1. Genet as a Theorician of Theater.

Jean Genet has been the focus of numerous studies (Sartre, Bataille, Goldman, Dort, Derrida, Aslan, Abirached, Coe, Corvin, Thody, Knapp, etc…) as a playwright. But despise their great value and their quantity, Genet's theoretical texts have been neglected. One of the causes of this disinterest is his official image (constructed by Sartre, Cocteau and Genet himself) as an uncultured outlaw who suddenly started to write masterpieces in prison.

Therefore, to be able to approach these texts, I had to expose the artificiality of Genet's image. During my research, I discovered three exchanges of letters (Genet Bloch, Genet Frechtman, Genet Bourseiller). These documents, as unpublished, helped me to show in Jean Genet, la vie écrite (La Différence, Paris, 1988) that Genet was a highly cultured writer whose need to write determined all the aspects of his life since his childhood.

The book was very spoken about, translated in various languages and the publication of a more comprehensive biography of Genet (White, 1993) has not erased the impact of this new conception that has become a point of reference for research on Genet's work.

My recently published book Le Maître fou (Nizet, 2009) focuses on the analysis of the theoretical texts written by Genet (Grec! Lettre à Léon Fini, Lettre à Jean-Jacques Pauvert, Le Secret de Rembrandt, L'Atelier d'Alberto Giacometti, etc…). These texts are a key to the comprehension of his dramatic work. They define a system of a new sacred theater. They are, above all, a deep reflexion about the powers and the limits of artistic creation.

See: "Les cinq vies de  Jean Genet", Revue d'Histoire du Théâtre (1986), pp. 219-245.

Genet, la vie écrite, La Différence, Paris, 1988. Edition: Les Nègres au port de la lune, La Différence, Paris, 1988. Le Maître fou, Nizet, 2009.

See too in list of publications: 2, 2a, 2b, 3, 6, 10, 13, 13a, 14, 15, 16, 16a, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 22a, 25, 29, 31, 32, 39, 42, 50, 52.

2. Claudel as a director.

Paul Claudel, the second theme of my research is not so far from the first theme as it might seem. In "Claudel le fou, Genet le sage" (Revue d'Histoire du Théâtre (1988-4)), I showed to what extent Claudel and Genet shared similar conceptions of theater. These two playwrights, both influenced by Greek theater and catholic ritual, violently reject the dominant realistic and psychologic theater and aim at the invention of a new sacred theater.

In Claudel metteur en scène: la frontière entre les deux mondes (Presses universitaires franc-comtoises, 1988) and in various papers published in France and abroad, I oppose the accepted image of Claudel as a paragon of arrière-garde, reactionary theater. The book shows unknown aspects of Claudel's work: his ballets, his theatrical experiments and his exploration of a new kind of musical theater. Claudel as a choreographer is completely unknown: the first part of the book was dedicated to ballets composed between 1917 and 1923 (L'Homme et son désir, La Femme et son ombre, etc…). Claudel's innovative conception of musical theater that he developed through his collaboration with Max Reinhardt, Philippe de Rothschild and Ida Rubinstein was an another topic of the book. In the musical theatrical tetralogy written for Ida Rubinstein, music emerges from chaos to reach the supreme accomplishment of melody.

Recently, La Revue d'Histoire littéraire de la France has accepted for publication a new paper I wrote on two other Claudel's theatrical experiments.

See: "Les signes de l'au-delà", Théâtre en Europe 13 (1983), pp. 12-19.

Claudel metteur en scène : la frontière entre les mondes (Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté, 1998).

"Paul Claudel : deux pièces pour enfants" (Revue d'Histoire Littéraire de la France, accepted for publication).

See too (in list of publications): 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 12a, 13, 13a, 13b, 19, 19a, 19b, 26, 30, 34, 35, 41, 48, 57.

3. The creative process.

The beginning of my research was dedicated to unknown texts, neglected by the critics because they did not fit the official image of the writer (theoretical texts by Genet, directing experiments by Claudel). It has since developed in a more general, interdisciplinary research on the creative process in general, including films and operas.

a. The "Dream. Project".

My long immersion in the works of Claudel and Genet had made way for a new theme, namely the importance of the "Dream Project" for understanding the essence of an artist's work.

Every artist has his dream project that he begins and then abandons many times throughout his life, yet never finishes. It is always impossible, always elusive Le livre of Mallarmé, I gigantic della montagna of Pirandello, Moses und Aaron of Arnold Schoenberg, etc…) My hypothesis is that this dream-project (of which remain only drafts, often partly published) is of crucial importance for the body of the artist's published work. It constitutes the heart of the artist's creative world, the point of reference for all his other work. The text that Genet worked on during his life, but never finished, La Mort, is essential for a complete understanding of his remaining works. Similarly Claudel's Dream project, the dialogue between the Two Testaments, Judaism and Christianity, in the fourth (unrealized) part of his Confrontation's trilogy, is the invisible center around which all his artistic world revolves. I also researched Fellini's unrealized script, Viaggio di Giuseppe Mastorna, of which I found an unpublished draft. This script, placed in Heaven and Hell shows to what extent Fellini was attracted to metaphysical subjects that are, in my eyes, the focus of his films.

See: "Le livre impossible", Europe 808.809 (1996), pp. 134-143,

"The Son of the Dove and the Jewish Waiter" in Theater and Holy Script, Fortland, 1999, pp. 72-81, "Genet's Screens: the playwright as a seer" (Bama 138 (1994) pp. 52-56, in Hebrew).

b. The creative dialogue.

Theatrical creation is often the result of a dialogue between the different participants of the production, playwright and director, director and set-designer, or actors. My research concerns another type of creative dialogue. In this case, two artists (close friends, or rivals) react one to another through their works of art. I researched this creative dialogue between various artists and various artistic forms. (Claudel-Milhaud, Sartre-Genet, Hezl-Bahar, Peretz-Anski, Bergman-Fellini).

See: "Genet et Sartre, le dialogue des oeuvres à partir des deux premiers textes théoriques de Jean Genet", Revue d'Histoire Littéraire de la France I-1997, pp. 102-112.

"Deux Utopies où nous vivons : Terre ancienne, terre nouvelle de Théodore Herzl et L'antigoyisme à Sion de Jacques Bahar" in Utopies-mémoire et imaginaire, Verlag die Blaue Eule, Essen, 2008,
pp. 263-264.

"Perez and Anski: The creative dialogue" (in Hebrew) in Don't chase me: new reflexions about Anski's Dybuk, Assaf, Tel Aviv, 2009.

4. Veiled representations of Jewish characters in the Theater and Films of occupied France.

The era of the German Occupation of France constituted, surprisingly, a golden age for all the Arts: Literature, Theater, popular music and Film. Many plays that became classic were written or produced during this period. Two hundred and twenty films were shot amongst them some of the greatest films of French cinema. These works of art seem to be devoid of political meaning as if through Mime the artist (and the public) escaped from the sad reality. The widespread trend of unrealistic and fantastic art during this period is explained by most scholars (Turk, Bertin-Maghit, Siclier, etc…) as the artist's escape from the omnipotent eye of the German Censorship. Furthermore, the discovery of secret political messages hidden between the words of the play or the images of the film is usually considered to be  proof of a subversive manifestation of the French resistance to the Occupation. The purpose of my research is to show that in these colorful legend like fairy tales or comedies often exists a negative character which is not directly designed as a Jew but whose characteristics evoke the stereotypes attributed to Jews (cowardice, ugliness, thirst for money and power).

The elimination of this negative character will open the doors of happiness for the positive characters, who symbolize the pure French people, victims of these dangerous strangers. In my analyses of  Les Visiteurs du Soir or The Children of Paradise, I show the veiled presence of a Jewish character designed as enemy of Society and to uncover the links of these works with Vichy's "Revolution nationale" idealization of simple people, Nationhood, Nature, loathing of money and motivation. I attempt to show the importance of the "sympathic murderer ", elevated to the status of a new hero (Aurélie in La Folle de Chaillot, Lacenaire in Children of Paradise) who kills in order to purify Society of its polluting elements.

I discovered that the clandestine collaboration of two Jewish artists to the Carné's film was largely exaggerated, after the war to mask the antisemitic aspect of the films.

See: "Collaboration dans la clandestinité", Perspectives 8 (2001), pp. 99-112.

"Revolution in Paradise" in Paradise, Magnes, Jerusalem, pp. 351-361 (in Hebrew).

"La guerre des visages" in Panim, Panim, l'exil prend-il au visage ? book under the direction of Céline Masson and Michaël Gad Wolkowicz, E.K.D., Paris, 2009.

See too: 46, 48 and papers at conferences: 30, 31, 35, 36, 37, 41.

In this new direction of research, I would like to explore theater and film not as mirrors offered to reality but as mirrors of the undercurrents that form the future of Society, mirrors of social dreams offered to the future.