Theater
ORIGINS
POST-BIBLICAL PERIOD
FROM 1600 TO THE 20TH CENTURY
England
France
Germany
Italy
Holland
Russia
United States
Jews in the Musical
The Jew as Entertainer
YIDDISH THEATER
Premodern Performance
in Yiddish
Haskalah Drama
Broder Singers
The Goldfaden
Era
Westward Exodus
The Gordin Era
New York to World
War II
Latin America
The Art Theater
Movement in Eastern Europe
Interwar Poland
Soviet
Yiddish Theater
Other Centers
The
Late 20th Century
Conclusion
Neither biblical nor talmudic literature contains
anything which can be described as "theater" or "drama"
in the modern sense of these terms. The Song of Moses (Ex. 15), with
its
choric refrain in the Song of Miriam, has often been cited as containing
the rudiments of drama, which began as a combination of song and dance.
The same has been suggested for the Song of Songs, and various attempts
have been made with limited success to arrange this book for performance.
It would be rash to suggest that writers of the Bible were quite untouched
by the Athenian drama which had developed on the fringes of the Israelite
world in the fifth century B.C.E. The Book of Job (dating
probably from the fifth or fourth century B.C.E.) conforms
in a general way to dramatic principles. It is written largely in
dialogue, it shows expression of character, and it contains dramatic
incidents. If there were in biblical writing tendencies toward formal
dramatic composition, they reached their furthest development in Job.
However, presentations of the Book of Job on the stage have fallen
short of proving that it was written for performance.
Dramatic intentions are not manifest in post-biblical
writing, except in the work of *Ezekiel of Alexandria, who
lived in the first century B.C.E. and wrote tragedies
on biblical themes. He wrote in Greek, and the known fragments of
his work owe their survival to non-Jewish scholars. On the whole,
post-biblical literature is without any works intended for performance
in a theater. But the rabbis were fully aware of and generally disapproved
of the theaters, amphitheaters, and circuses that existed in their
Hellenistic-Roman world. They discouraged attendance at the theater
except in certain circumstances. The Midrash indicates contemporary
opinion when, in reference to the Bible story of Joseph in Egypt,
it quotes two rabbis relating how, on the day of the Nile festival,
a day of theatrical performances which all flocked to see, Joseph
"went into the house to cast up his master's accounts"
(Gen. R. 87:7).
The rabbis of the Talmud taught that one should not
go to theaters or circuses because sacrifices were offered in honor
of the idols. Where no such sacrifices were offered it was still prohibited
to be present since persons watching the clowns and buffoons performing
would transgress the prohibition against sitting in "the seat
of the scornful" (Ps. 1:1). Nevertheless Rabbi Nathan thought
Jews should be allowed to attend circuses and shows to watch gladiatorial
contests since the members of the audience usually had the right of
saving the life of the victim (Av. Zar. 18b).
Other evidence suggests that though the pious kept
aloof from the theater, many others did not. It is considered that
one of the purposes of Ezekiel of Alexandria in writing his biblical
tragedies was to divert Jews from attendance at pagan theaters. This
indicates that Jews were regularly to be found among the theater-going
public.
Women were forbidden to go to shows of any kind.
There is a touching passage in the Midrash (Ruth R. 2:22) in which
Naomi tells Ruth that if she insists on conversion to Judaism, she
will have to deny herself certain pleasures. "My daughter,"
she says, "it is not the custom of the daughters of Israel
to frequent theaters and circuses."
The theaters that arose in Palestine during the Hellenistic
period were largely swept away by the Maccabean War (167 B.C.E.),
but a revival of forms of entertainment took place in the next century
under Herod, and the larger cities including Jerusalem had theaters,
amphitheaters, and hippodromes. These were gentile institutions. There
was no attempt at creating a Jewish playhouse.
By the second century of the Christian Era, performance
of tragedy had practically vanished from the Palestinian theater,
and had been replaced by buffoonery, ribaldry, and coarse comedy which
sometimes ridiculed Jews and their customs (Lam. R. 3:13). The hostility
of the rabbis was such that they declared it sinful for a Jewish workman
to take part even in the building of a stadium or amphitheater (Av.
Zar. 16a).
In Rome during the time of Nero (first century C.E.),
there were Jews on the Roman stage as well as in the auditorium. A
Jewish actor
*Aliturus
(or Alityros) is known to have been among the emperor's favorites.
He is mentioned by
*Josephus
without any apparent surprise at finding a Jewish actor in high favor
in court. The sarcophagus of an actress, Faustina, in the Roman catacombs
of the first or second century C.E. displays Jewish
symbols and the word "shalom" in Hebrew. Another
player, Menophilus (first century), lampooned by the Roman epigrammatic
poet Martial, appears to have been a Jewish comedian. In the third
century the rabbinical scholar Simeon b. Lakish (also known as Resh
Lakish) earned his living as a strong man in a circus at Sepphoris,
as related in the Talmud (BM 84a; Git. 47a, et al.).
All this suggests that Jews were not uncommon in the theatrical profession.
As Jews became increasingly unpopular, however, during the Jewish
War, they, like the early Christians, tended to conceal their origin.
Jewish theatrical activity at this early period thus
remains largely conjectural. The Bible, nevertheless, played a very
positive role both as a source of dramatic inspiration and as an influence
on content in all forms of theatrical representation. The Bible has
had a primary and enduring role in the history of the Western theater.
In the first place it provided the starting point of modern theater
in the medieval mystery plays, and secondly it continued to provide
subjects and ideas to which playwrights, poets, composers, and choreographers
have turned again and again. (See
*Bible
, in Arts.)
In the history of the Jewish theater, the mystery
play has great relevance. The two came into contact in Italy in the
early Renaissance period when the ducal heads of the city-states often
sponsored the entertainments held at ducal weddings or other festive
occasions. In their ghettos the cultural life of the Jewish communities
tended to follow the gentile pattern. The Purim play was a counterpart
to the kind of show the gentiles enjoyed at their carnivals (see
*Purim-Shpil
). In time it was turned into an elaborate theatrical presentation
played by Jewish theatrical companies who acquired considerable fame.
(See also below: The Jew as Entertainer.)
In Italy, in the 16th century, Mantua
became famous for its court pageantry and was the center of the new
Italian drama.
The Jewish community, about 2,000 people, often provided and most
likely paid for dramatic spectacles for ducal entertainments. On Fridays,
the performances began early since they had to end before Sabbath.
The Jewish company of the Mantua ghetto acquired a high reputation
as did companies in other Italian cities where there were Jewish communities.
The Venetian diarist, Marin Sanudo, records on Saturday, March 4,
1531, the day after Purim, that "there was performed among
the Jews in the 'Geto' a very fine comedy; but no Christian
could be present by order of the Council of Ten. It ended at ten o'clock
at night." This was almost certainly an annual event, which
gentiles must have attended in earlier years, thus arousing the disapproval
of the Council. In 1489, as a special request, the story of Judith
and Holofernes from the Apocrypha was staged in Pesaro by the Jewish
community at its own expense as the main show in the elaborate wedding
celebrations of Giovanni Sforza, lord of Pesaro, to the sister of
the marquess of Mantua.
In 1525 two obviously famous Jewish actors, Solomon
and Jacob, were sent for from Ferrara to act in a comedy at a great
banquet given by Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga in Mantua. By 1525 participation
of Jews in state performances was regarded as a normal thing. In 1549
the Jews presented a comedy at the wedding of Duke Francesco in Mantua.
In 1563 they performed Ariosto's I Suppositi, in 1568 Le Due Fulvie by Massimo Faroni of Mantua. In 1583 they presented
a comedy Gli Ingiusti Sdegni by Abbé Bernado Pino with
dances by the Jewish ballet master,
Jacchino *Massarano
. Under Duke Vincenzo of Mantua (from 1590) the Jews were required
to perform almost annually. As many as 80 members took part in one
performance. The success of the Mantuan community's theater
company was due in large part to one man, Leone Portaleone Sommi,
an impresario, well known all over Europe, who stands at the threshold
of modern times and modern theater.
[Lewis Sowden]
The Jew's participation in 17th-and
18th-century theatrical productions was at best insignificant.
As a stage character, however, the Jew, portrayed by non-Jewish actors,
became a popular figure in the European theater. He was generally
a villain, although occasionally, in plays by authors opposed to Jew-baiting,
a supernoble being. Jewish actors, until 1900, were isolated figures,
facing prejudice and often abuse. It was not until the second half
of the 19th century that Jews gained prominence as actors
and directors in Europe and in the United States and made their mark
as they had in other professions.
The bleak period is typified by the theater in England,
where the Shakespearean age had made drama the most important art
form in the country. Jews, who had been expelled in 1290, were little
known in England until their return in the mid-17th century,
but they were known on the stage. Early representations of Jews as
villains gave way to stage characters who, because they were Jews,
were either usurers or fools, and almost always ridiculous.
The first English secular play which included a Jewish
character was The Three Ladies of London by R.W. (possibly
Robert Wilson), published in 1584, in which a Jew, portrayed as decent
and honorable, was nevertheless defrauded. Shortly afterward,
*Marlowe
's The Jew of Malta (1591) and
*Shakespeare
's The Merchant of Venice (1596), in both of which a
Jew was the villain, set a pattern which was to endure. There are
on record 80 plays published in England from 1584 to 1820, in which
at least one character was recognizable as being Jewish; most of them
were written after 1700. After 1800 plays with Jewish characters appeared
at the rate of almost one year. (See
*English Literature
.)
Shakespeare's Shylock was first played comically,
until, in 1741, the Irish actor Charles Macklin caused a sensation
by defying tradition and playing him as a tragic character and according
to the original text.
When the English theaters, closed by the Puritans
in 1642, were reopened after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660,
King Charles II extended his protection to Jews, and
playwrights were therefore discouraged from lampooning them. More
important than mere protection was the fact that King Charles continued
Cromwell's benevolent policy of allowing Jews to resettle in
England. This meant in fact that Jews could now live and work openly
in the country. It was some time, though, before Jews made their way
in the theater. Samuel Pepys' Diary for Aug. 12, 1667, refers
to a "Mrs. Manuel, the Jew's wife, formerly a player,"
and praises her as "a mighty discreet, sober-carriaged woman";
but it is probable that Mrs. Manuel was not herself Jewish.
The first Jewess to win a name on the English stage
was
Hannah *Norsa
, daughter of an Italian Jew from Mantua who kept a tavern in Drury
Lane. She played the part of Polly Peachum in The Beggar's
Opera in 1732 with great success. Another popular actor on the
London stage was
*Leoni
(Myer Lyon), a singer who made his debut at Drury Lane on Dec. 13,
1760, in a play called The Enchanter. When Leoni played the
lead in The Duenna by Richard Sheridan it could not be performed
on Friday night as Leoni sang in the Duke's Place Synagogue.
When it opened in 1775 at Covent Gardens at Leoni's insistence,
the name of the principal male singing part was changed from Cousin
Moses to Don Carlos.
Both Leoni and another actor who played the part
of the rich and absurd Isaac Mendoza in The Duenna are reported
to have used the exaggerated foreign accent that had become standard
for Jewish characters from at least 1715, when the character Mordecai
used it in Charles Knipe's A City Ramble. Among the
leading actors who played accented Jewish roles was Ralph Wewitzer
who played in Garrick's and Edmund Kean's companies
and who may have been of Jewish birth. The broken accent was considered
hilarious by 18th- and 19th-century audiences.
From the end of the 18th century on, however, there were
several plays of importance that presented
Jews in a favorable light, among them those by C.Z. Barnett (1802–1890),
a Jew who was a playwright and an actor.
A small number of Jewish performers who became known
as "Astley's Jews" also played at Astley's
circuses at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the
19th century. Chief of the troupe was
Jacob De *Castro
, a comedian, who wrote an autobiography, Memoirs (1824).
One book changed the atmosphere for Jews in the arts
and profoundly influenced their portrayal. In Oliver Twist,
Charles Dickens drew Fagin as an unrelieved picture of evil, which
set the tone in drama for most of the rest of the 19th century. The first adaptation of Oliver Twist reached the stage
in 1838, the very year of the novel's publication. Fagin was
followed by an almost unrelieved procession of Jewish stage distortions,
and even helped to popularize a lisp for stage Jews that lasted until
1914.
Nevertheless, the Jews were beginning to protest.
They comprised a considerable portion of theater audiences at the
time, and during one performance in 1839 their resentment overflowed
into a disturbance that drowned the play completely. A riot stopped
Dibdin's Family Quarrels at its 1802 opening when the
audience took offense at a Jewish reference. Jews often expressed
their disapproval of a play by staying away. A revival of The Jew
of Malta in 1818 led to a Jewish boycott of London theaters for
the rest of the season.
In contrast to their portrayal on the stage, Jews
were winning distinction as actors, singers, and even writers. Maria
Bland, an actress, won fame at Drury Lane toward the end of the 18th century. Mary Anne Goward Keeley (1806–1899), her husband,
Robert Keeley (1793–1869), and Henry Sloman (Solomon; 1793–1873)
played in London theaters.
John *Braham sang
at Covent Garden and in 1835 built St. James' Theatre. Edward
Stirling (1811–1894) and Morris Barnett were actors and playwrights.
Adelaide Neilson (1846–1880) appeared twice on tour in the
U.S.
The Jewish stereotype on the London stage was finally
broken in 1914 by three plays that treated Jews in some depth:
Israel *Zangwill
's The Melting Pot,
Harold F. *Rubinstein
's Consequences, and Herman Scheffauer's The
New Shylock. In 1922 came Galsworthy's Loyalties,
which treated the Jew and the prejudices surrounding him with dignity
and objectivity. Leon M. Lion the actor-producer, played in a revival
of the play in 1928.
With the rise of the Nazis on the Continent, the
Jew became a tragic figure and could no longer be treated on the English
stage in a spirit of caricature or ridicule. Jewish actors came to
the fore without having to aver or deny their Jewishness, among them
Alfred Marks, Alfie Bass (d. 1987), David Kossoff, Yvonne Mitchell,
and Leonard Sachs. Among directors the most important was Sir Herbert
Beerbohm-Tree (1853–1917).
In most 19th-century French plays Jews
were either caricatured or romanticized, the men portrayed as ugly,
old, and dirty, and the women as noble, beautiful, and heroic, but
there were three important exceptions. Le Juif by Marc-Antoine-Madelaine
Desaugiers (1772–1827) produced in 1823 included the benevolent
character Isaac Samuel. The playwright Adolphe Philippe d'Ennery
(1811–1899), who had been a public notary and was said to be
a Jew named Jacob, criticized the convention that a Jew must be grotesque
and repulsive.
Catulle *Mendes
(1841–1909), whose father was a Jew, painted a sympathetic
Jewish character in Les Mères Ennemies (1880). But there
was no Jewish character in French drama as memorable as the English
Shylock or the German Nathan the Wise.
Foremost among France's Jewish actors was
Sarah *Bernhardt
who, though Roman Catholic by upbringing, was proud of her Jewish
heritage; and Eliza (
*Rachel
) Felix who died young, having become famous as an interpreter of
French classic roles.
There were, of course, many more Jewish actors on
the French stage: René Alexandre (1885–1945) who was
noted for Corneille and Victor Hugo roles;
Harry *Baur
who began at the Grand Guignol and went over to films; George Berr
(1867–1942), an actor, director, and author of fame whose beautiful
voice contributed to his success; Marthe Brandes (1862–1930)
whose original name was Josephine Brunschwig, and whose grace was
famous; Daniel Gelin (1921–2002), a Comédie Française
stage actor and director of films; Robert Hirsch (1921– ),
actor; Romanian-born Edouard Alexander de Max (1862–1930) who
became well known in roles of young tragic figures like Schiller's
Don Carlos; Simone Simon (1914–2005), equally at home on stage
and screen; Gustave Hippolite Worms (1836–1910); the athletic
Eugène Silvain (1851–1930), noted for his Roman profile;
and Suzanne Reichenberg (1853–1924) who for 30 years specialized
in young roles. Jules Claretie (1840–1912), dramatist and journalist,
was from 1885 to 1912 the administrator of the Comédie Française.
Gustave Cohen (1879–1958) was the great French historian of
the theater.
In a special category belong Jean Gaspard Deburau
(1796–1846) and his not-quite-so-famous son Jean Charles (1829–1873).
Jean Gaspard, whose father Philippe Germain (1761–1826) had
a theater of marionettes, was born in Bohemia in 1811 and came to
Paris where he became a mime at the Théatre des Funambules
("Theater of the Tightrope-Walkers"), which once had
been a circus. He created Pierrot, a new type which, because of its
originality and the excellence of the performer, became a sensation
overnight. He himself wrote the plays in which Pierrot was the tragic
hero, and his art of pantomime was considered unique. His son continued
in his father's career with success, but did not equal his
reputation.
In no other country in modern times did the theater
play as important a role as in Germany (see
*German Literature
). And in no other country did the Jew figure so prominently in dramatic
literature, in acting or directing. His beginning was early and on
a hostile note. In 1573 97 boys, five to 17 years
old, performed a play called Ein Schoen Christlich new Spil von
Kinderzucht in Ensisheim (Upper Alsace). The play, written by
Johann Rassern, the parson of Ensisheim, tells the story of two boys,
one of whom, spoiled by his mother and corrupted by a Jew, Ulmann,
ends his life on the gallows. An unknown artist illustrated the manuscript
with 63 woodcuts which depict the action of the play: Ulmann and the
boy at a dice game; Ulmann dragged to the gallows; and Ulmann being
removed from there by the devil (F.R. Lachman, Die "Studentes"
des Cristophorus Stymmelius und ihre Buehne, 1926).
In 1616, Das Endinger Judenspiel, dealing
with the trial and burning of Jews for murder after the disappearance
of a Christian family, was performed in Endingen (Baden). Following
that Andreas Gryphius (1616–1664) presented his Horribilicribrifax (1663; after Plautus' Miles Gloriosus) featuring the
boasting Jew Issachar; and, decade after decade from 1634, the Bavarian
Oberammergau Passion Play has been staged, latterly in the face of
energetic Jewish protests. The 17th and 18th centuries produced a considerable number of villainous or at least
reprehensible Jewish figures in dramatic literature.
Nevertheless, Germany, at a relatively early time,
provided exceptions to the general attitude. Die Juden (1749),
written by
Gotthold Ephraim *Lessing
, boldly attacked Christian prejudice. Much more important, however,
was Lessing's Nathan der Weise (1779) in which Jewish,
Christian, and Muslim characters present the idea that virtue is not
bound to religion and that all religions are equally important. The
play was banned from the stage for a number of years. A considerable
number of writers for the stage followed Lessing's example
and created sympathetic Jewish figures in their plays. The caricatured
Jew remained popular in the 19th and 20th centuries.
An example is quoted by S.M. Dubnow (Die neueste Geschichte des
juedischen Volkes 1789 – 1914, vol. 2, p. 12): in
1815–16, a very bad comedy, Die Judenschule or Unser
Verkehr had enormous success. A popular actor, Wurm, aping the
Jewish "jargon," and mocking Jewish peculiarities, was
applauded nightly. When the play was scheduled to be produced in Berlin,
Israel *Jacobsohn
obtained a prohibition against the performance from Chancellor Hardenberg.
The public became furious and held nightly demonstrations until the
prohibition was revoked.
It was only toward the end of the 18th century, the time of the Emancipation, that Jewish actors appeared
on the German stage. Their number, however, increased rapidly, a fact
noted by the German actor and historian of the theater, Eduard Devrient,
in his Geschichte der deutschen Schauspielkunst (5 vols., 1848–74).
It seems that Jacob Herzfeld (1769–1826), who was admired by
Goethe and Schiller and corresponded with both, was the first serious
Jewish actor on the German stage. He was followed by members of three
generations of his family. Eduard Jerrmann (1798–1859) had
equal success on the French and on the German stage, Heinrich Marr
(1797–1871) was the first Mephisto, Anton Ascher (1820–1884)
the first Jewish comedian. Moritz Rott (1797–1867),
Ludwig *Dessoir
, and especially the Polish-born
Bogumil *Dawison
, followed by Siegwart Friedmann (1842–1916), Maximilian Ludwig
(1847–1906), and the Budapest-born Max Pohl (1855–1935)
were outstanding actors in Germany.
Adolf von *Sonnenthal
, born in Budapest, was the uncontested star of the Vienna Hofburg-theater.
Great stage managers soon began to appear in the
German theater. Berlin was without doubt one of the two capitals of
world theater, the other being Moscow. Hebrew actors from Palestine
who met in Berlin gave the first performance of Henie Rochet's
play Belshazzar and created the Teatron Ereẓ Yisre'eli.
While in other European countries all theaters of importance were
concentrated in the capital, in Germany leading theaters existed in
more than a dozen cities, many under Jewish managers who often doubled
as outstanding stage directors. An important development in stagecraft
was brought about by the Jewish director of the theatrical company
of Duke George II of Saxony Meiningen (1826–1914),
Ludwig *Chronegk
, who, when the Meininger toured the country, staged more than 250
plays, introducing new precision, discipline, and natural behavior
and creating a closely knit ensemble. In the company were
Ludwig *Barnay
who later had a theater of his own in Berlin, and Hungarian-born Leopold
Teller (1844–1908).
The next step in the development of the German stage
was taken by another Jewish director,
Otto *Brahm
(Abrahamsohn), who became a pioneer of the naturalistic theater. Emanuel
Reicher (1849–1924) and Else Lehmann (1866–1940), among
others, acted under his direction. Together with two other Jews, the
publisher
Samuel *Fischer
and the critic
Alfred *Kerr
, Brahm prepared the way to fame of such non-Jewish authors as Frank
Wedekind and Gerhart Hauptmann.
The name of
Max *Reinhardt
, who moved away from Brahm's naturalism and allowed free play
to fantasy, became closely associated with a great number of Jews
acting under his direction: Victor Arnold (1873–1914),
Ernst *Deutsch
,
Max *Pallenberg
, and
Rudolph *Schildkraut
were among them. At the same time there were actors like
Elizabeth *Bergner
, Maria Fein (1896–1965), Alexander Granach (1890–1945),
Paul Graetz (1890–1966), Ludwig Hartau (1872–1922),
Peter *Lorre
, Fritzi Massary, Grete Mosheim (1905–1986), Luise Rainer (1912–
), Gisela Werbezirk (1875–1956), and many others. The last
director who changed the outlook of the theater in Germany before
Hitler's rise to power was
Leopold *Jessner
, pioneer of expressionism on the stage. It was under his direction
that actors like
Fritz *Kortner
reached the zenith of their careers.
During the 19th and at the beginning of
the 20th centuries many names of Jewish theater directors
in Berlin and elsewhere became widely known. Carl Friedrich Cerf (1771–1845)
created the first private theater in Berlin;
Victor *Barnowsky
, Oscar Blumenthal (1852–1917), and Gustav Lindemann (1872–1960)
in Duesseldorf are among them. Alfred Kerr was the most notable representative
of a generation of Jewish theater critics who had enormous influence
on the development of the theater in Germany and made the reviewing
of plays a quasi-independent art form. Romanian born
Ernst Stern (1876–1954) was, during the last pre-Hitler decades,
Berlin's and Reinhardt's most honored scenic artist
and stage designer. Jewish audiences played an important, sometimes
decisive role, as developments after Hitler's take-over illustrate.
On April 10, 1933, the Berlin correspondent of the Daily Telegraph reported: "The theaters are beginning to suffer from the impoverishment
of the Jews, who have always been lavish patrons. A new production
at the Deutsches Theater, enthusiastically praised by the entire press,
has been taken off after a few performances before a nearly empty
auditorium."
When Hitler came to power, there were about 2,400
Jewish actors and theater directors in Germany. On April 1, 1933,
an organized anti-Jewish boycott began and Jewish actors were ousted.
These actors and the public reacted by forming the
*Juedscher Kulturbund
("Jewish Cultural League"). From 1933 on, Jews who fully
understood the situation and were able to do so, left Germany; but
"the Jewish Cultural League from 1933 to 1938 (in a limited
way until 1941) supported three theater ensembles, an opera, two symphonic
orchestras, one cabaret, a theater for Jewish schools, some choirs,
numerous chamber music groups, and lectures and art exhibits. About
2,500 artists (actors, singers, instrumentalists, poetry readers,
directors, dancers, graphic and plastic artists) and lecturers belonged
to this organization set-up, and nearly 70,000 people in about 100
cities formed the public, the largest voluntary union of Jews in Germany"
(H. Freeden, Juedisches Theater in Nazideutschland, 1964, p.
1). The first performance, on Oct. 1, 1933, was Lessing's Nathan
der Weise. When Allied Powers reopened the Deutsches Theater in
Berlin in 1945, the first performance was again Nathan der Weise.
The director was Vienna-born Fritz Wisten, one of the few surviving
members of the Juedischer Kulturbund. Very few Jewish actors and directors
returned to Germany after the war; the most important of those who
did were Fritz Kortner and Ernst Deutsch.
Jewish theaters in the Italian ghettos continued
their performances until well into the 18th century. Later
on, a few Jewish playwrights appeared on the scene. Among the actors,
Gustavo Modena (1803–1861) was an interesting personality,
a revolutionary who had to flee Italy and was only able to return
after an amnesty had been granted. He was especially brilliant in
recitation. Giovanni Emanuel (1848–1902) toured in Berlin,
Vienna, and Russia, but had his greatest triumphs in Shakespeare and
Schiller parts in South America. Claudio Leigheb (1848–1903),
who specialized in comedy roles, was an actor's son. Giuseppe
Sichel (1849–1934) helped to make French comedy popular in
Italy. Enrico Reinach (1851–1929) mostly played the part of
the young lover. Virginia Reiter (1868–1937) achieved fame
largely thanks to her Jewish features which could give dramatic expression
to any kind of emotion and to her beautiful voice. Anche Oreste Calabresi
(1857–1915) was equally at home in drama and in comedy. Ugo
Piperno (1871–1922) acted on the stage and in a number of films.
The great Italian historian of the theater, Alessandro d'Ancona
(1835–1914), was a Jew.
In Holland, writer and dramatist
Herman *Heijermans
(also Heyermans) dedicated his prose works and his plays to the problems
of the proletariat and the lower middle class, especially Jews. In
one of his plays, Ghetto (1898), the role of Sachel was played
by the Jewish actor Louis de Vries (1871–1940) who was also
a director and theatrical organizer. He was outstanding in such roles
as Shylock, Hamlet, Fuhrmann Henschel, and Higgins in Shaw's Pygmalion. Holland's most outstanding actors, however,
belonged to the Bouwmeester family which provided actors from the
second half of the 18th century to the first half of the
20th. The first acting members of this family were Frederik
Adrianus Rosenveldt (1769–1847), a comedian, and his son Frederik
Johannes Rosenveldt (1798–1867) who married Louise Francina
Maria Bouwmeester. Their children took their mother's name.
Louis Frederik Johannes *Bouwmeester
(1842–1925) came to be considered Holland's greatest
actor. Other acting members of this family include Theodora Antonia
Louis Bouwmeester (1850–1939), who acquired fame as Schiller's
Maria Stuart, as Madame Sans-Gêne, and in other roles; Frederik
Christianus Bouwmeester (1885–?), and Lily Bouwmeester (1901–1993),
a stage and film actress.
In czarist times, Jewish actors on the Russian stage
in Moscow and St. Petersburg were usually members of foreign touring
companies. But there were Jewish actors in the provincial troupes
mostly under Russian names. Some of them had come from the Yiddish
theaters when they were closed by czarist edict in 1883 and most of
them took Russian names (if not baptism). The lifting of the ban for
a few years before the Russian Revolution changed the situation little,
though the rising film industry did provide further scope. By 1914,
Ossip Runitsch, who had started on the stage, had become a star of
the Russian cinema. A well-known Jewish player in czarist companies
was
Alla *Nazimova
, who left for the U.S. in 1905. The revolution brought other Jewish
personalities into the open. Zinaida Raikh, the wife of V. Meyerhold,
the Russian director, achieved a triumph in Meyerhold's production
of The Lady of the Camellias in the 1930s. She was murdered
in her Moscow flat in 1940 after Meyerhold's arrest and execution
by Stalin's agents. After the Stalinist period, the outstanding
Jewish actor on the Russian stage was the comedian Arkadi Raykin.
[Lewis Sowden and Frederick R. Lachman]
The theater in the United States, especially on New
York's Broadway, was during the 19th and the beginning
of the 20th century strongly influenced by Europe and especially
by England, but gained independence fast and developed largely under
the stimulus of Jewish directors and players. An early if atypical
figure was the actress
Adah Isaacs *Menken
, who created a sensation in the title role of Byron's Mazeppa in 1861.
Before the end of the century, the playwright
David *Belasco
and the producers
*Frohmans
brothers were important names in the New York theater world, the first
of the great line of personalities that was subsequently to arise
on Broadway.
Jewish influence in a city with a growing Jewish
population was among the sources from which the New York theater was
enriched. During the 1890s, Yiddish theater was developing rapidly
on Second Avenue and growing into a training ground for actors, among
them personalities such as
Paul *Muni
, who were inevitably to turn their eyes toward Broadway. Another
source of trained actors was the music hall or variety theater. It
abounded in Jewish comedians and sent much talent to the "legitimate"
stage. Derogatory references to Jews were largely absent from the
music halls because of the pressure from Jewish performers.
The early and middle years of the 20th century saw the rise of Jews to unequaled prominence on Broadway,
where they distinguished themselves as actors, playwrights, song-writers,
and composers. Early outstanding figures were the playwrights
Clifford *Odets
, Elmer
*Rice
,
S.N. *Behrman
; the showman
Billy *Rose
; and the producers
*Sam
and
Jed *Harris
. Others were Arthur Leroy Kaser, who wrote monologues, Elmer C. Levinger,
who wrote 19 short plays about Jewish history before World War II,
and Samson Raphaelson, who in 1925 wrote The Jazz Singer about
a Jewish boy who had to choose between being a cantor and a musical
comedy actor.
Al *Jolson
made the lead role famous. Later in the century playwrights who were
Jewish made a major impact on the drama. (See also
*United States Literature
.)
Of the hundreds of Jews who achieved fame as actors
and actresses in the half-century from 1920, practically none remained
basically a stage actor. Writers, producers, directors, and actors
divided their time between stage, film, and television, whereby the
importance of film and television continuously increased. In addition,
on the stage, the musical absorbed a high percentage of the Jewish
theatrical people, and a number of them, such as the
*Marx brothers
or the
*Ritz brothers
, stayed on the thin borderline between acting and entertaining. There
are a few, among the many, who remained equally at home in all the
media,
Zero *Mostel
,
Danny *Kaye
, and Sid Caesar among them.
Among the producers were Max Liebman, discoverer
of Danny Kaye and Sid Caesar; and Alexander H. Cohen, who became known
as Broadway's "Millionaire Boy Angel" and produced
more than 30 stage shows in New York and London. During the 1960s
Mike *Nichols
became one of the outstanding stage and film directors. Jules Irving
and Herbert Blau, who had founded in the early 1950s the Actors'
Workshop, an avant-garde group in San Francisco, became in 1965 co-directors
of the Lincoln Center Repertory Theater in New York. Blau resigned
that post in 1967.
Florenz *Ziegfeld
and the
*Shubert
brothers, Mike Todd, Lee Strasberg, and many others were important
and successful producers, directors, and teachers of generations of
actors.
Boris *Aronson
, who began his career in the Yiddish theater when he came to New
York in the early 1920s, became America's best-known stage
designer. Jean Rosenthal was the leading lighting designer of the
theater in the 1950s and 1960s.
[Mark Perlgut]
Jews continued to play a prominent role in the New
York theater, particularly on Broadway, largely through the ownership
of theaters. The Shubert organization, run by Gerald Schoenfeld and
Bernard *Jacobs
, controlling the largest houses, which offered the prospect of higher
profits, were a significant force in the economics of the theatrical
offerings. Despite the absence of
Joseph *Papp
, who had died, his Public Theater continued to present provocative
Shakespeare comedies and dramas and other works. Arthur Miller died
in 2005 but his major works, including Death of a Salesman, All
My Sons, and A View from the Bridge, were produced throughout
the United States. Younger Jewish playwrights, like
Tony *Kushner
, Jon Robin Baitz, Richard Greenberg, and Wendy
*Wasserman
emerged as serious dramatists.
[Stewart Kampel (2nd ed.)]
The musical comedy, later called musical play or
simply musical, has its sources in the European operetta and in vaudeville.
The musical comedy moved from England to the United States where in
the 20th century the genre expanded and underwent its greatest
development. Already in the earliest forms of musical theater, the
revue or vaudeville, Jews had played an important role: Florenz Ziegfeld
with his Ziegfeld Follies, which, between 1907 and 1931, introduced
many singer-actors and composers like
Irving *Berlin
and
Jerome *Kern
. Elaborate revues were presented by the Shubert brothers, theatrical
entrepreneurs who, by 1956, owned 17 theaters on Broadway and about
half of the nation's legitimate theaters. In the field of operetta,
Rudolf Friml and
Sigmund *Romberg
, both immigrants from Europe, dominated: Friml, born in Prague, with The Firefly (1912) and Rose Marie (1924), Romberg, Viennaborn,
with The Student Prince (1924) and The Desert Song (1926).
Jerome Kern, whose works include the Princess Theater Shows (1915–18), was one of the earliest composers for musical comedy.
So was Irving Berlin with Yip, Yip, Yaphank (1918). He and
producer Sam H. Harris built the Music Box Theater in 1920 and here
they put on their sophisticated and lavish Music Box Revues (1921–24).
The 1920s saw composers such as
Richard *Rodgers
,
George *Gershwin
, and Arthur Schwartz (d. 1984), with Lorenz Hart, Oscar Hammerstein II, E.Y. Harburg, Howard Dietz, Ira Gershwin,
George S. *Kaufman
, and Morrie Ryskind as lyricists and librettists. The team of Rodgers
and Hart became one of the most fruitful in American musical history,
producing 27 musicals. Dietz wrote the music for the Grand Street
Follies (1925). George Gershwin, one of the most celebrated composers
of the era, wrote, in addition to several large works for orchestra,
the music to more than 20 Broadway musicals. His brother, Ira, wrote
the lyrics for many of George's shows.
Early important examples of the musical play were Dearest Enemy (1925) and A Connecticut Yankee (1927),
both by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart; still more important was Showboat (1927) by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, based
on a book by
Edna *Ferber
, and destined to become a classic of the American musical theater.
Musical plays of the 1930s mirrored the reality of
American life, the slump and the Depression; Of Thee I Sing (1931), a satire on American politics by Morrie Ryskind (d. 1985),
George S. Kaufman, and George and Ira Gershwin, was the first musical
to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama.
Kurt *Weill
was the composer for Johnny Johnson (1936), an anti-war comedy,
and for The Eternal Road (1937), a pageant of Jewish history
produced by Max Reinhardt. George Gershwin reached a new high with Porgy and Bess (1935). Pins and Needles (1937), an amateur
revue presented by the heavily Jewish International Ladies Garment
Workers, became a Broadway hit. Harold Rome wrote most of the music
and lyrics.
In the 1940s the American musical play came fully
into its own. Pal Joey (1940), a Rodgers and Hart work, was
an "adult" musical, one of the first to deal with the
seamy side of life. Lady in the Dark (1941), dealing with the
hitherto theatrically unexplored world of psychoanalysis, had libretto
by Moss Hart, score by Kurt Weill, lyrics by Ira Gershwin, and was
produced by Sam Harris.
In 1943 Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II
wrote Oklahoma, which fully demonstrated the use of music in
telling a story and delineating character. It was followed by other
productions equally triumphant in the new form: Carousel (1945)
and South Pacific (1949 Pulitzer Prize winner) both by Rodgers
and Hammerstein; Annie Get Your Gun (1946; music by Irving
Berlin); and Brigadoon (1947), with book and lyrics by Alan
Jay Lerner.
Jewish writers and composers continued to make brilliant
use of the musical play in the same years. E.Y. Harburg wrote the
lyrics for Finian's Rainbow (1947). Frank Loesser wrote
the music and lyrics for Guys and Dolls (1950). The Pajama
Game (1954) and Damn Yankees (1955) were hits by the songwriting
team of Richard Adler and Jerry Ross. The Threepenny Opera (1954) with score by Kurt Weill, and libretto modernized by Marc Blitzstein,
had a fabulously successful off-Broadway revival. It ran for over
six years. Frederick Loewe composed for Alan J. Lerner's My
Fair Lady (based on Shaw's Pygmalion) in 1956.
Leonard *Bernstein
, who had had earlier successes such as Wonderful Town (1953),
introduced new trends in West Side Story (1957). The Sound
of Music (1959), another Rodgers and Hammerstein collaboration,
brought a story of the Nazi invasion of Austria to the musical stage.
In 1961 How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, with
words and lyrics by Frank Loesser, was the fourth musical play to
win the Pulitzer Prize for drama. The 1964 hit Fiddler on the Roof emphasized once more the Jewish contribution to the new form in a
play based on Yiddish stories by Shalom Aleichem, with a score by
Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, and choreography by Jerome Robbins.
Zero *Mostel
created the role of Tevya and the play had one of the longest runs
of the 1960s. Milk and Honey (1961), with music and lyrics
by Jerry Herman, was a musical with an Israel setting starring Molly
Picon. Herman also contributed the smash hit Hello Dolly! (1964), Mame (1965), and Dear World (1968). No Strings (1962), about an interracial love affair, had music and lyrics by
Richard Rodgers. Among performers, Barbra Streisand skyrocketed to
fame as the Broadway singing sensation of the 1960s through her roles
in I Can Get It For You Wholesale (1962) and Funny Girl (1964). Subsequently
Julie *Taymor
made a significant impact on the Broadway musical with her daringly
original staging of The Lion King, a musical that had a long
life. And the grandson of Richard Rodgers, Adam Guettel, began a promising
career as a Broadway composer with A Light in the Piazza.
In other countries, too, Jewish talent was attracted
by the scope offered in the musical. In England, one of the most successful
stage shows of the 1960s was Oliver! with lyrics and music
by Lionel Bart and the book based on Dickens' Oliver Twist.
It was followed by the same composer's Blitz in 1962.
In South Africa, the African musical King Kong was produced
and directed by Leon Gluckman in 1959 with a story by Harry Bloom.
It reached London in 1961.
In Israel too the musical play proved a success in
the commercial theater. One of the first such hits was the Chamber
Theater's production of King Solomon and the Cobbler (1966) based on a play by Sami Gronemann. Giora Godik, after winning
the public with American musicals, presented the all-Israel musical
play Casablan in 1967. Since that time musicals have been a
staple of Israeli theater.
[Harvey A. Cooper]
From the early Middle Ages on, entertainers were
mimes, storytellers, clowns, singers, dancers, acrobats, jugglers,
and tamers of wild animals. Beginning in the 13th century,
or even earlier, Jews in Italian cities were compelled to participate
in the carnival-time buffooneries as mounts for soldiers or for the
general populace. The Corso degli ebrei ("race of the
Hebrews") became a regular carnival feature. Jews played their
role as clowns or buffoons for the diversion of powerful men in the
Christian world, and from the 16th century on, in the Muslim
world (e.g., for the sultan in Constantinople). The role in most cases
was not a chosen one. Vagrant mimes, musicians, players, and jugglers
began to appear in Europe as early as the 11th century.
They were called minstrels in England and France, Spielleute in Germany. Jews grouped together and began to entertain predominantly
Jewish audiences. Their performances became particularly associated
with Purim festivities. The professional jokers were called leẓim ("mockers"), or later on, marsheliks ("buffoons").
During the 14th and 15th century, some of these leẓim gradually developed into actors; their performance
evolved into the Yiddish word-drama which originally was based on
biblical themes.
For a long time, however, the entertainment performed
between the acts of a play was more popular than the play itself.
During these interludes the performers were in their element, clowning
as rabbis, medical men, pharmacists, midwives, or even as devils,
at times severely mocking Jewish peculiarities. The leẓim-marsheliks continued, together with the Purim plays, until far into the 19th century. Their name gradually changed to badḥanim ("fools").
They appeared in the Jewish settlements in Galicia, later on in the
Jewish villages of Russia, the Bukovina, and Romania. A new type of
itinerant entertainers assumed the name of the place they had come
from and were called
*Broder Singers
. In comic disguises, they sang, danced, and, occasionally, performed
short one-act plays.
In modern times, entertainment has developed into
a world of its own, and an extremely high percentage of its population
is Jewish. London's music halls produced artists such as Lottie
Collins (1866–1910). In Berlin Hermann Haller (1872–1943)
became famous as creator of revues and shows. Florenz Ziegfeld in
New York with his spectacular Ziegfeld Follies gave the first
big chance to artists such as Fanny Brice and
Eddie *Cantor
.
In addition to Jewish professional entertainers in
the 20th century in Europe and the U.S. who often were
actors as well as entertainers (Jack Benny, Milton Berle, Victor Borge,
Danny Kaye, the Canadian comedian team Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster),
there were artists who specialized in forms of entertainment which
had very little or nothing to do with acting: the magician Samuel
Bellachini; the clown Grock; the athletes Josef and Siegmund Breitbart;
Harry *Houdini
, escape artist; Harry Reso, the step-dancer;
Sophie *Tucker
, the last "red hot Mamma," and an immense number of
others for whom, more and more, television became an ideal forum.
[Frederick R. Lachman]
Theatrical performances in Yiddish have taken place
for at least half a millennium, and in modern times have spanned six
continents. Yiddish drama and theater absorbed virtually every major
trend that emerged in Western drama, and Yiddish playwrights and performers
have been deeply influenced by, and have exerted their own influence
on, the drama and theater of broad swaths of Europe, the Americas,
and to a lesser extent, Australia and South Africa. For millions of
Yiddish speakers, theater has long been a lively form of entertainment,
but it has always been something more than that as well. Particularly
at its height, from the late 19th century to the middle
of the 20th, the Yiddish theater provided millions of Jewish
theatergoers with a powerful tool to help understand the ever-changing
world in which they lived.
For many centuries, Judaism placed significant barriers
in the way of the development of a full-fledged, professional Jewish
theatrical tradition, and as a result the process was slowed significantly.
Similar to early Christian commentators like Augustine and Tertullian,
the rabbis of the talmudic period and the early Middle Ages harbored
a deep suspicion of theater, influenced in no small measure by the
excesses of Roman entertainments. In the Christian world, such objections
were overcome by pedagogical necessity, as theater came to fill a
void left by the illiteracy of the masses in ways that few sermons
could. The fact that antisemitic attitudes figured prominently in
medieval Christian drama did little to endear the theatrical art to
Jewish authorities, however.
Yet long before scripted dramas were written and
performed in Yiddish, Yiddish speakers could enjoy the performances
of entertainers who performed at Jewish events, particularly weddings.
In German-speaking countries arose the figure of the leyts or marshelik (influenced by the German Narr, "fool"),
known in Slavic countries as the badkhn. This was part of a
wider fabric of performers in the medieval Jewish world, including
magicians who performed at fairs, wandering troubadours, and wedding
musicians (at times interchangeable with the badkhn). Over
time, the leytsim and badkhonim developed their own
repertoire of wedding songs, riddles, parodies, and serious and comic
songs; the leyts thus became an important forebear of the Yiddish
musical theater. The collections of Menachem Oldendorf and Isaac Wallich
preserve examples of the medieval badkhn 's repertoire.
Scholars have been unable to determine with precision
when formally scripted performances in Yiddish began taking place.
A number of texts in Old Yiddish, including some in both the Oldendorf
and Wallich collections, seem suitable to performance, but whether
they were put to such a use is not clear. Certainly by the end of
the 16th century, however – and possibly much sooner
– dramatic dialogues were being publicly performed in Yiddish.
A short farce, Dos Shpil fun Toyb Yeklayn, Zayn Vayb Kendlayn,
un Zeyere Tsvey Zinlekh Fayn ("The Play of Deaf Yeklayn,
His Wife Kendlayn, and Their Two Fine Children") was performed
in Tannhausen in 1598, probably as an interlude within a larger performance.
While this play was a farce that commented on contemporary social
types, the dominant type of work performed in Yiddish from the Middle
Ages to the 19th century was the purimshpil ("Purim
play"). Extant manuscripts of Yiddish poems about the Purim
story date back to the 15th century, and printed versions
as early as the 16th; it is generally believed that performances
of the purimshpil date back as least as early as the late 15th century. The earliest extant manuscript of a performance text of a
full-scale purimshpil is an Akhasheyresh-shpil ("Ahasuerus
Play") dating to 1697. This play and many others retell the
Purim story in a spirit of earthy irreverence befitting the jovial
mood of the holiday; the humor of such plays relied heavily on scatological
and sexual jokes and puns, which not infrequently drew the wrath of
religious and communal authorities. By no means all Purim plays, however,
were based on the Book of Esther; other popular subjects included
the sale of Joseph into slavery, the binding of Isaac, David and Goliath,
and Samson and Delilah.
The form of the earliest extant purimshpil resembles the German Fastnachtspiel in many ways, including
not only the
aforementioned profanity and eroticism, but the central role of a
narrator (here known as the loyfer, shrayber, or payats).
The traditional purimshpil was performed entirely by men and
boys – often yeshivah students. Since most performances took
place in the homes of wealthy families, the plays needed to be short
so that companies could make their rounds. Masks and primitive costumes
were the norm, and extant early texts do not tend to indicate changes
of costume or scenery. Beginning in the 16th century, purimshpiln gradually became more elaborate, and in some places, they expanded
beyond the one-day festival itself, with performances being offered
for up to two weeks on either side of the holiday. By the early 18th century, purimshpiln reflected many trends in the contemporary
European theater in literary style, subject matter, and scene design.
Most of the extant Purim plays from the period indeed resemble Baroque Staatsaktionen far more than they do the folk plays that preceded
them: their plots are complex and politically charged, their language
ornate (Latinate and French-influenced); one of the plays is identified
as an opera; another is provided with a description of the instrumentation
of the orchestra that accompanied the performance. Nevertheless, the
plays maintained a connection with Purim and were performed during
the appropriate season. Though the development of the modern Yiddish
theater altered the function of the purimshpil among Yiddish
speakers, it did not altogether supplant this performance form, which
continues to be staged to this day, particularly in many Ḥasidic
communities.
The carnivalesque atmosphere that prevailed on Purim
was critical for loosening restrictions that made it impossible for
theatrical performance to take root in the Jewish community during
the rest of the year. Though women could still not perform in public
on Purim, that holiday at least suspended the traditional prohibition
(from Deut. 22:5) against men wearing women's clothing, and
it was common for yeshivah students – whose traditional learning
equipped them well to make learned, extempore ad libs – to
perform the roles in Purim plays. As long as the Jewish community
as a whole adhered to rabbinic law, however, Jewish theatrical performances
would have to remain confined to one season only. The sea change that
transformed the place of theater in the Jewish world came about in
the late 18th century, when the Haskalah movement was born
in Germany. In essays, pamphlets, fiction, poetry, and drama, the maskilim exhorted their fellow Jews to become less insular,
to integrate more fully into European society (at least to the extent
that the law and their non-Jewish neighbors allowed), and to reap
the fruits of secular thought in politics, philosophy, science, and
the arts. While the movement initially met with fierce resistance
from religious Jews, it ultimately paved the way to new forms of religious
expression and a new orientation toward the non-Jewish world.
Although no professional Jewish theater existed when
the Haskalah began, a number of maskilim voiced their polemics
in dramatic form – possibly with the intention of performances
in literary salons or Jewish schools. This phenomenon began with two
of the leading figures of the Berlin Haskalah, Isaac Euchel and Aaron
Halle-Wolfssohn. Both Euchel's Reb Henokh, oder Vos Tut
Men Damit? ("Reb Henokh, or What Can Be Done with It?" ca. 1792) and Wolfssohn's Leichtsinn und Frömmelei ("Frivolity and False Piety," ca. 1796) helped
set the tone for decades of Haskalah dramas. Both of these satires
make rich use of a wide palette of social types and attitudes, and
varying levels of language. Almost all subsequent Haskalah plays were
comedies; among the most accomplished and influential were the anonymous
satire Di Genarte Velt ("The Duped World," ca.
1810); Solomon Ettinger's comic melodrama Serkele (1838),
featuring a gallery of comic types ranging across the social spectrum;
Avrom Ber Gottlober's grotesque and wickedly anti-ḥasidic Der Dektukh, oder Tsvey Khupes in Eyn Nakht ("The Bridal
Veil, or Two Weddings in One Night," 1839); several comedies
and melodramas by
Israel *Axenfeld
written in the 1830s and 1840s, including Der Ershter Yidisher
Rekrut in Rusland ("The First Jewish Recruit in Russia," ca. 1840), which in fact expresses considerable ambivalence
about the goals and methods of the Haskalah; and
S.Y. *Abramovitsh
's scathing social satire, Di Takse ("The Tax,"
1869).
The 1850s also saw the rise of a type of performer
known as the Broder Singer. Taking their name from the Galician city
of Brody (or Brod) – the home town of the reputed "father"
of the form, Berl Broder (Berl Margulis) – Broder Singers would
come to play a direct role in the formation of the modern, professional
Yiddish theater. Like the purimshpil, the performances of the
Broder Singers became more elaborate over time. Initially, songs telling
a story – often based on familiar character types and situations
from everyday Jewish life – were accompanied by facial expressions
and gestures. From there it was a short step to embedding the songs
into theatrical situations with a couple of performers, quick changes
of costume to suit the characters described in the lyrics, and simple
makeup. As the Broder Singers' fame grew, so did their geographical
reach. They spread throughout Galicia and Romania, and from there
into Russia. The repertoire and performance styles of the most renowned
of these figures, including Berl Broder and Velvl Zbarzher, inspired
the first generation of professional Yiddish playwrights.
Though Yiddish companies managed to perform in places
like Warsaw (in the 1830s and 1860s) during seasons completely unconnected
with Purim, such efforts met with stiff resistance from Jewish community
leaders, and left no direct legacy.
Abraham *Goldfaden
, on the other hand, would earn the title of "Father of the
Yiddish Theater" by forming the first relatively stable professional
Yiddish troupe and proceeding to write its plays, compose its music,
and direct the actors. Goldfaden's background prepared him
in many ways for the
task. He claimed to have begun composing songs as a young boy and
was a published poet and dramatist by the time he completed his rabbinical
studies in the 1860s. His first full-length play, Di Mume Sosye ("Aunt Sosya," 1869), bore the clear influence of Ettinger's Serkele – not entirely surprising, since Goldfaden had
played the title role in a production staged at his seminary in Zhitomir
in 1862. And one of Goldfaden's early teachers was none other
than the noted satirical writer and dramatist
Abraham Baer *Gottlober
. After trying his hand at various careers, Goldfaden assembled his
first company in Jassy, Romania, in 1876. His star performer, Israel
Grodner, was a seasoned Broder Singer. Over the next several years,
the playwright would turn out a stream of vaudevilles, burlesques,
and full-length comedies. His early plays were often crude, but among
them are several of his masterpieces: Shmendrik (1877), Di
Kishefmakherin ("The Sorceress," 1879), and Der
Fanatik, oder di Tsvey Kuni-Leml ("The Fanatic, or the
Two Kuni-Lemls," 1880). In these musical comedies, Goldfaden
sharply critiqued, in the spirit of the Haskalah, religious hypocrisy,
fanaticism, and insularity. He did so with lively music, witty lyrics,
deftly drawn characterizations, and the increasingly assured hand
of a skilled farceur. Within the first year of his company's
existence, Goldfaden hired his first actress, and two rival troupes
were formed, one led by Joseph Lateiner and the other by self-styled
"Professor" Moyshe Hurwitz. These two men would become
Goldfaden's lifelong rivals. Though critics would always favor
Goldfaden, Hurwitz and Lateiner would become as popular as they were
prolific, each with an enormous number of musicals and melodramas
to his credit. Lateiner's plays include Aleksander, Kroyn-Prints
fun Yerusholayim ("Alexander, Crown Prince of Jerusalem,"
1892), Blimele, di Perle fun Varshe ("Blimele, the Pearl
of Warsaw," 1894), Dovids Fidele ("David's
Violin," 1897), Dos Yidishe Harts ("The Jewish Heart,"
1908); Hurwitz's plays include Tisza Eszlar (1887), Ben Hador (1901). In addition to this trio, other playwrights
who contributed to the foundation of the professional repertoire were
Nahum-Meyer Shaykevitsh (
*Shomer
), a prolific writer of melodramas and light comedies, and Yoysef-Yude
Lerner, who adapted a number of works on Jewish themes from other
languages; these included Karl Gutzkow's Uriel Acosta,
Jacques F. Halévy and Eugène Scribe's opera La
Juive (as Zhidovka), and Salomon Hermann von Mosenthal's Deborah. Other writers active during this period were Sigmund
Feinman, Israel Barski, Rudolph Marks, and Reuben Weissman.
The pogroms that followed the assassination of Czar
Alexander II in 1881 helped spark a Jewish exodus from Russia. Over
the next few decades, several million Jews left their homes in Eastern
Europe in search of more favorable social and economic surroundings
The Yiddish theater moved with the masses. To be sure, this shift
was given a firm push by the czarist authorities, who banned Yiddish
theater in 1883. Though the ban would turn out to be capricious and
inconsistently enforced, it made a difficult business all the more
precarious, and many performers and playwrights headed for places
where they could pursue their work more freely. Companies were created
or expanded in Eastern European cities outside the Russian empire,
like Warsaw and Lemberg, while new centers of Yiddish theater arose
further west. By far the most important homes of Yiddish theater in
Western Europe were Britain and France. In London, performances were
staged at such venues as the Whitechapel, Grand Palais, and Pavilion
theaters. During the westward exodus from Eastern Europe, London become
both a haven in its own right, and a way station for refugees ultimately
planning to settle in the U.S. Stars such as Jacob Adler, David Kessler,
M.D. and Fanny Waxman, and Sigmund and Dina Feinman made London their
home for a time, enriching the quality of performance in the East
End theaters – and in Feinman's case, also penning a
number of dramas. London was also well positioned to serve as both
a destination for visiting companies – both the Vilna Troupe
and New York's Yiddish Art Theatre made numerous visits in
the 1920s and 1930s – and as a launching pad for performers
and companies heading to northern British cities such as Manchester,
Leeds, and Glasgow. The most prolific London-based Yiddish playwright
was Joseph Markovitsh, while the single most successful work written
for the London Yiddish stage was journalist S.Y. Harendorf 's Der Kenig fun Lampeduze ("The King of Lampedusa,"
1943), which ran for months at the Pavilion Theatre before that venue
was permanently put out of business by the German bombs that carpeted
London during the Blitz. Paris was more of a stopover than a destination
in itself for many East European Jews. By the time Goldfaden first
visited Paris in 1889 and assembled a company there, the French capital
had already hosted Yiddish performances for several years. But the
city never developed a distinctive tradition of professional Yiddish
theater, although it did provide fertile ground for a number of amateur
or semi-professional drama groups tied to specific political movements
– for example, the anarchist Frayhayt group, the Labor Zionist
Fraye Yidishe Bine, and the Bundist Fraye Yidishe Arbeter Bine. Members
of such groups were workers and artisans. While little French Yiddish
drama was home grown, Paris was the longtime home of Chaim Sloves,
author of notable dramas like Homens Mapole ("Haman's
Downfall," 1949), Borekh fun Amsterdam ("Baruch
of Amsterdam," 1956), and Nekome Nemer ("Avengers,"
1947).
The nature of the early professional Yiddish repertoire,
as well as the uneven production values by which such plays were staged,
sparked ongoing tensions among critics, playwrights, and audiences.
Reviewers constantly lamented the "low" taste of the
Yiddish audience (pejoratively nicknamed "Moyshe") and
the dominance of shund (popular theater; literally, "trash").
In common parlance, "Moyshe" was frequently described
as "licking his fingers" in delight at such offerings.
Yiddish playwrights, for their part, often shrugged off the
critics' complaints, suggesting that such niceties as aesthetic
ambitions had to take a back seat to practical concerns like putting
food on the table. Not all playwrights, however, were so disdainful
of social and aesthetic criteria for drama, and when Jacob Gordin
emerged on the scene with his first drama in 1891, many critics –
along with more serious-minded actors and playwrights – felt
that a new era was dawning. Gordin, a new Russian immigrant to New
York with a background in utopian politics and intellectual activity,
also deplored the existing repertoire, but was pleasantly surprised
by the sophistication of performers like Jacob P. Adler, whom he met
not long after arriving in New York. Gordin was persuaded to write
a play for Adler, and the result was Sibirya ("Siberia,"
1891), a work with its share of melodramatic touches, but far more
naturalistic than anything that had previously been seen on the Yiddish
stage. Gordin would be hailed in many circles as the great reformer
of Yiddish drama; successes such as Der Yidisher Kenig Lir ("The Jewish King Lear," 1892), Mirele Efros (1898), Got, Mentsh un Tayvl ("God, Man, and Devil,"
1900), and Khasye di Yesoyme ("Khasye the Orphan Girl,"
1903) would become fixtures on Yiddish stages for decades, and their
main roles became proving grounds for leading men and women as well
as character actors. The effectiveness of Gordin's best plays
derives in large measure from the fact that he wrote for outstanding
actors like Jacob Adler, Sarah Adler, Keni Liptzin, Dovid Kessler,
and Bertha Kalish. Like the European playwrights he emulated, such
as Henrik Ibsen, Gerhart Hauptmann, and Maxim Gorky, Gordin often
sparked controversy for his treatment of delicate social issues. Both
his social engagement and his dramaturgical technique drew a following
not only among audiences and critics but also among fellow playwrights.
By the time of Gordin's death in 1909, the most obvious heirs
to his mantle were Leon Kobrin (Yankl Boyle (1913), Riverside
Drive (1928), Tsurik tsu Zayn Folk ("Back to His
People," 1914), and Di Nekst-Dorike ("The Woman
Next Door," 1916)) and Zalmen Libin (Yisroel-Zalmen Hurvits)
(Hanele oder di Yidishe Medea ("Hannele or the Jewish
Medea," 1903), Tsebrokhene Hertser ("Broken Hearts,"
1903)), though neither would achieve Gordin's level of influence.
Other popular contemporaries of Gordin included Nokhem Rakov (Der
Batlen ("The Idler," 1903), Di Grine Moyd ("The Green Girl," 1904), Khantshe in Amerike ("Khantshe in America," 1913)); Isidore Zolotarevsky
(Der Yeshive Bokher ("The Yeshivah Student,"
1899), Di Yidishe Ana Karenina ("The Jewish Anna Karenina,"
1901–2), Di Vayse Shklavin ("The White Slave,"
1909)); Avrom-Mikhl Sharkanski (Kol Nidre ("All Vows,"
1896)); the brothers Anshl and Moyshe Shor (A Mentsh Zol Nen Zayn ("Be a Decent Person," 1909)); and Moyshe Richter (Moyshe
Khayat ("Moyshe the Tailor," 1903) and Sholem
Bayis ("Domestic Tranquility," 1904)). Such works
became popular on Yiddish stages worldwide.
For all of Gordin's achievements, he did not
manage to drive shund from the Yiddish stage, one of his explicitly
stated goals. The Yiddish critics tended to attribute this fact to Moyshe 's low taste, but they failed to appreciate that shund – or to use a less value-laden term, musicals
and melodramas – could succeed for positive reasons as well.
Though the acting on Yiddish stages was often uneven and overblown,
many Yiddish performers possessed extraordinary talent. Audiences
worshiped specialists in musical theater like Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky,
Sigmund and Dina Feinman, Clara Young, and Regina Prager; comedians
like Berl Bernstein and Zelig Mogulesco; and character actors like
Boaz Young and Bina Abramovitsh. And because of the importance of
music in the Yiddish repertoire, its composers contributed as much
to its success as its performers. Among the most important composers
of music for the Yiddish theater were Arnold Perlmutter and Herman
Wohl (who had many of their greatest successes as a team), Dovid Meyerovitsh,
Louis Friedsel, Joseph Rumshinsky, Abe Ellstein, Sholem Secunda, and
Peretz Sandler.
As long as westward migrations continued, New York
would continue to assert itself as one of the world capitals of Yiddish
theater. Almost all of the most important actors and performers in
the American Yiddish theater were foreign-born, many having started
their careers in cultural centers like Warsaw and Odessa. Among the
playwrights in this category were David Pinski and Peretz Hirschbein.
Both men were talented journalists and prose writers, and both generated
a distinguished body of dramatic work as well. Pinski could write
biting satires, like Der Oytser ("The Treasure,"
1911), but often wrote in a darker vein, in dramas like Der Eybiker
Yid ("The Eternal Jew," 1929), Di Familye Tsvi ("The Family Tsvi," 1905), and Ayzik Sheftl ("Isaac
Sheftl," 1904–5). He also wrote popular dramas revolving
around tempestuous human passions in works like Yankl der Shmid ("Yankl the Blacksmith," 1909) and Gabri un di Froyen ("Gabri and the Women," 1905). Hirschbein experimented
with various dramatic modes and registers, but is best known for his
idylls of village life, relying more on deftly developed characters
and convincing dialogue than on plot. These include A Farvorfn
Vinkl ("A Forsaken Nook," 1918), Di Puste Kretshme ("The Idle Inn," 1919), and Grine Felder ("Green
Fields," 1918). Other accomplished members of this new wave
of dramatists working primarily in New York were Osip Dimov (Shma
Yisroel ("Hear, O Israel," 1907), Bronx Express (1919), Yoshke Muzikant ("Yoshke the Musician";
the first of numerous versions premiered in 1914 as Der Gedungener
Khosn ("The Hired Bridegroom")); H. Leivick (Shmates ("Rags," 1921), Shop (1926), Der Goylem ("The Golem," 1925)); Fishl Bimko (Ganovim ("Thieves,"
1919), Dembes ("Oaks," 1922)); Harry Sackler
(Yizkor ("Remembrance," 1922), Mayor Noyekh ("Major Noah," 1928), Rakhav fun Yerikho ("Rahab
of Jericho," 1928)), and Avrom Shomer (Aykele Mazil ("Ikey the Devil," 1911), Style (1913), Der
Griner Milyoner ("The Green Millionaire," 1915)).
These playwrights often wrote for companies that joined the assemblage
of notable Yiddish troupes. Foremost among these in New York was Maurice
Schwartz's Yiddish Art Theater, which subsisted on a diet of
Western and Yiddish classics, new Yiddish dramas, and – most
lucratively
– adaptations of Yiddish novels, like
*Shalom Aleichem
's Tevye der Milkhiker ("Tevye the Dairyman,"
1919) and
I.J. *Singer
's Yoshke Kalb (1932), dramatized by Schwartz himself.
Schwartz's company was in theory an ensemble, but in practice
it belonged very much to the 19th-century star system.
For true ensemble acting, New York Yiddish audiences went to Artef
(from the Yiddish acronym for Workers' Theater Collective),
which opened its doors in 1928 with a production of Soviet Yiddish
playwright
Beynush *Shteiman
's Baym Toyer ("At the Gate," 1928). The
company established itself as the avant-garde answer to commercial
offerings with innovative productions of such works as Israel Axenfeld's Der Ershter Yidisher Rekrut in Rusland (aka Rekrutn / "Recruits," 1934) and Sholem Aleichem's Dos
Groyse Gevins ("The Jackpot," 1936; often going
by the alternate title 200,000). Artef never managed to launch
any major new playwriting talent, however.
Many performers based in the United States regularly
made their way to Latin America. While companies were also formed
in such places as Mexico City, Uruguay, Chile, and Brazil, Buenos
Aires was by far the largest and most significant Latin American hub
for Yiddish performers and eventually emerged as a major center for
Yiddish theater. Productions of plays from the European repertoire
began there by 1901, and soon popular performers from North America
and Europe, including Boris Thomashesfky, Maurice Schwartz, Celia
Adler, Rudolph Zaslavsky, Zygmunt Turkow and Ida Kaminska, and Joseph
Buloff added Buenos Aires and other cities and town in Argentina and
neighboring countries to their list of touring destinations. The Yiddish
theater in Buenos Aires had a long-standing connection to the seedier
side of Latin American life, for pimps and prostitutes in this major
center of the "white slave" trade invested heavily in
the theater, and had some control over its contents. In his memoirs,
Peretz Hirschbein recalls how the many prostitutes in the audience
for the Buenos Aires production (ca. 1910) of his drama Miryam were moved to tears by the plight of his heroine, an innocent shtetl girl who falls into a life of prostitution. Leyb Malekh's Ibergus ("Remodeling," 1926) hit even closer to home, for that
drama specifically addresses the connections and conflicts among different
strata of Argentinean society: the respectable folk, prostitutes and
gangsters, and actors. The play caused an uproar when it premiered
in Buenos Aires in 1926. That city rose to greater prominence as a
center of Yiddish theatrical activity in the 1930s, particularly with
the founding of organizations like IFT (Idisher
Folks Teater, "Jewish People's Theatre")
in 1932, in the tradition of left-wing, artistically ambitious troupes
like its notable contemporaries, Yung Teater in Warsaw and Artef in
New York. IFT continued to offer its audiences plays
addressing social issues, until demographic changes forced it to switch
to Spanish performances in the mid-1950s. Though the Argentinean Yiddish
theater enjoyed years of prosperity following World War II,
when many talented refugees made their way there, the seeds of its
decline had already been sown. Young Argentinean Jews, like their
counterparts in North America and Western Europe, were being raised
in a native language other than in Yiddish, and one theater after
another either closed its doors forever, or abandoned Yiddish in favor
of the local language.
In New York, Gordin was often praised for breathing
fresh life into Yiddish drama. This was particularly true in the 1890s;
later, prominent critics like Abraham Cahan, who had championed Gordin
early on, reversed course and harshly attacked his dramaturgy. European
critics like I.L. Peretz and Noyekh Prilutski, however, never warmed
to Gordin in the way that many American critics had. Peretz regarded
Gordin as little better than a shund playwright, and felt that
a different type of dramaturgy was needed to help Yiddish drama take
a seat of honor at the table of Western dramatic literature. Peretz
sought to remedy this situation partly by articulating ambitious critical
criteria, partly by writing plays himself, and partly by championing
new talent. As a playwright, Peretz was influenced most notably by
naturalism in his short plays and symbolism in his full-length, poetic
dramas. The latter include Baynakht afn Altn Mark ("A
Night in the Old Marketplace," 1907) and Di Goldene Keyt ("The Golden Chain," 1907); among his best-known one-acts
are Shvester ("Sisters," 1905) and Es Brent ("It's Burning," 1901). But Peretz, like other
classic Yiddish writers such as Sholem Aleichem, would never achieve
the success as a dramatist that he did in prose (at least not during
their lifetimes, though many of Sholem Aleichem's plays enjoyed
successful revivals in later years). While flashes of brilliance frequently
make their presence felt in Peretz's plays, they often lack
an effective dramatic structure to give the action a focus and propel
it forward.
Whatever Gordin's shortcomings, he showed
a far surer hand as a dramatist, and actors loved to play his characters.
One sign thereof is the fact that even in Eastern Europe, with different
sorts of commercial pressures and audiences quite different from those
in the U.S., Gordin's plays featured prominently in the performed
repertoire, while Peretz's tended to be invisible. This was
true of the first ensemble companies to try to elevate the level of
artistry in Yiddish drama and theater, starting with the troupe led
by Esther-Rokhl Kaminska in the early 1900s. Gordin's plays
were the bread and butter of the Kaminska Troupe (later known as Di
Fareynikte – "the united ones"). When Kaminska
left Europe to tour in the U.S. in 1909, she left a void that could
not be filled, but both as performer and as matriarch of a theatrical
dynasty, she continued to help shape Yiddish theater as well as film
for many decades.
As a mentor of young talent, Peretz left an indelible
mark on the development of Yiddish drama.
Sholem *Asch
, for example – arguably Peretz's most successful protégé
– penned a number of plays, most notably Got fun Nekome ("God of Vengeance," 1907), though he would become far
better known as a novelist. Another student of Peretz's, as
well as of Polish playwright Stanislaw Przybyszewski, was Mark Arnshteyn,
who
would write and direct productions in both Polish and Yiddish, including
his most successful work, Der Vilner Balebesl ("The
Little Householder of Vilna," 1908). In 1907, Arnshteyn and
Avrom-Yitskhok Kaminski, in an effort to infuse 'literary'
plays into the Yiddish repertoire, founded the Literarishe Trupe ("literary troupe"), with which they toured with plays
by Gordin, Arnshteyn,
David *Pinski
, and Sholem Aleichem. A similar effort was undertaken a couple of
years later by yet another of Peretz's protégés,
Peretz *Hirschbein
. Having earned the blessing of figures like Peretz and Bialik at
the outset of his career, Hirschbein founded a company in Odessa in
1908 that became known as the Hirschbein Troupe. His company, which
performed works by its founder, as well as by Asch, Pinski, Gordin,
and Sholem Aleichem, stayed in business for only two years, but achieved
an impact out of proportion to its short life through its earnest
striving for higher artistic standards in Yiddish drama and theater.
During this same period, other notable companies in Russia and Poland
included those led by Aba Kompanayets, Misha Fishzon, Dovid-Moyshe
Sabsay, and Yankev-Ber Gimpel.
Hirschbein's troupe served as a forerunner
for the
*Vilna Troupe
, founded in 1916 with the express purpose of carrying on Hirschbein's
reforms. The Vilna Troupe brought to light what was to become the
most famous play in the Yiddish repertory, S. Anski's Der
Dibek ("The Dybbuk," 1921), directed by Dovid Herman,
who had encouraged Hirschbein to write in Yiddish. The play caused
a sensation at its Warsaw premiere, just weeks after the author's
death. It has been translated into and performed in many languages,
and inspired several adaptations as well. The company's further
successes included Osip Dimov's Yoshke Muzikant ("Yoshke
the Musician," or "The Singer of His Sorrow"),
Asch's Kiddush ha-Shem ("Sanctification of the
Name," 1928), Peretz's Baynakht afn Altn Mark ("A Night in the Old Marketplace"), and The Merchant
of Venice. Although the Vilna Troupe suffered the loss of many
talented performers who left for other opportunities, it continued
to be vital until the Holocaust, when its remaining members were trapped
in the Vilna Ghetto and liquidated along with their neighbors. Before
that, however, interwar Poland became as rich a breeding ground for
significant new ventures in Yiddish theatrical performance as any
that had ever existed. The 1920s brought the creation of such companies
as VYKT (Varshever Yidisher Kunst Teater "Warsaw
Yiddish Art Theatre"), founded in 1924 and led by Zygmunt Turkow
and his wife Ida Kaminska; VNYT (Varshever Nayer
Yidisher Teater "Warsaw New Yiddish Theatre"), founded
by Zygmunt's brother, Jonas Turkow, in 1929; and Yung Teater ("Young Theater"), established by Mikhl Weichert in
1932. VYKT used modern techniques for to stage both
new and classic plays from the European repertoire, and Yiddish classics
by Ettinger and Mendele. Turkow and Kaminska put their stamp on roles
from within and beyond the Yiddish repertoire – he in such
parts as Molière's Harpagon to Sholem Aleichem's
Tevye, she in Yiddish standards like Mirele Efros (continuing
in her mother's footsteps) and roles from the world repertoire,
like Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage. More political
and experimental was Mikhl Weichert's YungTeater, whose
first production, Boston, used innovative environmental theater
techniques to tell the story of the Sacco and Vanzetti trial. Yung
Teater commented further on American travesties of justice with
Leyb Malekh's effective agitprop drama Mississippi,
based on the Scottsboro affair. Weichert's politics often made
him run afoul of the censors, a situation he commented on obliquely
in the production of his own play, Trupe Tanentsap (1933),
a play-within-a-play that used a production of Goldfaden's Two Kuni-Lemls to comment on contemporary censorship. Other
notable productions included Jacob Preger's Simkhe Plakhte (1935), and Georg Büchner's Woyzeck (1936), in
a Yiddish translation by Itsik Manger. Those with less experimental
tastes had many other options in cities like Warsaw, including the
Theater for Youth – founded in 1926 under the direction of
Thea Artishevski and the producer David Herman – which became
the most popular of the music theaters. Adding to the vitality of
the Polish Yiddish theater scene between the two World Wars was kleynkunst,
"a sort of cabaret revue, witty, gay, and irreverent, rapidly
winging from music to dance to monologue to sketch" (Sandrow,
323). Kleynkunst theaters included Azazel in Warsaw, Ararat
in Lodz, led by writer/performer Moyshe Broderzon, who discovered
such talents as the comedians Shimen Dzigan and Yisroel Shumakher,
who would enjoy a long career together – the most successful
double act of its kind in the Yiddish language – in sketches
filled with political and social commentary.
Poland had become arguably the world's richest
soil for Yiddish theater by the 1930s, so the annihilation of Polish
Jewry by the Nazis destroyed a particularly vibrant theatrical culture.
Yet during the war, performers made valiant efforts to carry on their
activities in the face of the gravest danger. Warsaw ghetto leader
Emmanuel Ringelblum's diaries chronicle all measure of cultural
undertakings, from journalism to the visual arts to musical and theatrical
performance.
Jonas *Turkow
gave a list of 138 performers who perished in the Warsaw ghetto, including
Mazo, director of the Vilna Troupe, and his wife Miriam Orleska. As
the Nazi ghettoes were liquidated and the survivors were sent to concentration
camps, they continued to perform, when possible, even in the camps.
After the war, surviving actors resumed activity, first in DP camps, and then to the many places to which the performers dispersed.
After the Russian Revolution, state-sponsored Yiddish
theaters were founded in a number of major cities of the Soviet Union.
Some were established quickly, as in Vilna and Odessa. Others were
created later, after the political situation stabilized. A total of
14 state Yiddish theaters were ultimately established; the most noteworthy
included the Minsk State Theater (Bilgoset), directed by M.
Rafalski, and the Yiddish State Theater in Kharkov, directed first
by Ephraim Loyter, and later by M. Norvid.
Other companies were established in such cities as Tarnopol, Lviv,
Zhitomir, Dnepropetrovsk, Bialistok, Grodno, Vilna, Kovno, Riga, and
Czernowitz. In addition, many of these companies traveled widely,
so that Yiddish theater reached communities throughout much of the
Soviet Union. The most celebrated Soviet Yiddish theater company was
the Moscow State Yiddish Theater (best known by the Russian acronym
for "state Jewish Theater," GOSET). Starting
as a small studio in St. Petersburg just after the revolution, and
moving to Moscow a couple of years later, GOSET revolutionized
Yiddish theater with avant-garde productions of Yiddish classics,
new Yiddish plays, and works from the European repertoire. The company's
founder, and its leader for much of the 1920s, was Alexander Granovsky,
who put his mark on Yiddish standards like Goldfaden's Di
Kishefmakherin, Sholem Aleichem's Dos Groyse Gevins,
and Peretz's Baynakht afn Altn Mark.
Marc *Chagall
was also briefly involved with the company as designer, but made an
impact all out of proportion to the time he spent with GOSET.
The company also had the input of significant musical talent in Joseph
Achron and Leyb Pulver. After Granovsky defected to the West in 1928,
actor Solomon Mikhoels took the reins and guided the company ably,
focusing for a while on new works like
Moyshe *Kulbak
's Boytre (1936) and
Dovid *Bergelson
's Der Toyber ("The Deaf Man," 1930) and Prints Ruveyni (1945). When the Soviet authorities used Kulbak's
underworld drama as an excuse to crack down on the troupe –
Kulbak was arrested and disappeared into the gulag – GOSET responded with politically correct versions of Goldfaden's Shulamis (1938–9) and Bar Kokhba (1939). This
strategy may have bought the troupe some time, but it did not avert
disaster forever. Mikhoels was murdered in a staged accident in 1948,
and Benjamin Zuskin was killed in a purge of Jewish intellectuals
in 1952.
As Yiddish speakers spread across the globe in search
of most hospitable environments, they established theatrical activity
on six continents. For every major metropolis with multiple theaters
and cabarets, there were numerous smaller cities and towns with less
sizable and diverse offerings, but which helped provide a lifeline
for performers and companies who needed audiences beyond their local
ones in order to make a decent living, and which brought Yiddish theater
to avid theatergoers living off the beaten path. The American "provinces,"
for example, included cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, and Baltimore,
and countless cities and towns between and beyond. Among the places
where Yiddish theater was performed, several important secondary hubs
are worth noting: South Africa, where Sarah Sylvia reigned as the
leading star, and where visitors like
Maurice *Schwartz
,
Molly *Picon
, and Meir Tselniker sojourned; Australia, dominated for decades by
the artistic leadership of Polish immigrants Yankev Weislitz and Rochl
Holzer, and playing host to numerous guest artists, from
Shimon *Dzigan
to Dina Halpern to Ida Kaminska and Zygmunt Turkow; and Montreal,
which had long served as a "provincial" theater on the
North American circuit. The leading figure of the Montreal Yiddish
theater in the second half of the 20th century was Ukrainian-born
Dora Wasserman, who established the Yiddish Drama Group in the 1950s;
later renamed the Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre, control of the company
passed to her daughter Bryna after Dora Wasserman's death in
2003. Israel became home to countless native Yiddish speakers, but
proved problematic for Yiddish theater. The language wars that raged
in Mandate Palestine and later in the State of Israel made public
theater performances in Yiddish difficult to stage; so despite an
abundance of talent, Yiddish theater was often suppressed. Nevertheless,
it played a role in Israeli life. Yiddish performances in Palestine
began as early as the 1890s, and in spite of both widespread scorn
for Yiddish and special taxes imposed on "foreign-language"
theaters, Yiddish theater was performed regularly in the early decades
of the state. Immigrants from Eastern Europe like Shimon Dzigan, Mary
Soriano, Max Perlman, Eni Litan, and Gita Galina were popular with
Israeli audiences, who also welcomed visitors like Avrom Morevsky,
Ida Kaminska, Joseph Buloff, and Maurice Schwartz. As of the early
21st century, little regular activity remains, but Shmuel
Atzmon's Yiddishpil company, based in Tel Aviv, continues
to carry the flame.
In spite of social and economic pressures that drove
millions of Jews westward, Yiddish theater continued to thrive in
Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union up to the outbreak of World
War II. After the war, though, the soil that had been
so fertile for such performances was largely scorched earth. Yet until
a new wave of antisemitism broke out in Poland in the 1950s, many
Polish Jews attempted to rebuild their lives in their native land,
and two companies arose in Poland in 1946. The Nidershlezis Yiddish
Theater, directed by S. Zack, produced Hirschbein's Grine
Felder and Sloves's Homens Mapole. The Lodz Theater,
directed by Moyshe Lipman, presented Dzigan and Schumacher and Ida
Kaminska. In 1950 these two companies joined forces as the Jewish
State Theater, working with a government subsidy under Kaminska's
direction. It achieved success with the Manger-Fenster adaptation A Goldfaden Kholem ("A Goldfaden Dream," 1950)
and Gordin's Mirele Efros, with Kaminska in the title
role.
While Yiddish culture was decimated by Hitler and
Stalin, it did not always fare well in countries where its speakers
were free to perpetuate it – for they were also free not to. Everywhere that Ashkenazim went in search of greater economic
opportunity and religious freedom, they faced ongoing dilemmas about
how to strike a desirable balance between maintaining a connection
to their religious roots and adapting to new surroundings. More often
than not, they pursued the latter at the expense of the former, and
Yiddish was often neglected as part of the bargain. What allowed the
Yiddish theater to continue developing in places like New York was
a steady supply of new immigrants. When the U.S. Congress enacted
strict immigration quotas in the early 1920s, that supply largely
dried up, and the American Yiddish theater began a slow but steady
decline (which might have happened anyway, given the rise of new competition
like film, radio, and television). Yet many of the stars of this period
continued performing for a long time. Artef was an important force
throughout the 1930s, as was the Yiddish Art Theatre in the 1930s
and 1940s. By the 1930s, more performers who had started their careers
in the Yiddish theater were crossing over successfully to Broadway
and Hollywood than had actors in earlier generations. English-language
audiences embraced such actors as Paul Muni (born Muni Weisenfreund)
and Joseph Buloff, and numerous Yiddish actors enjoyed success in
character roles. With the graying and shrinking of the Yiddish-speaking
audience, Yiddish theater in the late 20th century increasingly
became more a labor of love than a business. The one American company
continuing to offer Yiddish performances on anything like a regular
basis as of the early 21st century is the Folksbine. Elsewhere,
Jewish theaters make occasional forays into producing Yiddish drama
in English, just as some of the Yiddish classics have made their way
into the repertoire in Hebrew, Polish, German, and other languages.
For hundreds of years, the purimshpil provided
a Jewish counterpart to the dramas of the medieval Church, and as
different as the contents and purposes of such performances were,
Yiddish theater absorbed influences from its Christian neighbors from
the very beginning, while putting a distinctly Jewish mark on the
proceedings. That combination continued to lend the Yiddish theater
its special character well into the modern era. The purimshpil and other performance forms originating in pre-modern times set other
precedents as well: the centrality of music to much of Yiddish theatrical
performance, the roots of Yiddish theater in Jewish texts and traditions,
and challenges that Yiddish performances often presented to communal
authorities. Jewish law kept the Yiddish theater from growing into
a professional, year-round phenomenon for several centuries, by which
point other European cultures had long-standing secular theatrical
traditions. The Yiddish theater had a great deal of catching up to
do, and it took to this process with relish. Pioneers like Gold-faden
poured their knowledge of both Jewish materials and non-Jewish texts,
music, and theatrical techniques into their work. Yiddish actors learned
their craft partly from watching their counterparts perform in Russian,
Romanian, Polish, German, and other languages, and partly from simply
rolling up their sleeves and going to work. The most talented figures
of the first generation of modern Yiddish theater could hold their
own with contemporaries coming out of cultures with much more extensive
theatrical traditions. The development of Yiddish theater and drama
turned out to be remarkably compressed. Joining other European theatrical
cultures only late in the 19th century, Yiddish theater
took little time to diversify its repertoire, from the early musicals
and melodramas that dominated the marquees to the many theatrical
styles that would arise in the 20th century: naturalism,
symbolism, expressionism, constructivism, etc. The combined forces
of annihilation and persecution in Europe, and acculturation and assimilation
of Yiddish speakers worldwide, conspired to cut short the remarkably
rapid maturation of Yiddish theater and drama. It seems impossible
to imagine a world in which Yiddish theater will ever play as vital
a role in Jewish life as it did at its height, yet performers, scholars,
and audiences continue to explore its legacy in many ways. Several
of the best-known Yiddish dramas (for example, An-Sky's Der
Dibek and Asch's Got fun Nekome, in many different
translations as well as in adaptations by playwrights like Paddy Chayefsky,
Donald Margulies, and Tony Kushner) have a long history of performances
– some of them quite distinguished – in multiple languages.
There is reason to believe that as translators make additional works
available for non-Yiddish-speaking readers and audiences, other Yiddish
plays will take their proper place in the world repertoire. The Yiddish
theater has also attracted the attention of a number of distinguished
historians and literary critics, including Yitskhok Schiper, Max Erik,
Shmuel Niger, Jacob Shatzky, Noyekh Prilutski, and Zalmen Zylbercweig.
The late 20th century witnessed a dramatic increase in
scholarly books and articles on Yiddish theater and drama, a trend
that shows no sign of abating in the early 21st century.
The confluence of scholars, translators, playwrights, and audiences
willing to give the Yiddish theater a fresh look suggests that long
after the Yiddish theater's most vital period has passed, our
understanding of the phenomenon it represented continues to grow.
For theater in Israel, see
*Hebrew Literature
, Modern (Drama);
*Israel
, State of: Cultural Life (Theater).
[Joel Berkowitz (2nd ed.)]
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
GENERAL: Enciclopedia dello Spettacolo (1954–62); J. Gregor, Weltgeschichte des Theaters (1933);
G. Freedley and J.A. Reeves, A History of the Theater (19552);
C. Roth, Jewish Contribution to Civilization (1938); idem, Jews in the Renaissance (1959); V.I. Zoller, in: Mitteilungen
zur juedischen Volkskunde, 29 (1926); S. Salomon, Jews of Britain (1938); E.D. Coleman, Jews in English Drama (1943); R. Craig, English-Religious Drama of the Middle Ages (1955); E. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, 2 vols. (1903); H. Carrington, Die
Figur des Juden in der dramatischen Litteratur des XVIII.
Jahrhunderts (1897); M.J. Landa, The Jew in Drama (19692);
H. Freeden, Juedisches Theater in Nazi-Deutschland (1964);
G. Weales, American Drama Since World War II (1962); F. Ewen, Complete Book of the American Musical Theater (19592); idem, The Story of the American Musical Theater (19682). YIDDISH THEATER: D.S. Lifson, The
Yiddish Theatre in America (1965); B. Gorin, Di Geshikhte fun
Yidishen Teater, 2 vols. (1918, 19232); Z. Zylbercweig, Leksikon fun Yidishn Teater, 6 vols. (1931–70); Y. Schiper, Geshikhte fun Yidisher Teater-Kunst un Drame, 3 vols. (1923–28);
J. Shatzky (ed.), Arkhiv far der Geshikhte fun Yidishn Teater un
Drame (1930); M. Litvakov, Finf Yor Melukhesher Yidisher Kamer-Teater (1924); ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: M. Altshuler, Ha-Te'atron
ha-Yehudi bi-Vrit ha-Mo'aẓot (1996); A. Belkin, Ha-Purim Shpil: Iyyunim ba-Te'atron ha-Yehudi ha-Amami (2002); Y. Berkovitsh, Hundert Yor Yidish Teater in Rumenye (1976); J. Berkowitz, Shakespeare on the American Yiddish Stage (2001); J. Berkowitz (ed.), Yiddish Theatre: New Approaches (2003); B. Gorin, Di Geshikhte
fun Yidishn Teater (1923); N. Bukhvald, Teater (1943);
E. Bützer, Die Anfänge der jiddischen purim shpiln
in ihrem literarischen und kulturgeschichtlichen Kontext (2003);
B. Dalinger, ' Verloschene Sterne'. Geschichte des
jüdischen Theaters in Wien (1998); Y. Dobrushin, Di
Dramaturgye fun di Klasiker (1948); J. Hoberman, Bridge of
Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds (1991); A. Krasney, Ha-Badkhan (1998); A. Kuligowska-Korzeniewska and M. Leyko (eds.), Teatr żydowski
w Polsce (1998); J-M. Larrue, Le Théâtre yiddish
à Montréal (1996); Y. Lyubomirski, Melukhisher
Yidisher Teater in Ukrayne (1931); J. Mestel, 70 Yor Teater-Repertuar (1954); idem, Undzer Teater (1943); A. Mukdoiny, Yitskhok
Leybush Perets un dos Yidishe Teater (1949); E. Nahshon, Yiddish
Proletarian Theatre: The Art and Politics of the Artef, 1925 – 1940 (1998); B. Orshanski, Teater-Shlakhtn (1931); S.
Perlmutter, Yidishe Dramaturgn un Teater-Kompozitors (1952);
B. Picon-Vallin, Le Théâtre juif soviétique
pendant les années vingt (1973); N. Sandrow, Vagabond
Stars: A World History of Yiddish Theater (1977, 19992);
Kh. Shmeruk, Meḥazot Mikrayim be-Yidish (1697 – 1750) (1979); Y. Tsinberg, Di Geshikhte fun Literatur bay
Yidn, 8 vols. (1943); J. Veidlinger, The Moscow State Yiddish
Theater (2000); M. Viner, Tsu der Geshikhte fun der Yidisher
Literatur in 19tn Yorhundert, 2 vols. (1945); I. Manger, J. Turkow,
and M. Perenson (eds.), Yidisher Teater Tsvishn Beyde Velt-Milkhomes,
2 vols. (1968); A. Zable, Wanderers and Dreamers: Tales of the
David Herman Theatre (1998).
Source: Encyclopaedia
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