Joel Grey is an American actor, singer, dancer, photographer, and theatre director. He is best known for portraying the Master of Ceremonies in the musical Cabaret on Broadway and in Bob Fosse's 1972 film adaptation. He has won an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Tony Award. He earned the Lifetime Achievement Tony Award in 2023.
Yiddish theatre consists of plays written and performed primarily by Jews in Yiddish, the language of the Central European 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.
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.
A badchen or badkhn is a type of Ashkenazic Jewish professional wedding entertainer, poet, sacred clown, and master of ceremonies originating in Eastern Europe, with a history dating back to at least the sixteenth or seventeenth century. The badchen was an indispensable part of the traditional Jewish wedding in Europe who guided the bride and groom through the stages of the ceremony, act as master of ceremonies, and sing to the bride, groom and in-laws with the accompaniment of klezmer musicians. They also had a traditional role on holidays such as Hanukkah or Purim. Today they are primarily found in Chassidic communities.
On Second Avenue is a Yiddish American musical theatre production which looks back at the heyday of Yiddish Theater, especially in the Yiddish Theater District in Manhattan's East Village on Second Avenue.
The National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, commonly known as NYTF, is a professional theater company in New York City which produces both Yiddish plays and plays translated into Yiddish, in a theater equipped with simultaneous superscript translation into English. The company's leadership consists of executive director Dominick Balletta and artistic director Zalmen Mlotek. The board is co-chaired by Sandra Cahn and Carol Levin.
Zalmen Mlotek is an American conductor, pianist, musical arranger, accompanist, composer, and the Artistic Director of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene (NYTF), the longest continuous running Yiddish theatre in the world. He is an internationally recognized authority on Yiddish folk and theater music and a leading figure in the Jewish theatre and concert worlds. As the Artistic Director of the NYTF for the past twenty years, Mlotek helped revive Yiddish classics, instituted bi-lingual simultaneous English and Russian supertitles at all performances and brought leading creative artists of television, theatre and film, such as Itzhak Perlman, Mandy Patinkin, Sheldon Harnick, Theo Bikel, Ron Rifkin, and Joel Grey, to the Yiddish stage. His vision has propelled classics including NYTF productions of the world premiere of Isaac Bashevis Singer's Yentl in Yiddish (1998), Di Yam Gazlonim and the 1923 Rumshinky operetta, The Golden Bride (2016), which was nominated for a Drama Desk Award and listed as a New York Times Critics Pick. During his tenure at the NYTF, the theatre company has been nominated for over ten Drama Desk Awards, four Lucille Lortel Awards, and has been nominated for three Tony Awards. In 2015, he was listed as one of the Forward 50 by The Forward, which features American Jews who have had a profound impact on the American Jewish community.
Joseph Rumshinsky (1881–1956) was a Jewish composer born near Vilna, Lithuania. Along with Sholom Secunda, Alexander Olshanetsky and Abraham Ellstein, he is considered one of the "big four" composers and conductors of American Yiddish theater.
Shloyme Prizament (1889-1973), Jewish composer, actor in the Yiddish theater, and badkhn, son of Moyshe Prizament.
Adrienne Cooper was a Yiddish singer, musician and activist who was integral to the contemporary revival of klezmer music.
Eleanor Chana Mlotek was a musicologist, specializing in Yiddish folklore. Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Yiddish writer and Nobel laureate, once called Mlotek and her husband, Joseph, “the Sherlock Holmeses of Yiddish folk songs.” She was also inducted in Hunter College's Hall of Fame.
The Yiddish Theatre District, also called the Jewish Rialto and the Yiddish Realto, was the center of New York City's Yiddish theatre scene in the early 20th century. It was located primarily on Second Avenue, though it extended to Avenue B, between Houston Street and East 14th Street in the East Village in Manhattan. The District hosted performances in Yiddish of Jewish, Shakespearean, classic, and original plays, comedies, operettas, and dramas, as well as vaudeville, burlesque, and musical shows.
Zusha is an American Hasidic folk/soul band from Manhattan, New York. They formed in 2013 with lead singer Shlomo Gaisin and guitarist Zachariah Goldschmiedt. The band, named after Zusha of Hanipol, combines traditional Hasidic niggunim with secular styles like jazz, folk, and reggae. Their self-titled debut EP, released on October 28, 2014, reached No. 9 on Billboard's World Albums chart, while their debut full-length album, Kavana (2016), reached No. 2.
Amerike – The Golden Land is a musical with book, lyrics, and song by Moishe Rosenfeld and Zalmen Mlotek. The show is in Yiddish and English depicting the journey of Jewish immigrants to the United States.
Raquel Nobile is a New York City-based theater and film actor.
Stephanie Lynne Mason is a New York City-based theater actress. She has performed on Broadway as well as in other theatrical productions.
Fidler Afn Dakh is a Yiddish-language adaptation of the musical Fiddler on the Roof translated and adapted by Shraga Friedman. The adaptation revisits the 1894 collection of Yiddish short stories on which Fiddler on the Roof is based, about Tevye the Dairyman. Friedman created the translation for a 1965 Israeli production. It was produced by the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene (NYTF) in New York City in 2018 and transferred off-Broadway to Stage 42 in 2019.
Eleanor Reissa is an American actress, singer, theatre director, playwright, librettist, choreographer, translator, and author based in New York City. She works and performs in English and Yiddish speaking stages, and also interprets and performs Yiddish theatre and songs.
Avram Mlotek is an American rabbi, social activist, cantor, writer, actor and slam poet. Mlotek is the co-founder of Base, a pluralistic home-centered outreach program, established in nine cities worldwide, predominantly for Jewish young adults.
Di Goldene Pave refers to a mythical golden peacock and is a common symbol in Yiddish poetry.
