Eastern Europe
Warsaw, Poland
Articles
Articles
- Dystopia on the Verge: Or Why a 1934 Yiddish Play About Charlie Chaplin Still Matters
- Rubber Bullets at False Targets: On Dzigan and Shumacher’s Performance in the Soviet Union
- 10 Things You Need to Know About God of Vengeance
- A Writer, a Painter, and Queen Esther
- Ola Lillith’s Edgy, Avant-Garde Yiddish Cabaret
July 29, 2020
How Two Nudniks Saved History from the Fire
The Moscow State Yiddish Theatre archives are available digitally!
November 6, 2019
Theatre: A Sketch
Jessica Kirzane’s translation and introduction of Miriam Karpilove’s “Theatre.”
August 30, 2018
Avrom Fishzon, or the Berdichev Sheherazad
The DYTP’s first long form blog post: a reflection on the actor and impresario Avrom Fishzon (1843?–1922).
July 5, 2018
Zylbercweig’s Leksikon and Selfridges’ Rump Steak: In Memoriam Harry Ariel
In this tale of Łódź and London, David Mazower remembers the Yiddish actor Harry Ariel and a life-changing association with theatre historian Zalmen Zylbercweig.
February 12, 2018
Rubber Bullets at False Targets: On Dzigan and Shumacher’s Performance in the Soviet Union
Shimen Dzigan and Isroel Schumacher’s professional artistic career began as actors in the experimental Yiddish theatre “Ararat,” in Łódź .
February 28, 2017
10 Things You Need to Know About God of Vengeance
A Twitter summary of its production history would read something like this: “admired, translated, parodied, panned, banned, prosecuted, withdrawn, forgotten, revived, celebrated.”
August 3, 2016
Breaking News: Yiddish Theatre Makes Money
Reviews of Avrom Goldfaden’s productions are notorious for critics’ snarky pot-shots, huffy asides, and sniffy evaluations.
January 19, 2016
A Tribute to Sonia Lizaron
Arnold Zable is an award winning writer, storyteller, educator, and human rights advocate.
November 17, 2015
The Sholem Asch Festival: Poland Rediscovers a Yiddish Dramatist
Every two years around this time I visit the Polish town of Kutno, for the Jewish festival named after my great-grandfather, the Yiddish writer Sholem Asch. He was born there in 1880 in a single-story wooden house on one of the town’s main streets. Asch left Kutno as a teenager, having grown weary of his religious studies, […]
June 29, 2015
The Krakow Yiddish Theatre Postcards – a Crowdsourcing Experiment
Think of the pulsating energy of Motown’s dawn in Detroit. Or the soaring sounds of early jazz in New Orleans.
March 18, 2015
Russians? Cossacks? Jews? The Russian Imperial Singers Unmasked
SOME PHOTOGRAPHS JUST make you smile, and this is one of them. When I first saw it I thought it was a group of adults dressed up for the Jewish festival of Purim. That would explain the Cossack-style costumes and the (real or fake?) comedy store moustaches. In fact, although it’s not a Purim photo, that […]
March 4, 2015
A Writer, a Painter, and Queen Esther
Purim reminds us that modern Yiddish theatre traces its lineage from the traditional folk drama genre known as the Purim-shpil.
February 4, 2015
Goldfaden’s Rules for Yiddish Actors
In 1888, the first school for Yiddish actors was supposed to open in New York. It never did.
January 21, 2015
The Talented Mr Rotblat and His Micrographic Tribute to Jacob Gordin
This is the story behind an exquisite portrait of a Yiddish dramatist.
December 21, 2014
“Entertainment”?
Over the past year, as time has permitted, I’ve been revisiting the subject of theatre in the Warsaw Ghetto.
December 14, 2014
An Amateur Yiddish Theater in Cairo
David Mazower is the Bibliographer and Editorial Director at the Yiddish Book Center and the co-editor with Aaron Lansky of the Center's English-language magazine Pakn Treger.