Yiddish theatre consists of plays written and performed primarily by Jews in Yiddish, the language of the Eastern European Ashkenazaic Jewish community. 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 also in Berlin, ...

Including:

• Yiddish theatre - Precursors and early influences
• Yiddish theatre - The first rumblings
• Yiddish theatre - The early years
• Yiddish theatre - The Russian era
• Yiddish theatre - London
• Yiddish theatre - The heyday of Yiddish theater
• Yiddish theatre - The effect of the Holocaust

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Noah Prilutski (1882–1941) noted that Yiddish theatre did not arise simultaneously with theatre in other European "national" languages; he conjectured that this was at least in part because the Jewish sense of nationality favored Hebrew over Yiddish as a "national" language, but few Jews of the period were actually comfortable using Hebrew outside of a religious/liturgical context. [Bercovici, 1998, 18] Nonetheless, the culture of the Eastern European Jews was permeated with music, song, and dance ...

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Yiddish theatre, Yiddish theatre - Precursors and early influences, Yiddish theatre - The first rumblings, Yiddish theatre - The early years, Yiddish theatre - The Russian era, Yiddish theatre - London, Yiddish theatre - The heyday of Yiddish theater, Yiddish theatre - The effect of the Holocaust

Read more here: » Yiddish theatre: Encyclopedia II - Yiddish theatre - Precursors and early influences

Like the rest of Yiddish-language culture, Yiddish theatre was devastated by the Holocaust. A major portion of the world's Yiddish-speakers were killed and many theatres were destroyed. Many of the surviving Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi emigrated to Israel, where many assimilated into the emerging Hebrew-language culture. Although its glory days have passed, Yiddish theatre companies still perform in various Jewish communities. The Folksbiene (People's Theatre) company in New York City is still active 90 years after it was founded. The ...

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Yiddish theatre, Yiddish theatre - Precursors and early influences, Yiddish theatre - The first rumblings, Yiddish theatre - The early years, Yiddish theatre - The Russian era, Yiddish theatre - London, Yiddish theatre - The heyday of Yiddish theater, Yiddish theatre - The effect of the Holocaust

Read more here: » Yiddish theatre: Encyclopedia II - Yiddish theatre - The effect of the Holocaust

The 1883 Russian ban (eventually lifted in 1904) effectively pushed Yiddish theatre to Western Europe and then to America; over the next few decades, successive waves of Yiddish-language performers would arrive in New York (and, to a lesser extent, in Berlin, London, Vienna, and Paris), some simply as artists seeking an audience, but many as a result of persecutions, pogroms and economic crises in Eastern Europe. Professional Yiddish theatre in London began in 1884, and flourished until the mid-1930s. By 1896, Kalman Juvilier's troupe was th ...

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Yiddish theatre, Yiddish theatre - Precursors and early influences, Yiddish theatre - The first rumblings, Yiddish theatre - The early years, Yiddish theatre - The Russian era, Yiddish theatre - London, Yiddish theatre - The heyday of Yiddish theater, Yiddish theatre - The effect of the Holocaust

Read more here: » Yiddish theatre: Encyclopedia II - Yiddish theatre - The heyday of Yiddish theater

If Yiddish theatre was born in Romania, its youth occurred largely in Imperial Russia, largely in what is now Ukraine. Israel Rosenberg's troupe (which later had a series of managers, including Goldfaden's brother Tulya, and which at one point split in two, with one half led by actor Jacob Adler) gave Russia's first professional Yiddish theater performance in Odessa in 1878. Goldfaden himself soon came to Odessa, pushing Rosenberg's troupe into the provinces, and Osip Mikhailovich Lerner and N.M. Sheikevitch also founded a Yiddish theatre at Odessa, which for several years became the capit ...

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Yiddish theatre, Yiddish theatre - Precursors and early influences, Yiddish theatre - The first rumblings, Yiddish theatre - The early years, Yiddish theatre - The Russian era, Yiddish theatre - London, Yiddish theatre - The heyday of Yiddish theater, Yiddish theatre - The effect of the Holocaust

Read more here: » Yiddish theatre: Encyclopedia II - Yiddish theatre - The Russian era

Although professional Yiddish theatre is generally dated from 1876, there are earlier claimants to the title. Although there was briefly some professional Yiddish-language theatre in and around Warsaw in the 1830s, it left no immediate heirs. There is a contemporaneous record of there being 19 amateur Yiddish-language theatrical troupes in and around Warsaw at that time, and of one professional company performing, with a large and receptive audience of both Jews and Gentiles, a five-act drama about Moses, written by A. Schertspierer o ...

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Yiddish theatre, Yiddish theatre - Precursors and early influences, Yiddish theatre - The first rumblings, Yiddish theatre - The early years, Yiddish theatre - The Russian era, Yiddish theatre - London, Yiddish theatre - The heyday of Yiddish theater, Yiddish theatre - The effect of the Holocaust

Read more here: » Yiddish theatre: Encyclopedia II - Yiddish theatre - The first rumblings

Abraham Goldfaden is generally considered the founder of the first professional Yiddish theatre troupe, which he founded in Iaşi, Romania and later moved to Bucharest; his own career also took him to Imperial Russia, Lvov, and New York City. Within two years of Goldfaden's founding of his troupe, there were several rival troupes in Bucharest, mostly founded by formen members of Goldfaden's troupe. Most of these troupes followed Goldfaden's original formula of musical vaudeville and light comedy, while Goldfaden himself turned more toward re ...

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Yiddish theatre, Yiddish theatre - Precursors and early influences, Yiddish theatre - The first rumblings, Yiddish theatre - The early years, Yiddish theatre - The Russian era, Yiddish theatre - London, Yiddish theatre - The heyday of Yiddish theater, Yiddish theatre - The effect of the Holocaust

Read more here: » Yiddish theatre: Encyclopedia II - Yiddish theatre - The early years

Of the next era of Yiddish theatre, Adler wrote, "...if Yiddish theater was destined to go through its infancy in Russia, and in America grew to manhood and success, then London was its school." [Adler, 1999, 256] In London in the 1880s, playing in small theater clubs "on a stage the size of a cadaver" [Adler, 1999, 248], not daring to play on a Friday night or to light a fire on stage on a Saturday afternoon (both because of the Jewish Sabbath), forced to use a cardboard ram's horn when playing Uriel Acosta so as not to blaspheme [Adler, 1999, 257], Yiddish theatre nonetheless took on much of what ...

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Yiddish theatre, Yiddish theatre - Precursors and early influences, Yiddish theatre - The first rumblings, Yiddish theatre - The early years, Yiddish theatre - The Russian era, Yiddish theatre - London, Yiddish theatre - The heyday of Yiddish theater, Yiddish theatre - The effect of the Holocaust

Read more here: » Yiddish theatre: Encyclopedia II - Yiddish theatre - London