The Banality of Evil: Hannah Arendt, France, 1940

In May 1940, three German Jewish women are arrested in France – Hannah Arendt, who would become one of the 20th century’s most influential political theorists, the artist Charlotte Salomon, and the Communist schoolgirl Eva Daube.

Branded “Undesirables” and transported to Camp Gurs, they find themselves among thousands of prisoners held by the state that once promised them refuge. As German forces advance, each woman must confront an impossible choice: stay and hope for liberation, or risk her life to escape into a dangerous and unknown future.

Blending satire, physical theatre and cabaret, The Banality of Evil draws on archival research and testimony to reveal forgotten histories of women caught between exile, imprisonment and survival. At its centre is a pivotal moment in the life of 33 year-old Hannah Arendt that would later inform her writing on power and human rights.

A world premiere from writer and director Julia Pascal (Blueprint Medea; Crossing Jerusalem).

Post-show talks
10 October: To mark the anniversary of Charlotte Salomon’s death, we will be joined after the show by Griselda Pollock, Professor Emerita of Social and Critical Histories of Art at University of Leeds, and writer/director Julia Pascal for a post-show discussion. Author of the art historical and cultural analysis of Charlotte Salomon’s major work, Life? Or Theatre? (Yale, 2018), Pollock is deeply involved in the study of women as creative artists and their fate at the hands of art history.

14 October: On the 120th anniversary of Hannah Arendt’s birthday, we will be joined after the show by Dr Barbara Warnock, Co-Director of the Wiener Holocaust Library, and writer/director Julia Pascal for a post-show discussion. During her time at the Library, Dr Warnock has curated a number of exhibitions including Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust, Berlin-London; The Lost Photographs of Gerty Simon; Fighting Antisemitism from Dreyfus to Today, and Forgotten Victims: The Nazi Genocide of the Roma and Sinti.

20 October: Join us for a post-show discussion on Charlotte Salomon with Dr Cailee Davis, co-founder of the Holocaust Research Consultancy, and writer / director Julia Pascal. Cailee recently completed her doctorate at St Anne’s College, University of Oxford. Her research traces generational patterns in representations of the Holocaust from the works of survivors to their descendants, across media, language, culture, and geographies. Cailee has received fellowships from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure, the Holocaust Education Foundation at Northwestern University, and the University of Wrocław.