Teatrul Evreiesc de Stat (TES, the State Jewish Theater) in Bucharest, Romania is a theater specializing in Jewish-related plays. It is the oldest Yiddish-language theater with uninterrupted activity in the world. Its contemporary repertoire includes plays by Jewish authors, plays on Jewish topics, and plays in Yiddish (which are performed with simultaneous translation into Romanian, using headphones installed in the theater in the 1970s). Many of the plays also feature Jewish actors.
A precursor, the Teatru Evreiesc Baraşeum operated as a Jewish theater through most of World War II, although they were closed during the few months of the National Legionary State, and thereafter performed in Romanian rather than Yiddish through until the fall of Ion Antonescu.
Prehistory
The Jewish Theatre in Romania has a tradition dating back to the 19th century. The first newspaper reference to a Jewish theater in Romania was a review by Mihai Eminescu in the Romanian newspaper Curierul de Iaşi (The Courier of Iaşi) in 1876, in which he described a troupe of six Jewish actors who performed in the famous Green Tree garden of Iaşi under Avram Goldfaden’s management, the father of the modern Jewish Theatre.[1]
In Bucharest, the theater building, the Teatru Baraşeum or Sala Baraşeum, was used from the early 1930s as a Yiddish-language theater, originally under private management. The theater was named in honor of Dr. Iuliu Barasch, as was an adjoining clinic. (The street it is on, the former str. Ionescu de la Brad, is now str. Dr. Iuliu Barasch.) On the verge of World War II, it was home of the Thalia company, one of four professional Yiddish theater companies in Bucharest at that time.[2]
As war broke out in Europe and the antisemiticright-wing politics that had long been a factor in Romania came to the fore, resources for Yiddish theater in Bucharest dried up. In the summer of 1940, all four Bucharest-based Yiddish theater companies, including Thalia, set out on tours of the country rather than attempt summer theater in Bucharest. Thalia were on the road when King Carol IIabdicated on September 6, 1940, the start of the National Legionary State under General (later Marshal) Ion Antonescu. The extremely antisemitic Iron Guard became the only legal political party in Romania. On September 9, Jews were prohibited from participating in theater. All Jews were fired from artistic or administrative positions at the National Theater and others, and the country's Yiddish-language companies had their licenses revoked. Public use of the Yiddish language was also banned.[3]
Nonetheless, after some petitioning, permission was obtained on September 26 to start a single Jewish theater in Bucharest, subject to conditions such as making donations to a fund for unemployed Christian actors, performing only in Romanian, and getting permission from the Military Commander of the capital. Some 200 people were associated with the group that emerged, ranging from performers of light comedy to actors versed in the method acting of Konstantin Stanislavski, and representing a wide range of politics and all levels of experience.[4]
The company wanted to rent the Roxy Theater in the central Lipscani district, but were told that they would only be allowed to perform in the Jewish ghetto; the Baraşeum in the Văcăreşti neighborhood met this requirement.[5]
Over the next six months, the company would struggle with the authorities over the conditions under which they could open, while awaiting the elusive permission from the Military Commander. A January 17, 1941 document from the Minister of Culture and from Director General of Theaters and Operas Liviu Rebreanu added new requirements: each individual artist would need approval from the Director General of Theaters; no plays could be performed on major Christian holidays, nor on the three "legionary holidays"; they could use only the front door of the Baraşeum on str. Ionescu de la Brad, not the stage door on str. Udricani; and they could not open until May 31, 1941, four and a half months away. Days after these requirements were put in place, the Iron Guard attempted a coup against Antonescu; the Guard's defeat resulted in a government less actively hostile to Jews. These new requirements were relaxed after the defeat of the Iron Guard, and Rebreanu wrote on February 19 that "in view of the current situation" they could open on March 1. The Military Commander never did give formal permission, but that requirement seems to have been ignored.[6]
Baraşeum Jewish Theater
On March 1, 1941 Teatrul Evreiesc Baraşeum (the Baraşeum Jewish Theater) opened with a revue, Ce faci astă seară? (What are you doing this evening?). Five days later they premiered a production of The Brothers Sanger by Margereth Kennedy. They changed the name to Gema and also substituted a different author's name (since they were only allowed to do plays by Jews).[7]
During the war years, the Baraşeum Jewish Theater premiered over thirty productions, about half of them directed by Sandru Eliad. Although officially exclusively Jewish, at times various Gentile intellectuals helped the company illegally, especially with translations; this was well enough known to provoke indignation from at least one antisemitic newspaper. Some Gentiles, mostly intellectuals, showed support for the theater by coming to performances.[8]
At times their plays were heavily censored. For example, on one occasion they were required to drop the lines "Je sais bien que demain tout peut changer" ("I know that tomorrow everything could change") and "L'histoire est à tournant" ("The story/history is at a turning point") from a French love song, lest they be understood politically. At other times, though, they sneaked in the occasional Yiddish-language joke or refrain.[8]
Israil Bercovici, later a key figure in the State Jewish Theater, has said of this period that Jewish theater was pushed to the periphery, but "turned that periphery into a center of Jewish culture and art".[9] Their included Romanian-language translations of classic Yiddish theater pieces such as the bittersweet Dos Groise Ghivens (The Big Lottery Ticket, a musical based on a story by Sholom Aleichem) and S. Ansky's The Dybbuk as well as new pieces, and performances of works by the acceptably Jewish Jacques Offenbach and Louis Verneuil.[10]
On August 23, 1944 the overthrow of Antonescu in a coup led immediately to the re-legalization of the use of the Yiddish language. The Baraşeum returned to performing in Yiddish, presenting Sholom Aleichem's Mentshn (Men) on September 15. This Baraşeum production was not, however, the first Yiddish play after of the new period. On the very evening of August 23 an improvised Yiddish performance Nacht-Tog (Night-Day) took place in Botoşani— the town where, in 1876, Avram Goldfaden had presented one of the first professional Yiddish language productions, the first ever in an indoor theater.[11]
IKUF
This group who had improvised the play in Botoşani were part of the Yiddisher Kultur Ferband (IKUF). They would evolve and repeat their performance of Nacht-Tog. This performance was sharply divided into two parts, Nacht being the dark past and Tog expressing a belief in life. The play used songs both from the forced labor camps and from Yiddish theater before the war.[11]
IKUF would become a key institution in the next few years, publishing a magazine IKUF Bleter, organizing libraries and conferences, and evolving Teatrul IKUF, a new Yiddish theater led initially by Iacob Mansdorf. Drawing its mostly young, professional actors from cities around Romania, their production of Moşe Pincevski's new play Ich Leb (I Live) about resistance in a forced labor camp put them on the map in a Bucharest where the Communist Party was moving toward hegemony. Ceremonies for the play's opening included a number of speakers, including Minister of Art Mihail Ralea and Iosif Eselaohn of the socialist party Ihud.[12]
Mansdorf, according to Bercovici, tired of leading a theater troupe after only two years; some of his actors left with him. Others, including Sevilla Pastor, Dina König, Seidy Glück, Moris Siegler and Marcu Glückman, reorganized under Bernard Lebli, and became the new permanent company of the Baraşeum, with an unprecedented subsidy from the government. They began their new season January 11, 1948 with Dos Groise Ghivens; this was followed by Nekomenemer (The Song of War) by French Yiddish writer Haim Sloves.[13]
The State Jewish Theater
TES (2002). The poster at lower right advertises a production of The Dybbuk by S. Ansky.
After the rise of Communism in Romania, the IKUF theater was nationalized August 1, 1948 as the State Jewish Theater (Teatrul Evreiesc de Stat, TES). This made it the first state-operated Yiddish theater in the world; a second Romanian State Jewish Theater was established in Iaşi in 1949, but went out of existence in 1964.[14]
TES has operated in the former Baraşeum building almost continually since that time. In 1954–1956 the theater building was rebuilt with a modern stage; the company appeared on a number of other Bucharest stages during that time. In 1955 Franz Auerbach became head of the theater with Iancu Gluck as General Manager and Israil Bercovici as literary secretary.[15] Over the next two decades, these three would doubtless do as much as anyone in the world to keep the flame of Yiddish theater alive. (Auerbach's successor, Harry Eliad, continues to run the theater as of 2005[update].)
The first production on the new stage in their building (now called, like the company, Teatrul Evreiesc de Stat, but still sometimes referred to as the Baraşeum) was The Diary of Anne Frank, with Samuel Fischler as Otto Frank. For four years (1957–1961), TES also operated a studio theater to train young actors and stage technicians, in which some of the surviving greats of Yiddish theater taught their crafts to a new generation.[16]
The repertoire of TES has included many works with music by their own Haim Schwartzman. They have performed traditional works of the Yiddish theater, and new plays by Ludovic Bruckstein, (or I.L. or Leibush Brukstein, 1920-1988) who wrote between 1948 and 1969 a series of plays both in Yiddish and Romanian. Bruckstein, a survivor of Auschwitz and several other concentration-camps, wrote in 1948 a play entitled "Night-Shift" (Nachtshicht, in Yiddish) describing the revolt of the Auschwitz sonderkommando towards the end of the Second World-War, and the play had a huge success over the years 1949-1958. Subsequently, TES, The Yiddish Theater in Iaşi, and other Theaters in Romania played a series of his plays, (The Grunwald Family in 1952, The Return of Christopher Columbus, 1955, Dor Hamidbar, or The Desert Generation in 1957, An Unfinished Trial in 1961, White Night, 1963, and Meeting on the Mountain in 1969), and Bruckstein became, before his 1972 emigration to Israel, the most important Yiddish playwright of post-war Romania, as mentioned in the Encyclopaedia Judaica, see also YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe on Romanian literature.
Despite significant repression of Jews during some phases of the Communist regime, despite significant emigration of Romanian Jews, and despite the demolition of much of the Văcăreşti neighborhood in anticipation of a never-finished portion of Centrul Civic, the theater continued to operate until the end of the communist era in the Romanian Revolution of 1989. It still continues today (as of 2007[update]) as a public institution, receiving a subsidy from the General Council of the Municipality of Bucharest. Along with the nearby Jewish Museum, it is one of the two most prominent remaining secular Jewish institutions in Romania, continuing what Bercovici called "a tradition of humanist theater".[21]
Israil Bercovici was a Jewish Romanian dramaturg, playwright, director, biographer, and memoirist, who served the State Jewish Theater of Romania between 1955 and 1982; he also wrote Yiddish-language poetry.
Abraham Goldfaden, also known as Avram Goldfaden, was a Russian-born Jewish poet, playwright, stage director and actor in the languages Yiddish and Hebrew, author of some 40 plays. Goldfaden is considered the father of modern Jewish theatre.
Berl Broder (1817–1868), born Berl Margulis, was a Ukrainian Jew born in Podkamen, the most famous of the Broder singers and reputed the first to be both a singer and an actor. His nickname is the origin of the term Broder singer. Thirty of his songs survive; of these, 24 are in the form of dialogues, usually between craftsmen such as tailors or shoemakers; his songs are seen as a precursor to Yiddish theater.
Velvel Zbarjer, birth name Benjamin Wolf Ehrenkrantz, a Galician Jew, was a Brody singer. Following in the footsteps of Berl Broder, his "mini-melodramas in song" were precursors of Yiddish theater.
Sophia Karp, born Sara Segal, and also known as Sophie Goldstein, Sofia Carp, and Sophie Karp, was a Romanian-born Jewish actress and soprano, the first professional Yiddish theater actress.
Sigmund Mogulesko — Yiddish: זעליק מאָגולעסקאָZelik Mogulesko, first name also sometimes spelled as Zigmund, Siegmund, Zelig, or Selig, last name sometimes spelled Mogulescu — was a singer, actor, and composer in the Yiddish theater in New York City. He was born in Kalarash, Bessarabia and began singing in the local synagogue choir. Before reaching adolescence, he was paid nearly three times what teachers made, to sing in the synagogue of Chişinău. Soon after moving to Bucharest, Romania, he was paid to sing in churches as well as synagogues, and started acting.
Israel (Yisrol) Grodner was one of the founding performers in Yiddish theater. A Lithuanian Jew who moved at the age of 16 to Berdichev, Ukraine, Russian Empire, the Broder singer and actor was in Iaşi, Romania in 1876 when Abraham Goldfaden recruited him as the first actor for what became the first professional Yiddish theater troupe. Jacob Adler remarks that as the only Lithuanian Jew in the early years of Yiddish theater, he deliberately spoke a different dialect of Yiddish on stage so that it would blend better with the other actors.
Sokher Goldstein, first name also spelled Suher, Soher, Socher, or Sukher, was a singer and actor, one of the founding performers in Yiddish theater. A Jew, presumably of Ukrainian or Romanian origin, nothing is known about his life before Abraham Goldfaden recruited him in Iaşi in 1876 as the second actor after Israel Grodner for what became the first professional Yiddish theater troupe.
Moses Ha-Levi Horowitz, also known as Moishe Hurvitz, Moishe Isaac Halevy-Hurvitz, etc., was a playwright and actor in the early years of Yiddish theater. Jacob Adler describes him as an "authorit[y] on dramaturgy", but also remarks that before being part of the Yiddish theater in London in the mid-1880s he had "wandered in different lands, involved himself in various undertakings, and then moved on often leaving, it is said not altogether pleasant memories behind him." He was one of the few figures in the early years of Yiddish theater who did not participate in the boom years in Imperial Russia (1879–1883).
Isidor Goldenberg (1870–?) was a Romanian Jewish singer and actor, prominent in Yiddish theater in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Hersh Leib Sigheter (1829–1930), pen name of Hersh (Hirsch) Leib Gottlieb גוטליב was a Hungarian Jew from today's Sighetu Marmaţiei, Romania who, even before the advent of what is generally considered to be professional Yiddish theater, wrote satirical Yiddish-language Purim plays on an annual basis and hired boys to play in them. Although often objected to by rabbis, these plays were popular, and were performed not only on Purim but for as much as a week afterwards in various locations.
Yankev Shternberg was a Yiddish theater director, teacher of theater, playwright, avant-garde poet and short-story writer, best known for his theater work in Romania between the two world wars.
Solomon Stramer was the leader of a Yiddish theater troupe founded in Vienna, Austria, but based in Cluj, Romania from 1919 at least until the late 1920s. For a time, his troupe had the exclusive right to perform Yiddish-language theater in Transylvania, an area which at that time was home to about 300,000 Jews.
The Vilna Troupe, also known as Fareyn Fun Yiddishe Dramatishe Artistn and later Dramă şi Comedie, was an international and mostly Yiddish-speaking theatrical company, one of the most famous in the history of Yiddish theater. It was formed in and named after the city of Vilnius (Vilna) in the Russian Empire, later capital city of Lithuania. Distinctly Modernist, and strongly influenced by Russian literature and by the ideas of Konstantin Stanislavski, their travels in Western Europe and later to Romania played a significant role in the dissemination of a disciplined approach to acting that continues to be influential down to the present day.
The Bucharest Yiddish Studio Theater was a short-lived, highly experimental Yiddish theater founded in Bucharest, Romania in 1930, under the leadership of Jacob Sternberg.
Iuliu Barasch or Baraş was a Galician-born Jewish physician, philosopher, pedagogue and promoter of Romanian culture and science who made his career in Romania. He played a leading role in disseminating the ideas of the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, among the Jews of Bucharest.
Moishe Finkel was a prominent figure in the early years of Yiddish theater. He was business partner first of Abraham Goldfaden and later of Sigmund Mogulesko and, for a time, was married to prima donna Annetta Schwartz. Together, they dominated Yiddish theatre in Bucharest in the early 1880s and in New York City in the late 1880s and into the 1890s, with a repertoire based mainly in the works of Joseph Lateiner and Moses Horowitz.
The Witch of Botoşani or simply The Witch or The Sorceress was an 1878, or possibly 1877, play by Abraham Goldfaden. Like most of Goldfaden's major works, it included music.
Ni-be-ni-me-ni-cucurigu is an 1878 play by Abraham Goldfaden. The somewhat nonsensical Yiddish title is variously translated as Not Me, Not You, Not Cock-a-Doodle-Doo or Neither This, Nor That, nor Kukerikoo; Lulla Rosenfeld says it had an alternate title The Struggle of Culture with Fanaticism. The title comes from a Russian expression "ни бе, ни ме, ни кукареку", meaning to understand nothing on the subject.
Doctor Almasaro, or The Jews of Palermo is a historical, dramatic play in rhymed couplets by Abraham Goldfaden, written some time between 1880 and 1883. The title character's name is also variously rendered as Doctor Almasado, Doctor Almaraso, and Doctor Almasada.
References
—, theater program for Parchează Maşina la Harvard! (Park Your Car in Harvard Yard!) by Israel Horowitz. Teatrul Evreiesc de Stat, Stagiunea 2001-2002.
Bercovici, Israil, O sută de ani de teatru evreiesc în România ("One hundred years of Yiddish/Jewish theater in Romania"), 1st Romanian-language edition, Kriterion Publishing House, Bucharest, 1982, with foreword by Ileana Berlogea, translated to Romanian by the author, from the Yiddish original: "Hundert ior idis teater in Rumenie", Kriterion Publishing House, Bucharest, 1976.
Bercovici, Israil, O sută de ani de teatru evreiesc în România ("One hundred years of Yiddish/Jewish theater in Romania"), 2nd Romanian-language edition, revised and augmented by Constantin Măciucă. Editura Integral (an imprint of Editurile Universala), Bucharest (1998). ISBN973-98272-2-5. See the article on the author for further publication information. From 1955 to 1982 Israil Bercovici (1921–1988) served the theater as a dramaturg, playwright, director, and historian.
Dalinger, Brigitte, English-language review from All About Jewish Theatre of Elvira Groezinger's 2003 German book Die jiddische Kultur im Schatten der Diktaturen-Israil Bercovici ("Jewish culture in the shadow of the dictators: Israil Bercovici").
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