Diego Rotman is a Senior Lecturer, researcher, playwright, theater and performance director, artist, and curator. His research focuses on performative practices as related to local historiography, contemporary art, football, Yiddish theater and folklore and research-creation projects. He is currently an Vissiting Professor at the Anne Tanenbaum Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto and Research Associate at the Center for Jewish Studies at York University.
From July 2019 till July 2024 he served as the Head of the Department of Theater Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In March 2022, intitated at the Hebrew University the lab-performanceThe OWL. In May 2022 De Gruyter published the book Possession and Dispossession: Performing Jewish Ethnography in Jerusalem co-edited with Lea Mauas and Michelle MacQueen. In November 2023, established together with Dr. Noga Keida and Dr. Michal Brayer the Green Roof: An Inclusive space in times of war.
In March 2021 De Gruyter pub
lished The Yiddish Stage as a Temporary Home – Dzigan and Shumacher’s Satirical Theater (1927-1980), translated by Rebecca Wolpe. The book, in its Hebrew version published by Magnes University Press in 2017 was the recipient of the 2019 Shapiro Award for the Best Book in Israel Studies. In 2017 he was, together with Mauas, the recipient of the Israeli Minister of Culture for Visual Artists. In 2014, co-edited with Ronen Eidelman and Lea Mauas He'ara: Independent Art in Jerusalem at the Beginning of the 21st Century . Diego's Master's thesis (written in Yiddish) about the Yiddish te'ater in Israel 1948-2003 and his Ph.D. were written under the supervision of Prof. Galit Hasan-Rokem and Prof. Yechiel Szeintuch.
In 2000, Rotman and Mauas founded the Sala-manca Group, which is active in contemporary art, performance and public art. The Group published the art periodical He'arat shulayim and curated and produced the He'ara Contemporary Art Events. In 2009, they founded the Mamuta Art and Research Center, today based at the Hansen House, Jerusalem, as a center for research, production, and presentation of art.
[Dzigan and Shumacher painting by Adi Kaplan and Shahar Carmel]