ABSTRACT
Ron Elisha, the first Jewish-Australian playwright to be produced so far in Australia, New Zealand, North America, England, France, Poland, Belgium, Portugal, and Israel, keeps returning to “the scene of the crime” in his writing, i.e. The Holocaust.
The Israeli production of his play, “Certificate of Life” (staged at the Cameri theater, 2017) was uniquely cast. The three leading ladies were a Holocaust survivor (as a Holocaust survivor), a daughter of a survivor (as her daughter) and a German born and raised actress, whose parents converted to Judaism after the war (as the German clerk).
Matters of reality vs. fiction, personal biography and artistic invention were very present in the process of making the show and its eventual reception by critics and audiences alike.
This chapter, written by the director of that special production, seeks to explore Elisha’s prolific body of work as a “Holocaust playwright”, to follow the sources of his inspiration, analyze the main themes of his play, document the work process on the Israeli production, and examine the way it was received.
