J. Brel Is Alive And Well And Living In Kennesaw

·         Theatre flourished during ww2

·         From ‘40-44 several hundred plays packed the 4 auditoriums in Paris

·         Emergence of the Resistance Theatre

o   Due to German ignorance

o   Subtlety of the French playwrights

o   Theatre gave citizens what they needed most; warmth and entertainment

·         Paris was obviously the center of artist exploration during the occupation

·         Most popular shows occasionally toured to smaller houses in the suburbs

·         Censor was re-introduced to the theatre community for the first time since 1906

·         Post occupation, trials conducted for playwrights only, not actors or directors

·         The Parisian press printed mainly the Nazi agenda so plays were circulated by mouths and thru underground papers

·         Postwar French drama was mostly expressed through the existential and absurdist styles

·         Camus and Jean-Paul Sarte most notably combined theory, philosophy and psychology with theatre

·         Jazz clubs closed, curfew was 8pm

·         It was a strange reconcile. Paris was a hot bed of bona-fide jazz-loving, leaf-smoking, jew-friending ‘degenerates’. And while Hitler’s army were arresting musicians, shutting down swing-joints,  storming cabarets that housed the “rhythms of belly-dancing negroes”,

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·         “Strictly prohibited is the use of instruments alien to the German spirit – so-called cowbells, flexatone, brushes, etc – as well as all mutes which turn the noble sound of wind and brass instruments into a Jewish-Freemasonic yowl – so-called wa-wa, hat, etc.” (Step 5 in Nazifing Jazz, as recalled in Josef Skvorecky’s ‘Bass Saxophone’)