“theatre”

Review

Review of Diego Rotman's The Yiddish Stage as a Temporary Home

Debra Caplan

In this study of Shimen Dzigan and Yisroel Schumacher, Diego Rotman presents a study of the subversive power of Yiddish comedy in the twentieth century.

Article

“An altogether unusual love and understanding”: The Shomer Sisters and the Gender Politics of Shund Theatre

Sonia Gollance

Examining Rose Shomer Bachelis and Miriam Shomer Zunser in the context of their famous shund-writing family, this article argues that their operetta "Der liebes tants" -- a love triangle with an Apache dance motif -- should be read against the grain to emphasize the importance of sisterhood.

Article

My Mom Drank Ink: The “Little Negro” and the Performance of Race in Yente Telebende’s Stage Productions

Gil Ribak

The case study of Yente Telebende is merely one example of popular Yiddish culture — theater, pulp fiction, and newspapers — that strove for commercial success by appealing to the tastes of its audience, shaped by American culture's vocabulary and images of Blackness.

Article

'Di Yidn Kumen!': Israeli and Multicultural Identities in Israeli Yiddish Light Entertainment Shows

Roni Cohen and Olga Levitan

While Hebrew cultural discourse tended to treat Yiddish theatre as a kind of “outside” culture, light entertainment shows in Yiddish reveal close engagement with the central icons and themes of Israeli society.

Article

Murder, Lust, and Laughter, or, Shund Theatre: A Special Issue of In geveb

Joel Berkowitz, Sonia Gollance and Nick Underwood

As the opening of the special issue on shund theater, this introduction situates the four articles and two translations in the history of the study of shund.


Special Issue

Murder, Lust, and Laughter, or, Shund Theater

This special issue of In geveb, edited by Joel Berkowitz, Sonia Gollance, and Nick Underwood, examines shund and its connection to the popular Yiddish theater.

Article

The Goldenberg Variations: The International “Star System” and the Yiddish Theater of Buenos Aires in 1930

Zachary M. Baker

From the 1920s until the 1950s, Yiddish Buenos Aires hosted a thriving theatrical landscape. Critics complained that the public's adoration of "stars" propelled a preponderance of shund at the expense of “better” (literary) plays.

Article

Hertz Grosbard’s Jewspeak: The Lost Art of Word Concerts

Agnieszka Legutko

Hertz Grosbard's “word concerts” were an embodiment of "Jewspeak," performances that sought to give life to the Yiddish literary tradition.

Review

What Does Justice Mean, Decades Later?: Review of Ida Fink’s Der tish in Paris

Ri J. Turner

Ri Turner reviews the World Premiere of Ida Fink’s Der tish in Paris.

Blog

Feminist Dybbuks in Melbourne: Possession, Desire and Voice

Nicola Menser Hearn

In August 2018, Australian theatre maker and director Samara Hersch, along with Chamber Made, a company operating at the ‘nexus of contemporary performance, music and sound’, presented Dybbuks – a production in three acts exploring ideas of possession; of women being with the dead; of desire, ritual, and voice. Here, Nicola Menser Hearn reviews the production and discusses it with Hersch.


Texts & Translation

משיח אין אַמעריקע

Messiah in America

Moyshe Nadir

Translation by Michael Shapiro

An exclusive extract from Moyshe Nadir's 1932 satire, Messiah in America.

Review

How to be Both: Officials and Artists Vying for the Limelight

Iaroslava Strikha

Mayhill Fowler's book shines light on the blind spots of national cultural histories of turn of the century Ukraine, following the often uneasy interface between authorities and art institutions.

Interview

Art Against Fascism: Joshua Sobol on the Radical Possibilities of Yiddish Theater

Rachelle Grossman

Joshua Sobol speaks to Rachelle Grossman about resistance through art and the future possibilities of Yiddish theater. 

Texts & Translation

דער דיבוק אין קריזיס־געשטאַלט

The Dybbuk In The Form Of A Crisis

Yosl Cutler

Translation by Michael Shapiro

No, not Sh. An-Ski's classic Dybbuk, but Yosl Cutler's parody version, with sharp-tongued satire, a host of illustrious cameos, and puppets.