The effect of holocaust psychology to the time and place of the theatre plays written by jewish inmates in Terezin

Theatre has long been called a laboratory –for revolution, for catharsis, for formulating our relationship to social action and ethical responsibility. As Tony Kushner once remarked, 'theatre is the greatest device we've ever invented for teaching critical consciousness'. Focusing on the question of how theatre can maintain the power of endurance under one of the most horrible time in world's history. The aim of this PhD research is to explore the creative coping process on the reorganizsing the past and projecting the future in the theatre plays written by Jews in Terezin/Theresienstadt during World War II. This research was investigated a detailed dramaturgical analysis of Terezin plays. However, the methodology of the research was not only a textual analysis and required to re-enter the ghetto by all possible means. The importance of this research based on the reality that the aim of doing theatre is not to create an artistic event. 'It's a fight for life'. Theatre becomes the instrument of this fight. It has designed according to the conditions in the ghetto and then it changes these conditions in people's mind by giving them the strength. The relation between time, place and memory gives us the crucial structures of Terezin Plays to create and increase the spiritual resistance in the inmates. We can accept the theatre plays produced in Terezin/Theresienstadt ghetto as a fictional universe and as a kind of laboratory and examine the space-place designs of the play texts on the axis collective memory by taking into account the effect of stress coping motivation on this creative process. This PhD dissertation was studied twelve pieces plays, which were written in Terezin/Theresienstadt with this regard and offer the term 'contrcatharsis' to the field.