18 Facts About Yiddish theatre

The range of Yiddish theatre is broad: operetta, musical comedy, and satiric or nostalgic revues; melodrama; naturalist drama; expressionist and modernist plays.

At its height, its geographical scope was comparably broad: from the late 19th century until just before World War II, professional Yiddish theatre could be found throughout the heavily Jewish areas of Eastern and East Central Europe, but in Berlin, London, Paris, Buenos Aires and New York City.

Yiddish theatre's roots include the often satiric plays traditionally performed during religious holiday of Purim ; other masquerades such as the Dance of Death; the singing of cantors in the synagogues; Jewish secular song and dramatic improvisation; exposure to the theatre traditions of various European countries, and the Jewish literary culture that had grown in the wake of the Jewish enlightenment .

Professional Yiddish theatre is generally dated from 1876, although there is scattered evidence of earlier efforts.

Shortly afterward, the Ukrainian Jew Abraham Goldfaden, generally considered the founder of the first professional Yiddish theatre troupe, attended that same rabbinical school, and while there is known to have played a woman's role in a play, Serkele, by Solomon Ettinger.

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Besides complaints about the mingling of men and women in public and about the use of music and dance outside of sacred contexts, the two main criticisms from this quarter were that the Yiddish theatre "jargon" was being promoted to the detriment of "proper" Hebrew and that satire against Hasidim and others would not necessarily be understood as satire and would make Jews look ridiculous.

Russia offered a more sophisticated audience than rural Romania: many Russian Jews were regular attendees of Russian-language Yiddish theatre, and Odessa was a first-rate Yiddish theatre city.

In London in the 1880s, playing in small theatre clubs "on a stage the size of a cadaver", not daring to play on a Friday night or to light a fire on stage on a Saturday afternoon, forced to use a cardboard ram's horn when playing Uriel Acosta so as not to blaspheme, Yiddish theatre nonetheless took on much of what was best in European theatrical tradition.

The Vilna Troupe employed some of the most accomplished actors on the Yiddish theatre stage, including Avrom Morevski, who played the Miropolyer tsaddik in the first performance of The Dybbuk, and Joseph Buloff, who was the lead actor of the Vilna Troupe and went on to further accomplishments with Maurice Schwartz's Yiddish theatre Art Theater in New York.

At many times, a dozen Yiddish theatre groups existed in New York City alone, with the Yiddish Theater District, sometimes referred to as the "Jewish Rialto", centered on Second Avenue in what is the East Village, but was then considered part of the Jewish Lower East Side, which often rivaled Broadway in scale and quality.

Yiddish theatre is said to have two artistic golden ages, the first in the realistic plays produced in New York City in the late 19th century, and the second in the political and artistic plays written and performed in Russia and New York in the 1920s.

Yiddish New York theatregoers were familiar with the plays of Ibsen, Tolstoy, and even Shaw long before these works played on Broadway, and the high calibre of Yiddish language acting became clear as Yiddish actors began to cross over to Broadway, first with Jacob Adler's tour de force performance as Shylock in a 1903 production of The Merchant of Venice, but with performers such as Bertha Kalich, who moved back and forth between the city's leading Yiddish-language and English-language stages.

People who can neither speak nor write Yiddish theatre attend Yiddish theatre stage performances and pay Broadway prices on Second Avenue.

Yiddish theatre was highly influential on what is still known as Jewish humor.

Many of the surviving Yiddish theatre-speaking Ashkenazim emigrated to Israel, where many assimilated into the emerging Hebrew-language culture, since Yiddish theatre was discouraged and looked down upon by Zionists.

New Yiddish theatre Rep, founded in New York City in 2007, producesYiddish theatre shows for a younger audience than the senior-citizen oriented Folksbiene.

The Kadimah Yiddish Theatre has presented new plays in Yiddish as well as new interpretations of Yiddish classical plays and music.

Opera singer and actor David Serero is bringing Yiddish theatre, adapted in English, back to the Lower East Side of New York, with plays such as the Yiddish King Lear.