Directors

The auteur director–the great visionary in the mold of a Stanislavsky, Meyerhold, or Reinhardt–did not figure into the early years of the professional Yiddish stage. But it took little time for Yiddish troupes to develop an awareness of those great figures, and for some in those troupes to aspire to, and attain, such levels of artistic authority.


May 17, 2019

Grand Opera for Yiddish Speakers in Early Twentieth-Century America! Who Knew?!

In the spring of 1904, New York witnessed the unlikely spectacle of a musical-dramatic adaptation of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal—in Yiddish.
April 30, 2019

Dystopia on the Verge: Or Why a 1934 Yiddish Play About Charlie Chaplin Still Matters

Somewhere, in an obscure port city in Europe…
February 20, 2019

“More Argentine than Martín Fierro”: Jevel Katz’s Debut in Buenos Aires, 1930

During the 1930s, Buenos Aires cemented its reputation as one of the capitals of Yiddishland. And Jevel Katz, the Yiddish Carlos Gardel, one of the greats.
September 21, 2018

Found in Translation: Hatuey, Cuba, and the Jews

Some background on the Yiddish epic poem, Hatuey.
August 16, 2018

One (Act) for the Show

One-act plays present a striking variety of themes, character types, and styles, as can be seen in the latest Plotting Yiddish Drama batch, devoted to this genre.
June 20, 2018

Visual Artists and Yiddish Avant-garde Theatre in Poland

During the interwar period in Poland, producers of literary and avant-garde Yiddish theatre invited visual artists to play key roles in realizing their creative visions.