Mi Corazón Español Vive Ahora En Grecia: Creating Plays on the Spanish Roots of the Sephardic Communities of Thessaloniki and Veroia

Abstract

In my 2022-23 Fulbright Award to Spain and Greece, I took on the daunting task of writing six plays, titled Mi Corazón Español Vive Ahora En Grecia: Six Plays of Sephardic Greece, about the Spanish roots of the Jewish communities of Thessaloniki and Veria, of which I am a descendent (my father’s mother, my Nona, Mary Massarano Crespin was from Thessaloniki, and my Nono, Isaac Morris Crespin was from Veroia). This project was built upon a previous 2018 Fulbright project titled Madre de Israel: Three Plays of Jewish Salonika. In this essay, I will document and analyze my dramatic adaptation process for both Fulbright Projects, creating living histories for the stage to memorialize a Sephardic Jewish world nearly destroyed by the Holocaust. Working through a process which included teaching, oral narrative, traditional scholarship, and the creative research of exploring the geography, family histories, and cultural experiences of Ladino/Spanish music, poetry, and storytelling, I have written a total of 10 new plays, all using a non-linear technique of dreamwork for dramatic writing. The challenges tied to this ongoing project include the absence of collective memory, the destruction of entire communities, and the controversial curation of places of Jewish memory.

Keywords

• jewish
• thessaloniki
• veria
• holocaust
• theatre
• drama
• playwriting
• spain
• greece
• fulbright
• dramatic technique
• dramatic literature