If you stop remembering, you forget: Nostalgia in Jewish-American theatre and film, 1979--1999

Many Jewish-American theatre and film performances from 1979--1999 use nostalgia transmitted through Jewish/Yiddish language or culture to create emotional links with audiences. Why is nostalgia such an important approach in Jewish-American performances and what significance lies behind that nostalgia? Jewish-American theatre and film from 1979--1999 echoes the older Yiddish stage tradition at least as strongly as it does previous Jewish-American performances in English---particularly in using the Yiddish language, period music, and Jewish ritual. Important to nostalgia in the American Yiddish stage were techniques pioneered by Goldfadn, key plays Der Yidisher Kenig Lir by Gordin and Di Familia Tsvi by Pinski, plus certain techniques of the so-called shund theatre. Since 1979, three major categories of nostalgia include (1) nostalgia of place, for an ancestral or personal home; (2) nostalgia of time, often used to make sense of vexing social conflicts and dislocations or coming-of-age stories; and (3) nostalgia of family, whether personal, spiritual, or linguistic. I define "Jewish-American theatre and film" as works created by American Jews that contain explicitly Jewish cultural, linguistic, and ritual content. I define "nostalgia" as an emotional yearning for or revisiting of the past and the bittersweet impossibility of full return to that past. I seek to understand how nostalgia functions as an element in these works, which include examples of "low" as well as "high" art, rather than assessing nostalgia's artistic merits. Key plays and films examined include works by Allen, Fierstein, Finn, Kushner, Lebow, Levinson, Lumet, Mann, Margulies, Mlotek and Rosenfeld, Simon, Stein, Streisand, Wasserstein, and such films as The Frisco Kid, Dirty Dancing, Sweet Lorraine, and A Walk on the Moon. Nostalgia in these works helps audiences comprehend contemporary social dislocations and relocations, including the American Jews' departure from Europe for America, the city for the suburbs, Yiddish for English, as well as the impact of the civil rights, women's, peace, gay and lesbian movements and subsequent redefinition of family structures. The nostalgic past, often an imaginary place, thus serves as an emotional resource for audiences, and theatre and film serve as key media for transmitting culture from one generation to another.