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Jewish Theatre

Author: Edna Nahshon

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 9004173358

While a frequently used term, Jewish Theatre has become a contested concept that defies precise definition. Is it theatre by Jews? For Jews? About Jews? Though there are no easy answers for these questions, "Jewish Theatre: A Global View," contributes greatly to the conversation by offering an impressive collection of original essays written by an international cadre of noted scholars from Europe, the United States, and Israel. The essays discuss historical and current texts and performance practices, covering a wide gamut of genres and traditions.

Chagall and the Artists of the Russian Jewish Theater

Author: Susan Tumarkin Goodman

Publisher:

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13:

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Soviet Jewish theater in a world of moral compromise / Susan Tumarkin Goodman -- The political context of Jewish theater and culture in the Soviet Union / Zvi Gitelman -- Habima and "Biblical theater" / Vladislav Ivanov -- Yiddish constructivism : the art of the Moscow State Yiddish Theater / Jeffrey Veidlinger -- Art and theater / Benjamin Harshav -- Habima and Goset : an illustrated chronicle

New York’s Yiddish Theater

Author: Edna Nahshon

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2016-03-08

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 0231541074

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In the early decades of the twentieth century, a vibrant theatrical culture took shape on New York City's Lower East Side. Original dramas, comedies, musicals, and vaudeville, along with sophisticated productions of Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Chekhov, were innovatively staged for crowds that rivaled the audiences on Broadway. Though these productions were in Yiddish and catered to Eastern European, Jewish audiences (the largest immigrant group in the city at the time), their artistic innovations, energetic style, and engagement with politics and the world around them came to influence all facets of the American stage. Vividly illustrated and with essays from leading historians and critics, this book recounts the heyday of "Yiddish Broadway" and its vital contribution to American Jewish life and crossover to the broader American culture. These performances grappled with Jewish nationalism, labor relations, women's rights, religious observance, acculturation, and assimilation. They reflected a range of genres, from tear-jerkers to experimental theater. The artists who came of age in this world include Stella Adler, Eddie Cantor, Jerry Lewis, Sophie Tucker, Mel Brooks, and Joan Rivers. The story of New York's Yiddish theater is a tale of creativity and legacy and of immigrants who, in the process of becoming Americans, had an enormous impact on the country's cultural and artistic development.

The Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theater

Author: Alyssa Quint

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2019-01-24

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 0253038626

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Alyssa Quint focuses on the early years of the modern Yiddish theater, from roughly 1876 to 1883, through the works of one of its best-known and most colorful figures, Avrom Goldfaden. Goldfaden (né Goldenfaden, 1840-1908) was one of the first playwrights to stage a commercially viable Yiddish-language theater, first in Romania and then in Russia. Goldfaden’s work was rapidly disseminated in print and his plays were performed frequently for Jewish audiences. Sholem Aleichem considered him as a forger of a new language that "breathed the European spirit into our old jargon." Quint uses Goldfaden’s theatrical works as a way to understand the social life of Jewish theater in Imperial Russia. Through a study of his libretti, she looks at the experiences of Russian Jewish actors, male and female, to explore connections between culture as artistic production and culture in the sense of broader social structures. Quint explores how Jewish actors who played Goldfaden’s work on stage absorbed the theater into their everyday lives. Goldfaden’s theater gives a rich view into the conduct, ideology, religion, and politics of Jews during an important moment in the history of late Imperial Russia.

Inventing the Modern Yiddish Stage

Author: Joel Berkowitz

Publisher: Wayne State University Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 398

ISBN-13: 0814335047

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Collects leading scholars' insight on the plays, production, music, audiences, and political and aesthetic concerns of modern Yiddish theater. While Yiddish theater is best known as popular entertainment, it has been shaped by its creators' responses to changing social and political conditions. Inventing the Modern Yiddish Stage: Essays in Drama, Performance, and Show Business showcases the diversity of modern Yiddish theater by focusing on the relentless and far-ranging capacity of its performers, producers, critics, and audiences for self-invention. Editors Joel Berkowitz and Barbara Henry have assembled essays from leading scholars that trace the roots of modern Yiddish drama and performance in nineteenth-century Eastern Europe and span a century and a half and three continents, beyond the heyday of a Yiddish stage that was nearly eradicated by the Holocaust, to its post-war life in Western Europe and Israel. Each chapter takes its own distinct approach to its subject and is accompanied by an appendix consisting of primary material, much of it available in English translation for the first time, to enrich readers' appreciation of the issues explored and also to serve as supplementary classroom texts. Chapters explore Yiddish theater across a broad geographical span--from Poland and Russia to France, the United States, Argentina, and Israel and Palestine. Readers will spend time with notable individuals and troupes; meet creators, critics, and audiences; sample different dramatic genres; and learn about issues that preoccupied both artists and audiences. The final section presents an extensive bibliography of book-length works and scholarly articles on Yiddish drama and theater, the most comprehensive resource of its kind. Collectively these essays illuminate the modern Yiddish stage as a phenomenon that was constantly reinventing itself and simultaneously examining and questioning that very process. Scholars of Jewish performance and those interested in theater history will appreciate this wide-ranging volume.

Jewish Drama & Theatre

Author: Eli Rozik

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 2013-07-01

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 178284094X

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Jewish drama and theatre has followed a tortuous path from extreme rabbinical intolerance to eventual secular liberalism, with its openness to the heritages of both Judaism as a culture and prominent foreign cultures, to the extent of multicultural integration. No wonder, therefore, that since biblical times until the seventeenth century there are only examples of tangential theatre practices. This initial intolerance, shared by the Church, was rooted in pagan connotations of theatre rather than in the neutral nature of the theatre medium, capable of formulating and communicating contrasting thoughts. Whereas by the tenth century the Church understood that theatre could be harnessed to its own ends, Jewish theatre was only created seven centuries later through spontaneous and amateurish theatrical practices, such as the Yiddish purim-shpil and the purim-rabbi. Due to their carnivalesque and cathartic nature these practices were tolerated by the rabbinical establishment, albeit only during the Purim holiday. But as a result, Jewish drama and theatre were created and emerged despite rabbinical antagonism. Under the influence of the Jewish Enlightenment, Yiddish-speaking theatres were increasingly established, a trend that became central in the cultural enterprise of the Jews in Israel. This process involved a renewed use of Hebrew as a spoken language, and the transition from a profound religious identity to a secular Jewish one, characterised by a basic liberalism to the extent of openness to cultures traditionally perceived as archetypal enemies of Judaism. This book sets out to analyse play-scripts and performance-texts produced in the Israeli theatre in order to illustrate these trends, and concludes that only a liberal society can bring about the full realisation of theatre's potentialities.

Nine Contemporary Jewish Plays

Author: Ellen Schiff

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2005-11-01

Total Pages: 596

ISBN-13: 9780292712904

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Jewish theatre—plays about and usually by Jews—enters the twenty-first century with a long and distinguished history. To keep this vibrant tradition alive, the National Foundation for Jewish Culture established the New Play Commissions in Jewish Theatre in 1994. The commissions are awarded in an annual competition. Their goal is to help emerging and established dramatists develop new works in collaboration with a wide variety of theatres. Since its inception, the New Play Commissions has contributed support to more than seventy-five professional productions, staged readings, and workshops. This anthology brings together nine commissioned plays that have gone on to full production. Ellen Schiff and Michael Posnick have selected works that reflect many of the historical and social forces that have shaped contemporary Jewish experience and defined Jewish identity—among them, surviving the Holocaust, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the lives of newcomers in America, Israel, and Argentina. Following a foreword by Theodore Bikel, the editors provide introductory explanations of the New Play Commissions and an overview of Jewish theatre. The playwrights comment on the genesis of their work and its production history.

Possessed Voices

Author: Ruthie Abeliovich

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2019-07-01

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 1438474458

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Analyzes audio recordings of interwar Hebrew plays, providing a new model for the use of sound in theater studies. Possessed Voices tells the intriguing story of a largely unknown collection of audio recordings, which preserve performances of modernist interwar Hebrew plays. Ruthie Abeliovich focuses on four recordings: a 1931 recording of The Eternal Jew (1919/1923), a 1965 recording of The Dybbuk (1922), a 1961 radio play of The Golem (1925), and a 1952 radio play of Yaakov and Rachel (1928). Abeliovich traces the spoken language of modernist Hebrew theater as grounded in multiple modalities of expressive practices, including spoken Hebrew, Jewish liturgical sensibilities supplemented by Yiddish intonation and other vernacular accents, and in relation to prevalent theatrical forms. The book shows how these recorded performances provided Jewish immigrants from Europe with a venue for lamenting the decline of their home communities and for connecting their memories to the present. Analyzing sonic material against the backdrop of its artistic, cultural, and ideological contexts, Abeliovich develops a critical framework for the study of sound as a discipline in its own right in theater scholarship. Ruthie Abeliovich is Lecturer in the Theatre Department at Haifa University, Israel.

New Jewish Voices

Author: Edward M. Cohen

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2012-02-01

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 0791499375

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New Jewish Voices presents the first anthology of modern Jewish-American drama. These highly acclaimed plays, previously produced by New York City's nationally-renowned Jewish Repertory Theatre, offer an enjoyable and eye-opening introduction to the unique and modern voice of five young writers. The insights and visions of these playwrights will help redefine Jewish theater. While offering college students and amateur dramatic groups exciting new material, these five plays will entertain and delight every reader. An introduction by Edward M. Cohen, associate director of Jewish Repertory Theatre, outlines the history of Jewish theatre in America, the origins and development of the Jewish Repertory Theatre, the methods and programs of play development used at the theatre, and an analysis of current trends in modern Jewish playwriting. The anthology also includes production photos, a list of all plays produced by the theatre, and original scripts.