Village East former Yiddish Arts Theatre

The Yiddish Art Theatre was a New York

Yiddish theatre 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 revu ...

company of the 20th century.

History

The organization was founded in 1918 by actor and impresario

Maurice Schwartz Maurice Schwartz, born Avram Moishe Schwartz (June 18, 1890 – May 10, 1960),Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ve ...

. At its opening on August 30, 1918, Schwartz's company was housed at the

Irving Place Theatre The Irving Place Theatre was located at the southwest corner of Irving Place and East 15th Street in the Union Square neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. Built in 1888, it served as a German language theatre, a Yiddish theatre, a burlesq ...

Union Square, Manhattan Union Square is a historic intersection and surrounding neighborhood in Manhattan, New York City, located where Broadway and the former Bowery Road – now Fourth Avenue – came together in the early 19th century. Its name denotes ...

. Zalmen Zylbercweig (ed.),
Moris (Avrom Moyshe)
, ''Leksikon fun yidishn teater'' exicon of the Yiddish Theatre(in Yiddish). Vol. 3. New York: Hebrew Actors' Union; Elisheva, 1959. cols. 2327-2368; here: 2334-2340. It performed there for three theater seasons. For the beginning of the 1921/1922 theater season the company moved to the

Garden Theatre The Garden Theatre was a major theatre on Madison Avenue and 27th Street in New York City, New York. The theatre opened on September 27, 1890, and closed in 1925. Part of the second Madison Square Garden complex, the theatre presented Broadway ...

at Madison Avenue and 27th Street, where they remained on and off for the next four seasons, through spring 1925. It was at the Garden Theatre that Schwartz first billed the company as the Yiddish Art Theatre. Over these first years the company presented works by playwrights including

Leonid Andreyev Leonid Nikolaievich Andreyev (russian: Леони́д Никола́евич Андре́ев, – 12 September 1919) was a Russian playwright, novelist and short-story writer, who is considered to be a father of Expressionism in Russian liter ...

, S. Ansky,

Sholem Aleichem ) , birth_date = , birth_place = Pereiaslav, Russian Empire , death_date = , death_place = New York City, U.S. , occupation = Writer , nationality = , period = , genre = Novels, sh ...

Jacob Gordin Jacob Michailovitch Gordin (Yiddish: יעקב מיכאַילאָװיטש גאָרדין; May 1, 1853 – June 11, 1909) was a Russian-born American playwright active in the early years of Yiddish theater. He is known for introducing realism an ...

Maxim Gorky Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (russian: link=no, Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешко́в; – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (russian: Макси́м Го́рький, link=no), was a Russian writer and social ...

Peretz Hirschbein Peretz Hirshbein ( yi, פרץ הירשביין;7 November 1880, Melnik, Kleszczele, Grodno Governorate – 16 August 1948, Los Angeles) was a Yiddish-language playwright, novelist, journalist, travel writer, and theater director. Because h ...

David Pinski David Pinski (Yiddish: דוד פּינסקי; April 5, 1872 – August 11, 1959) was a Yiddish language writer, probably best known as a playwright. At a time when Eastern Europe was only beginning to experience the industrial revolution, Pinsk ...

Arthur Schnitzler Arthur Schnitzler (15 May 1862 – 21 October 1931) was an Austrian author and dramatist. Biography Arthur Schnitzler was born at Praterstrasse 16, Leopoldstadt, Vienna, capital of the Austrian Empire (as of 1867, part of the dual monarchy ...

George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...

and Oscar Wilde. Berta Gersten with the Yiddish Art Theatre troupe in London 1935

The Garden Theatre was part of the second Madison Square Garden complex, and in the face of plans to demolish the complex the Yiddish Art Theatre moved to the Nora Bayes Theater on West 44th Street in fall 1925. Their tenancy there was brief, as the next year the Yiddish Art Theatre moved to its own purpose-built theatre: the Louis N. Jaffe Theater, a

Moorish Revival Moorish Revival or Neo-Moorish is one of the exotic revival architectural styles that were adopted by architects of Europe and the Americas in the wake of Romanticist Orientalism. It reached the height of its popularity after the mid-19th centu ...

theatre on Second Avenue in the heart of the Yiddish Theatre District which Brooklyn developer and prominent Jewish community leader Louis Jaffe had built in 1925–1926 to house the company. Shows produced by Maurice Schwartz at this new venue included a production of "Yoshe Kalb" which ran for 300 performances. The Yiddish Art Theatre operated for approximately 32 years from its founding, finally disbanding in 1950.Maurice Schwartz, Actor, Dead; Founder of Yiddish Art Theatre
. ''New York Times''. May 11, 1960. Retrieved May 19, 2020. Over that time it performed classics of Yiddish, European and English theater, ranging from works by Sholem Aleichem to William Shakespeare.Richard F. Shepard. "Schwartz, Maurice." ''Encyclopaedia Judaica''. 2nd ed. Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. Vol. 18, pp. 186-187. Retrieved via ''Gale Books'' database, May 19, 2020. Also available online vi
Encyclopedia.com

References

{{Authority control 1918 establishments in New York City Yiddish theatre in the United States Theatre in New York City