Ida Kamińska was a Polish actress and director. Known mainly for her work in the theatre, she was the daughter of Avrom Yitshok Kaminski and Ester Rachel Kamińska, known as the Mother of the Jewish Stage. The Jewish Theatre in Warsaw, Poland is named in their honor. In her long career Kamińska produced more than 70 plays, and performed in more than 150 productions. She also wrote two plays of her own and translated many works in Yiddish. World War II disrupted her career, and she later immigrated to the United States where she continued to act. In 1967, she directed herself in the lead role of Mother Courage and Her Children on Broadway. In 1973, she released her autobiography, titled My Life, My Theater.
Yiddish theatre consists of plays written and performed primarily by Jews in Yiddish, the language of the Ashkenazi Jewish community. The range of Yiddish theatre is broad: operetta, musical comedy, and satiric or nostalgic revues; melodrama; naturalist drama; expressionist and modernist plays. At its height, its geographical scope was comparably broad: from the late 19th century until just before World War II, professional Yiddish theatre could be found throughout the heavily Jewish areas of Eastern and East Central Europe, but also in Berlin, London, Paris, Buenos Aires and New York City.
Jacob Pavlovich Adler was a Jewish actor and star of Yiddish theater, first in Odessa, and later in London and in New York City's Yiddish Theater District.
Boris Thomashefsky, born Boruch-Aharon Thomashefsky, was a Ukrainian-born Jewish singer and actor who became one of the biggest stars in Yiddish theater.
Joseph Lateiner was a playwright in the early years of Yiddish theater, first in Bucharest, Romania and later in New York City, where he was a co-founder in 1903 with Sophia Karp of the Grand Theater, New York's first purpose-built Yiddish language theater building.
Shmendrik, oder di komishe Chaseneh is an 1877 comedy by Abraham Goldfaden, one of the earliest and most enduring pieces in Yiddish theater. The title role of Shmendrik was originally written for the young Sigmund Mogulesko, and derived from a character Mogulesko did when auditioning for Goldfaden earlier that year. The role was first played by Jacob/Yankel Katzman with great reviews. The role was later famously played by actress Molly Picon.
Jacob Michailovitch Gordin was a Russian-American playwright active in the early years of Yiddish theater. He is known for introducing realism and naturalism into Yiddish theater.
Sara Adler was a Russian actress in Yiddish theater who made her career mainly in the United States. She was known as the "mother" or "duchess" of Yiddish theater.
Celia Feinman Adler was an American actress, known as the "First Lady of the Yiddish Theatre".
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.
David Kessler (1860–1920) was a prominent actor in the first great era of Yiddish theater. As a star Yiddish dramatic performer in New York City, he was the first leading man in Yiddish theater to dispense with incidental music.
Annetta Grodner was a Ukrainian Jewish singer and actress, the first prima donna in Yiddish theater.
Keni Liptzin was a star in the early years of Yiddish theater, probably the greatest female dramatic star of the first great era of Yiddish theater in New York City.
Solomon the Wise is a 1906 play by Jacob Gordin, based on French sources, and loosely based on actual events in 17th century France, during the reign of Louis XIII and the ascendancy of Cardinal Richelieu.
Di shkhita was an 1899 Yiddish play by Jacob Gordin. The title refers to the Kosher slaughter of animals, and has been variously rendered in English as The Butchery or The Slaughter. The play is a protest against arranged marriage.
Dinah Shtettin was an English Yiddish theater actress. She was the second wife of Jacob Adler, with whom she had a daughter, Celia Adler, in 1889.
The Yiddish King Lear was an 1892 play by Jacob Gordin, and is generally seen as ushering in the first great era of Yiddish theater in New York City’s Yiddish Theater District, in which serious drama gained prominence over operetta.
The Worthless is a 1908 play by Jacob Gordin, described by Lulla Rosenfeld as "a study of provincial bigotry and fear", whose central character Ben Zion Garber is "a man of genius lost and misunderstood in an environment that ultimately destroys him".
Leon Kobrin was a playwright in Yiddish theater, writer of short stories and novels, and a translator. As a playwright he is generally seen as a disciple of Jacob Gordin, but his mature work was more character-driven, more open and realistic in its presentation of human sexual desire, and less polemical than Gordin's. Many of his plays were "ghetto dramas" dealing with issues of tradition and assimilation and with generational issues between Jewish immigrants to America and the first generation of American-born Jews.
Berta Gersten, was a Polish-born American actor, in Yiddish theater and later in Broadway productions. She took a major role in The Benny Goodman Story film in 1954.
