Yehuda (Jean-Bernard) Moraly is a playwright and professor emeritus of Theater Studies at the Hebrew University. His fields of research are mainly French theater and film.
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Critic
His recent research is devoted to the representations of Jewish characters in Occupied France's Theater and Film: articles include "Les Enfants du Paradis, Volpone", "La Folle de Chaillot" that were published in Revolution in Paradise: Veiled representations of Jewish characters in Occupied France Elkana Press, 2015. The undermining of generally admitted cultural images remains a consistent feature of his research.
Jean Genet
His first book: Jean Genet, la vie écrite, Paris, 1988 opposed Genet's official image (as an uncultured outlaw) and showed him to be a highly cultured writer whose need to write determined all the aspects of his life. The book became a point of reference for research on Genet's work. Le Maître fou, (Nizet, 2009) analyses Genet's theoretical texts on theater and art. These texts, neglected by scholarship, offer a key for the comprehension of Genet's dramatic work and are a deep reflexion about the powers and the limits of artistic creation.
Paul Claudel
The second theme of his research, the theatrical creation of Paul Claudel, is not so far from the first as it may seem. In Claudel metteur en scène : la frontière entre les deux mondes, Besançon, 1998) Moraly opposes the accepted image of Claudel as a paragon of arrière-garde theater. The book reveals unknown aspects of Claudel's work: his ballets, his theatrical experiments and his exploration of a new kind of musical theater.
Playwright
Moraly is also a playwright. His plays have been produced and published in France and in other countries : Les Catcheuses (Maison de la Culture de Nanterre, 1973), Sissi en enfer (Maison de la Culture de Rennes, 1975), Cendrillon (Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, 1980), Gimpel (Khan Theater, 1982), Le Tombeau des poupées (Palais de Chaillot, 1983), Strip (Avant-Scène, 1986), Etrangle-moi, mon amour (Theatron HaSimta, 1990);The Barcelona Dispute, Jerusalem 1992 ); La Musique (France Culture, 1992). Voices (Aspeclaria, 2006, 2012) In 2009, Continuum published his recent play, a one-woman show, Les merveilles du fond des mers ou un chef d'œuvre à gonfler soi-même.