Centre for Contemporary Performing Arts

"Kaddish” is an exploration of ritual, loss, and unrelenting inner conflict in which the beleaguered central character mourns the absence of the child he never fathered during his failed marriage, his mantra being a refusal to bring a child into a world where horrors like the Holocaust can occur. As he attempts to reach the final Amen of the Kaddish prayer, he weaves a brutally honest, deeply personal, stream of consciousness web of the unseen casualties of war, political corruption, Jewish identity, and the humor of living. American staging of this magnificent novel, an eloquent meditation on human vulnerability and strength told through the eyes of a survivor of Holocaust.

After the premiere in Baltimore and in New York, the play toured to Hungary.

One can hardly find a text seemingly less suitable for theatre than Kertész’s novel. However, Barbara Lanciers and Jake Goodman were able to find the authentic form on stage: their performance is wonderfully simple and reserved, saturated by the beauty of the text and the creators’ deep respect for it.

Andrea Tompa, President, Hungarian Theatre Critics’ Association wrote: “Though the novel itself is not driven by plot, the two artists created an excellent, spot-on adaptation and Jake Goodman combines incredible power, self-control, composure and inner fire in transmitting the inexplicable.”

Kertész is known to be strict and picky about how his works are produced. He refuses to give the permission for production, when he feels that that the play might deviate from his original work. But after the premiere of the production of Barbara Lanciers and Jake Goodman he wrote: “I am very happy that these young people understood my text and did such a wonderful selection and interpretation for the stage.”

A co-production with the Jewish Museum in Prague.