THE GLORIOUS PERIOD OF YIDDISH THEATRE

In the years 1910-1911 in New York, there existed eleven Yiddish theatres. In the province, in virtually every big city, such as Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago and Newark, there existed a permanent, large company.

In the province one was paid greater wages than in New York, because every actor wanted to play Yiddish theatre in New York, but the greater wages were made by those who played in the province.

After the season five or six New York companies used to tour the province, virtually all of them doing colossal business. In that time a young actor, Morris [later Maurice] Schwartz, played in the Second Avenue Theatre, under Kessler and Wilner's management.

The young Morris Schwartz already was a good actor and very ambitious. He used to carry booklets under his arm, writing, translating plays. He vibrated with ambition and talent.

David Kessler, the star and manager of the theatre, felt that the young Morris will go far ...

David Kessler then proceeded with Samuel Schneier, a very good actor with a fine figure. Schneier was in the style of Morris Moshkowitz. Ray Schneier, his wife, was one of the leading ladies in that theatre.

Although the young Morris Schwartz had then played side, small roles, his talent brought him through all hardships. At that time they staged a musical, German comedy, "Alma, vu voynstu?" ("Alma, Where Do You Live?"), by Adolf Phillip. The comedy had no great success. It was pulled after the first couple of performances. But the young Morris had a scene there, where he imitated the Yiddish stars Jacob Adler, David Kessler, Boris Thomashefsky, Max Rosenthal and still others. With his slimmer, thinner figure and burning eyes, and mainly with these imitations of the aforementioned actors, he won over the entire Jewish public, and the play, "Alma, Where Do You Live?", became a great success, due to Morris Schwartz's imitations.

His imitations became the talk of New York. In every shop, home, in the streets, they talked about the young Morris Schwartz. His great success did him no good in the theatre, because the jealousy in Kessler intensified. But the manager, Kessler's partner, Max Wilner, saw in the young Morris a future, great power. And Wilner protected him, so he would suffer less.

Wilner went so far that he took to rejecting his star, partner and stepfather David Kessler, due to Morris Schwartz.

The discord and frequent quarrels between the two partners, David Kessler and Max Wilner, became repetitive and stronger. Once it was strikingly evident.

Once David Kessler and Max Wilner were heard screaming and fighting. One even heard chairs flying. The screams became louder and louder, especially the throwing of the benches.

The whole company gathered around the room where the beatings and the screams came from. But the door was closed. They were afraid that one of them would become a cripple from the blow, until the actors, with the help of a couple of healthy stage workers, broke through the door and opened it.  There they found Maurice Schwartz, sitting quite comfortably, reading a newspaper. They asked him, where were David Kessler and Max Wilner, and he answered in a cold-blooded manner: "How do I know? I've been here for over an hour." They immediately knew that he alone played the entire beating scene and entirely copied both voices, Kessler's and Wilner's.

As he was not allowed to play important roles, in the summer, we together took over the roof garden of the Second Avenue Theatre.

I then was the music composer , although in the same situation as Maurice Schwartz, although I then already had written music to several successful plays. But all were in surrounding, smaller theatres. I felt happy that I was able to pour out my musical soul on the roof garden, and the young Morris Schwartz was jealous of the stars at the time, mainly of David Kessler, and he played all the first and most important star roles, to which he was not allowed winter.

I enjoyed myself that summer on the roof garden as a true composer, and Morris Schwartz enjoyed himself as a shbstars star.

Among the frequent visitors to the roof garden, there came an attractive, healthy, elegant young woman. She used to come often and by herself. Her appearance caught the attention of the entire locale. I used to give Schwartz a wink from the orchestra, that she was already here. Once I said to him: "My heart tells me that she will be Mrs. Schwartz." In a short time she became the only wife of Morris Schwartz.

THE YIDDISH ART THEATRE

The Yiddish Art Theatre was born of itself. Maurice Schwartz, the builder of the "Yiddish Art Theatre," even did not dream that he would be able to create an art theatre. He was enthusiastic to play good theatre, but it should be a theatre where no shund plays should dare to enter. About this he was even to afraid to think about it.

In the year 1918 the manager Max Wilner, with Maurice Schwartz as a partner and star, took over the Irving Place Theatre, the former German theatre. Schwartz was taken and determined to play better and different Yiddish theatre. This could be seen from the composition of the company: Jacob Ben-Ami, Ludwig Satz, Jechiel Goldschmidt, Celia Adler, Anna Appel, and even more important, serious actors.

His first play at the Irving Place Theatre was "Der man un zayn shotn (The Man and His Shadow)," by Z. Libin. Although they played the play a little better, quieter, with more direction than in Kessler's Second Avenue Theatre, the play nevertheless was not satisfactory enough for the public, and not for Maurice Schwartz. However, they felt in the air that it is something different, a new way, a new tone.

Maurice Schwartz then searched for and searched for his happiness in foreign gardens ... He staged "Mrs. Warren's Profession," by Bernard Shaw; "Uriel Acosta," by Karl Gustow; "The  Robbers," by Schiller. But this was the fruit of a foreign garden, until he staged Peretz Hirshbein's "Dos farvorfene vinkl (The Faraway Corner)." The play, "The Faraway Corner," was for the Yiddish Art Theatre what Anton Chekhov's "The Cherry Garden" was for the Moscow Art Theatre. They saw a new kind of Yiddish theatre. The contents, the direction, the place for acting -- everything together is far, far away from the old Yiddish theatre.

"The Faraway Corner" laid the foundation for the Yiddish Art Theatre. Years earlier Peretz Hirshbein founded a company in Russia, and went on to play in his repertoire, among which, "The Faraway Corner" was one of his repertoire. It is likely that years before Boris Thomashefsky bought from Peretz Hirshbein the rights to play "The Faraway Corner." But at that time when he played his "Torah'le," "Pintelekh," and "Dos bintl grins," would such a fine idyll, such as "The Faraway Corner," positively fail.

Maurice Schwartz arrived with the play, "The Faraway Corner," at the right time. This Yiddish theatre then was rife for such a play. Then they had already played plays by Sholem Asch, David Pinski, Osip Dymow. People embraced "The Faraway Corner," like with a jewel. The play lasted more than three months, because they did not go away, but ran to see "The Faraway Corner."
 

SHOLEM ALEICHEM'S "TEVYE THE DAIRYMAN"

"The Faraway Corner" from Peretz Hirshbein, created the Yiddish Art Theatre. The name "Art Theatre" did not come from any one person, but from the people, the audience, who came out of "Faraway Corner" and said: "This is art. This is an art theatre." And so they began to call it the "Art Theatre." The existence of the Yiddish Art Theatre became even more available when they staged Sholem Aleichem's "Tevye der milkhigher (Teyve, the Dairyman)." In the comedy Schwartz was exalted as a great Yiddish artist. Through his directing and excellent acting, Sholem Aleichem's play first received its first fix. Maurice Schwartz felt that for a great and important task, he had to be the director, regisseur and star of the Yiddish "Art Theatre," and he then brought out new playwrights, such as Berkowitz, Leivick, Nadir, Sackler, Zeitlin, Gottesfeld. He also staged plays from the world-literature, from Ibsen, Andreyev, Gogol, Gorky, Checkhov, Toller, Lope De Vega, Strindberg, Romain Rolland, Bernard Shaw, and also important set designers and painters, such as Boris Aaronson, Marc Chagall, Sam Leve, Van Rosen, and great musicians, such as Joseph Achron, Boris Moross, Secunda and Rumshinsky. Maurice Schwartz, in all his years of the existence of his Yiddish "Art Theatre," was a great contrast of the old Yiddish theatre. Until Maurice Schwartz had the Yiddish theatre, very little was given about the art of light, that is, the lighting of a play. With the decorations' side and lighting effects, Maurice Schwartz devoted virtually as much time and energy and perhaps even more time, than to the play itself. Although a large part, almost the greatest part, Schwartz during the rehearsals devoted himself to the emphasis and true Yiddishness of Yiddish. This theatre became Maurice Schwartz's "home." He went home only to eat a sleep for a few hours. The "Yiddish Art Theatre" became not only the home of better Yiddish theatre, but the home of better theatre in America. When Maurice Schwartz used to leave America for a season or two, he took with him the "Yiddish Art Theatre."   They made several experiments to create a Yiddish art theatre without Maurice Schwartz, but it turned out to be a great failure. It lacked not only the great actor Schwartz, but the building, the tone-giver, the heroic power. Schwartz became a symbolic figure in the theatre arts. They say that to be an "atheist," an epicurist, one needs to first be a hospitable man, a believer. Schwartz indeed went far away from the old Yiddish theatre. But he made it through and played virtually every one of Goldfaden's until "Chinke-Pinke." He went through the theatre from being a role writer to the biggest pedestal of theatre art. Not everyone who learns music is a good musician. Maurice Schwartz is a natural musician. His keen hearing and sense of music had helped him a lot in his art roles. For example, in "Blacksmith's Daughters," when Schwartz sings, working at a quadrille: "Meydl, meydl, meydl, I love you so; Meydl, meydl, meydl, I went before you in grief." Maurice Schwartz filled his pauses with shabby tenors of popular religious melodies, or cantorial prayers, and it enters into the hearts of people, because it comes from a people's musician like Maurice Schwartz. Maurice Schwartz was not a constant water [awk.]. he always sought new ways. Many times he wandered from style to style, until he had in a short time wandered to modernistic, futuristic productions,  which had for a short time caught on in Russia. It took a lot of diligence and a spirit of submissiveness to "Dos tsente gebot (The Tenth Commandment)," "Di kishufmakherin (The Witch)," "Khelmer khokmim (The Wise Men of Chelm)," in a futuristic style. The productions were strange to the public, and more strange for the actors. Instead of coming in through front of the door, people crashed through a window, or through a chimney; instead of carrying as usual a couple of sacks of one color, one sack was red, and the other -- green. A beard of a Jew had ten colors .... The text, the contents, is twisted upside down and with the legs up. For example: Halkin, a Soviet Jewish-Russian writer wrote a play on the historical theme of "Bar Kokhba." The great scholar patriarch, Elazar Hamudaʻi, is a blacksmith, and Bar Kokhba  is one of the blacksmith's workers. But who then had the habit of speaking a word against such theatre craziness? First, it was then considered the greatest spiritual art of the theatre play, and secondly -- it comes from Moscow! Ab. Cahan, who was a realist and hated all the subtle, unnatural scenes and the futuristic style, published in the "Forward," with sharp words about such a kind of acting, that they make such fine actors as Joseph Buloff, Bina Abramowitz purimshpilers, clowns, comedians, and the scenery, the sets, he called Cossack furniture. AB. CAHAN'S CRITICISM HAS AN EFFECT Maurice Schwartz always had respect for the printed word. He began, as always, to look for new ways, and his natural, artistic sense led him on the right path: There was printed in the "Forward" a novel from a European writer, I.J. Singer, "Yoshe Kalb." The first translation of the novel, "Yoshe Kalb," became the talk of New York's Yiddish readers. I had to wait impatiently for every continuation. It kept the reader excited to the highest degree. When Maurice Schwartz announced that he was going to stage "Yoshe Kalb" in his Art Theatre, success was felt in the air. Although the main role of "Yoshe Kalb" was not played by Maurice Schwartz but by Lazar Freed, he strongly excelled in the role of the Nyeveshe rabbi. With "Yoshe Kalb" there began a new epoch for the Yiddish Art Theatre, a play staged from a novel.