Ghetto is the story of the Vilna ghetto theatre, during the Nazi occupation of Lithuania. Written by the Israeli playwright Joshua Sobol, Ghetto was inspired by an actual historical theatre which operated in the Jewish ghetto from 1941 until 1943.
Performing musical concerts, poetry, cabarets and original theatrical works, the Vilna ghetto theatre had its debut in January of 1942, four months after the Jews of Vilna were forced into the ghetto and two months after 50,000 of Vilna's 70,000 Jews were executed. The Ghetto theatre gave over 200 performances-selling 70,000 tickets predominantly to Jews but also to Polish, Lithuanian, and German officers. As a play within a play, Ghetto chronicles both the theatre's work and the dispute over its existence: whether it lulled the Jewish population into false sense of well-being or functioned as a site of cultural survival and resistance.
The story unfolds in the mind of the artistic director and chief puppeteer of the ghetto, through which the audience follows the intertwined stories of the creation of the theatre and the destruction of the Ghetto. Through the patronage of an SS officer, (who is also a musician,) the chief of the Jewish police assembles the theatre troupe believing it can provide a means of spiritual and cultural survival for the Jewish people in the Ghetto.
Cultural activity in the ghetto was not confined to the theatre. Creative and intellectual activity thrived, reflected in dozens of symposia and lectures, arts competitions, the maintenance of ghetto schools, and the printing of the "Ghetto News." Most notably, two days after the establishment of the ghetto, a library was opened which gained 1,485 registered readers within two weeks. Despite the constant deportations of Jews to the nearby Ponar death camp, books were borrowed at a rate of 400 a day. Within a year the library celebrated the borrowing of the 100,000th book.
Playwright Joshua Sobol noted while reading through the diaries of survivors and those who perished, "one is overawed by the burst of vitality. Without it, there is no accounting for the ability of the defenseless survivors to cling dauntlessly to life, to retain their joy of life in the face of armed tormentors and murderers." Sobol has recreated this vitality in his work Ghetto, filled with the song, dance and drama of the Ghetto theatre. The play had its premiere at The Haifa Municipal Theatre in 1984, its American premiere in Los Angeles at the Mark Taper Forum in 1986, and its British premiere at the National Theatre in 1989.
Despite the protests claiming "No theatre in a graveyard," the Vilna Ghetto theatre responded to despair with song, satire, and-amazingly-criticism of the Nazi regime, proving that theatre can provide courage and hope even amidst atrocity.