Remembering Forbidden Memories: Community Theatre and the Politics of Memory

Abstract

This article demonstrates how community theatre enables marginalized groups to re-member their forbidden memories and thus re-form their blocked cultural histories. I focus here on the Mizrahi group (Jews originating from Arab countries) in Israel and the way it appropriates community theatre as a tactic to articulate its own memories and history. In order to introduce community theatre as a particular alternative mnemonic practice within marginalized communities I present here together three alternative remembering systems: countermemory, community of memory, and performing history and show their connection to community theatre. I then analyse three community theatre productions which present community theatre as a popular form of performing history through which the Mizrahi actors produced a countermemory that contributed to the consolidation of their community into a community of memory.