“theater”

Paula Ansaldo’s book brings about a long-awaited return of Yiddish and the IFT to their rightful place in Argentine theater history and Jewish theater history.

Feb 26, 2025

This essay about Yiddish-speaking artist Nathan Altman, written in French by Dr. Pascale Samuel, is from the catalogue accompanying the exhibition “The Dybbuk: Phantom of a Lost World,” on view at Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme [Museum of the Art and History of Judaism] (mahJ) in Paris through January 26, 2025. 

Dec 05, 2024

Tamara Gleason Friedberg sat down with Sonia Gollance in Summer 2024 to discuss Yiddish theater in London, her translation of Tea Arciszewska's Miryeml, and what comes next.

Nov 26, 2024

I badly wanted The Last Yiddish Speaker to be an American Jewish meditation on American Jewish safety that used Yiddish to pull our political imaginations toward new horizons.

Oct 23, 2024

On Sunday, October 29th, DraCor released its Yiddish corpus (YiDraCor), making these Yiddish plays highly machine readable and ready out-of-the-box for computational literary study.

Oct 22, 2024

In The Great Dictionary of Yiddish Language: A Chamber Opera, composer Alex Weiser and librettist Ben Kaplan endow enchantment and glamor on their decidedly unglamorous protagonists and, most importantly, heighten our attention to their doubts and torments the way only an opera can. 

Jul 25, 2024

These three wriers with lives unfolding in three different localities—Tsarist Russia, Poland, and the US—wrote plays that grapple with issues —such as the tragic fate of the agune (“chained wife”), motherhood, self-realization, sex work, financial independence, and reproductive autonomy— that unfortunately are still urgent a century later.

Jul 09, 2024

Bashevis Singer's play takes on new meaning and relevance for Ukrainian audiences.

Apr 08, 2024

Eyshe Beirich reviews Mikhl Yashinsky's original Yiddish play Di psure loyt khayim.

Feb 26, 2024

Suggestions for instructors who might want to teach Shulamis (1881) by Avrom Goldfadn in their Jewish history, culture, or literature classrooms.

Feb 12, 2024

Today's Yiddishists can find historical models for politically-engaged cultural activism in Nick Underwood's account of interwar Paris.

Feb 07, 2024

Last spring we published Jon­ah Lubin's overview and bibliography of "Master Criminal" Urke Nachalnik. Now, he has expanded this research to discuss how Urke Nachalnik was represented in popular Yiddish culture.

Feb 06, 2024

Nov 20, 2023

Spanish/Lithuanian artists Adrian Schvarzstein and Jūratė Širvytė-Rukštelė delivered an interactive, dynamic, wordless performance, titled אָנקומען /Arrived/Przybyli in the Kraków Street Theatre Festival. 

Sep 26, 2023

Detroit’s Yiddish theater, despite its distance from the center of American Yiddish culture in New York, was home to big personalities and bigger stars.

Apr 27, 2023

Focusing on Abraham M. Sharkansky’s 1896 play Kol nidre, oder di geheyme yidn in madrid (Kol Nidre, or the Secret Jews of Madrid), this article examines how, on both sides of the Atlantic, the Kol Nidre prayer performed in the Yiddish theatre reflected profound modern and migratory cultural transgressions, between categories such as high and low, religion and entertainment, the holy and the theatrical.

Apr 21, 2023

Vivi Lachs translates Katie Brown's Bankrot, a family drama set in London's East End. 

Apr 18, 2023

As the biannual Ashkenaz festival kicked off, so did the North American Premiere of Bas Sheve, a Yiddish opera, on August 31, 2022.

Jan 13, 2023

In this piece Beth Dwoskin explains how Leah Hoffman's play about the Yiddish alphabet can be adapted for children's classes today. She presents her English translation of the play alongside a recording of the alefbeys song in English.

Nov 15, 2022

An excerpt from the play Gelt by Morris Gisnet. 

Nov 23, 2021

Cameron Bernstein interviews director Jake Krakovsky about his bilingual Yiddish-English puppet film “Labzik: Tales of a Clever Pup” based on short stories by Chaver Paver.

Nov 04, 2021

Eve Romm traces the many approaches to resolving the problem of Shylock on the Yiddish stage, from apologetics to heroism.

May 12, 2021

Ivo Pelay's 1926 plays Judío and Judía, “Jew” and “Jewess,” thematize anxiety not only about the Argentineity of Jews, but also about the Jewishness of Argentina: the promise of assimilation and the threat of subversion.

May 02, 2021

Avram Mlotek shares the personal, family, and artistic roots of the Folksbiene's online pandemic-era Kids and Yiddish reunion show this spring.

Dec 10, 2020

Mikhl Yashinsky discusses his starring role as Bobe Yakhne in the Folksbiene production of The Sorceress, featuring an In geveb first — a Yiddish drag performance recorded just for our lucky readers!

Oct 29, 2020

What if Shylock spoke Yiddish? One experimental production of Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" did just that.

Jul 07, 2020

We are seeking submissions for a special issue on Yiddish popular theater.

May 18, 2020

The Rise of the Modern Yiddish Stage is a monumental work that tells the story of Avrom Goldfaden, Yiddish theater's most central, confounding, and enigmatic figure while also situating it in the context of Yiddish theater’s initial development. 

Nov 25, 2019

Tova Benjamin reviews The Argentinian Prostitute Play, a new play by Reuven Glezer staged as part of the 2019 Broadway Bound Theatre Festival. 

Oct 10, 2019

Fiddler’s Yiddish translation merits discussion in The New York Times, not as history or metaphor, but as a window into how Jews tell stories about themselves. 

Apr 15, 2019