Overview of the World Yiddish Stage

Based on articles supplied by Nahma Sandrow, author of Vagabond Stars: A World History of Yiddish Theater (Harper & Row, 1977, reissued by Syracuse U. Press, 1995)

Opening Act

Yiddish Theatre had its start in 1876 in a wine garden in Jassy, Romania, when Avrom Goldfaden performed the first evening of Yiddish Theatre. During the century that followed, Yiddish theatre telescoped most of the genres of Western theatre since the Middle Ages.

The development of the Yiddish theatre was part of the flowering of Yiddish into a modern literary language and secular culture in the 19th century. The rapid changes within the Yiddish-speaking community loosened the old religious and community strictures. Out went the traditional prohibition against theatre, allowing secular literature and drama to appear.

Yiddish theatre is not only an art form but also a social institution. In the early days, it was the symbol and battleground for the community's ferocious cultural, political and intellectual battles. When synagogue going diminished and assimilation shook social cohesion, Yiddish theatre functioned as a communal meeting place and a rite dedicated to Yiddishkeit, to sustaining the Yiddish way of life. Attending Yiddish theatre had the sense of a holiday.

The Prologue

The Purim play (Purim shpeil) is the earliest form of Yiddish theatre. On the Purim holiday, Jewish tradition sanctions revelry. In the late Middle Ages, bands of masquerading male amateurs became Purim players who went from house to house and in exchange for food, drink or a few coins for a favourite charity, performed short parodies in Yiddish based on the Book of Esther or other bible stories.

At Chanukah and weddings of important families, badchonim, wedding jesters, also used to entertain in Yiddish.

Another kind of Yiddish performer appeared in 19th Centrury Eastern Europe. These were the brodersingers, colourful troubadours, who created their own folk art material. Brodersingers would sing or dance, tell stories, recite dramatic poems or perform slapstick comedy in cabarets during the less restrictive reign of Alexander II in Russia.

Thus began the Jewish craze for stage shows.

Casting

Modern self-conscious Yiddish drama appeared in the early 19th century as part of the Haskalah, (Haskole) the Enlightenment movement. The Haskalah aimed to secularize and modernize Ashkenazi Jewry within modern European national cultures. The stage was seen not only as entertainment but also as a sphere for popular education, the elevation of culture and the enlightenment of the masses.

By 1886, a floating cadre of Yiddish Theatre practitioners appeared in Eastern Europe. Small troupes moved from town to town. Hotly competing theatre companies were formed centered either on a family of performers or on a star-manager with actors contracted by the season, by the production or by the tour. Actors included the handsome tragedian Jacob Adler, the heart-rending David Kessler, comic clown Sigmund Mogulesko and the elegant Keni Liptzin.

Popular Theatre

Popular theatre included folksy operettas, musical entertainments, revues and a whole range of low comedies and domestic tearjerkers. At its most vulgar, it was scorned by detractors as shund. It was a caricature of Jewish life, full of high gesture, colour and spectacle. As popular plays reflected the audiences' real-life problems, play going created communal bonds.

Pioneering Playwrights: Goldfaden and Gordin

On a higher intellectual level were the works of Goldfaden, the father of Yiddish theatre and of playwright, Jacob Gordin. Poet and songwriter, Goldfaden derided the folk caricatures and superstitions of the shtetl (small towns and villages) as in Koldunye (The Witch) and Hotsmach.* In its place he sent a message of heroism and hope to the suffering Jewish masses through biblical heroes as in Bar Kochba. His Sorceress was an operetta in 5 acts and 9 tableaus. Shulamis is his masterpiece, from which is drawn the most famous Yiddish theatre song, Raisins and Almonds.

While Goldfaden combined music, song and dance with text, Gordin, a former literary and drama critic, relied primarily on dialogue. Predating Stanislavski, he championed naturalism, fidelity to the text, moralism and modern ideas, including women's rights. Gordin's most famous works were Mirele Efros* and God, Man and Devil. It took some time but Yiddish actors and audiences developed a taste for Gordin's finer theatre. Gordin successfully reconciled the Yiddish -speaking masses and the intellectual elite.

As the Yiddish theatre grew, it drew on the classics including the works of literary giants, Sholem Aleichem (The Lottery *)and Yitschok Leib Peretz ( The Innkeeper*)

A More Crowded Scene

Every country with Yiddish-speakers enjoyed both resident and touring companies, big houses and little cabarets as well as thousands of active amateur groups. There were professional Yiddish actors' unions; in fact, the first actors' union in the USA was the Hebrew Actor's Union. Wherever a Yiddish theatre existed, it managed to incorporate elements of the local theatre that surrounded it and yet remain uniquely and essentially itself.

Passionate fans attached themselves to specific stars and productions were hotly debated in the Yiddish press. The Yiddish-speaking public's strong feelings for its stars is bound up with the intense relationship that the community has with Yiddish theatre as a whole. The Yiddish theatre was above all an actor's theatre and the actor's qualities were those of the theatre: energy, emotionalism, expressiveness, physicality, musicality, a forceful presence and a conscious attention to 'truth' as the criterion for artistic success. Stars included matinee idol Boris Thomashevsky and his wife Bessie, the lively singer-dancer Aaron Lebedev, comedian Ludwig Satz, Jacob and Sara Adler and the glamorous Bertha Kalish.

Yiddish Art Theatre

By World War 1, Yiddish theatre drew on the latest European avant-garde. Troupes were formed which shared a commitment to Stanislavsky-style realism, ensemble playing and the supremacy of the director's vision. In Europe, the most notable company was the Vilna Troupe which despite its name, found a home in Warsaw, Poland. Art theatres fostered intellectually ambitious plays, original Yiddish works and translations into Yiddish. The style was primarily expressionist and symbolic. The Vilna Troupe is best known for its production of S. Ansky's The Dybbuk*. Its most famous members were Joseph Buloff, Luba Kadison and Lev Kadison.

After the Russian Revolution, the USSR enjoyed a network of lively regional Yiddish theatres including children's theatres. The jewel was the Moscow Yiddish State Art Theatre (GOSET) starring Solomon Mikhoels and Binyomen Zuskin. They presented a range of repertory but were acclaimed for familiar Yiddish plays with a politicized twist. Among the important figures of this period were Ida Kaminska, Zygmund Turkow, Mikhel Mikjalesko, Max Bozyk, Shimen Dzigan and Yisroel Shumacher.

In North America, several art theatres with similar ideals were formed including Jacob Ben-Ami's Jewish Art Theatre and Maurice Schwartz's Yiddish Art Theatre. Authors associated with this art theatre movement were Sholom Asch (God of Vengeance*, Kiddush Hashem* -The Sanctification of G-ds Name) H. Leivick (The Golem) David Pinski ( The Tsvi Family, The Eternal Jew) and Peretz Hischbein(Green Fields*) in addition to the giants, Sholom Aleichem and Peretz. Maurice Schwartz' theatre lasted for 30 years. Identifying themselves with this more intellectual theatre movement were actors Jacob Ben-Ami, Joseph Buloff, Leon Leibgold, Ben Bonus and Mina Bern.

Denouement

Yiddish theatres continued in Europe on a large scale until the moment of total Nazi control. Even during World War II, Yiddish theatre continued in the ghettos. The Nazis and Stalin obliterated most European Yiddish actors and audiences and with them, their theatre. The survivors fanned out to other continents. From 1935 onwards, Yiddish theatres, artists and audiences began to disappear in Stalinist Russia, culminating in the murder of Mikhoels in 1949 and of Zuskin in 1952. Assimilation eliminated most of the remaining Yiddish theatres around the world.

After the Holocaust, Yiddish theatres could be found primarily in the USA as well as in London, Paris, Buenos Aires, Montreal, Melbourne, Johannesburg and Tel Aviv. The popular theatre entertainers included Molly Picon, Jenny Goldstein, Miriam Kressyn, Seymour Rechseit, Menasche Skulnik and Herman Yablokoff.

The Significance of Yiddish Theatre Today

Today there are 5 major Yiddish theatres left in the world. The Folksbiene Theatre in New York has continued for 92 seasons while Romania and Poland maintain Yiddish state theatres with primarily non-Jewish actors. Yiddispiel is the government sponsored Yiddish theatre in Israel. The Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre of Montreal celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2009.

Gordin asked, "If Yiddish actors are like other actors, why shouldn't Yiddish theatre be like all other theatres?" It is, certainly from the technical, directing and design standpoint. Yet it's different. It is a theatre that reflects the people it dramatizes - a people of passion and extremes. Through supertitles or simultaneous translation, it reaches out beyond the language to those that are Yiddish challenged.

Yiddish plays have been translated for non-Yiddish productions, just as Yiddish theatre has presented plays translated from the Western cannon. New Yiddish plays are a rarity and the classic plays no longer can be performed without adaptation, if for no other reason than their length. Audiences today are not generally willing to sit through four to five hour performances lasting until midnight, as did the audiences of yore who came with supper baskets and snacks in hand.

Performers (and audiences) trained in Yiddish theatre have participated in non-Yiddish drama and influenced it. Many Yiddish actors moved into character acting in films and TV. Paul Muni became an American film legend while Stella Adler, daughter of Jacob Adler and leading lady of Maurice Schwartz trained a whole generation of stars including Marlon Brando, Robert de Niro and Warren Beatty.

Today people are trying to get close to the life that Yiddish theatre nourished. More and more books, biographies and dissertations are being written on Yiddish theatre. London has a museum of Yiddish theatre. For a generation too young to remember, the Yiddish stars and the Yiddish stage retain a certain mystique.

Yiddish folk and popular theatre still affirms specific Jewish traditions. Yiddish intellectual theatre still strives to preserve authentic language and literature. Yiddish theatre still retains rich associations with cultural identity and Yiddish theatre attendance still remains a highly charged communal act.