Interview: Indecent Playwright Paula Vogel and Director Rebecca Taichman

Yankev Blayfer. Sonia Alomis. Leola Vendorf. Baruch Lumet. Wolf Barzel. Who are these figures and what is their place in history?

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, […]

Diving off of the raised proscenium stage, I don a fish mask and begin to swim through the audience. “Vu zaynen di fish?” (Where are the fish?).

I’d never heard of him before, but I’ve found out a few things about Mark Schweid since February.

Think of the pulsating energy of Motown’s dawn in Detroit. Or the soaring sounds of early jazz in New Orleans.

One of the hardest problems in theatre studies is understanding audiences response.

Nahum Stutchkoff (1893-1965) was a beloved Yiddish radio personality, playwright, lyricist and linguist who created dramas and commercials for WEVD radio.

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 […]

Purim reminds us that modern Yiddish theatre traces its lineage from the traditional folk drama genre known as the Purim-shpil.

In 1888, the first school for Yiddish actors was supposed to open in New York. It never did.