Data, the Vilna Troupe, and Digital Humanities Praxis Debra Caplan Assistant Professor of Theater Baruch
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Reassessing Obscurity: Data, the Vilna Troupe, and Digital Humanities Praxis Debra Caplan Assistant Professor of Theater Baruch College, City University of New York This essay includes material from my forthcoming book, Yiddish Empire: The Vilna Troupe, Jewish Theater, and the Art of Itinerancy (University of Michigan Press, 2018), as well as some additional meditations about data visualization and Jewish theater history. Yankev Blayfer. Sonia Alomis. Leola Vendorf. Baruch Lumet. Wolf Barzel. Who were these individuals and what were their contributions to theatre history? Their names do not appear in any theatre history text or reference work. In fact, these figures are almost entirely absent from the historiographic record. Googling their names reveals a few IMDB and IBDB references, a handful of Wikipedia stubs, and perhaps a mention or two in a little-known memoir.1 And yet, Yankev Blayfer studied with Max Reinhardt and, in his later career as a Hollywood actor, performed alongside Harrison Ford, Sylvester Stallone, Kirk Douglas, Clark Gable, and Hedy Lamarr. Sonia Alomis was close friends with actress Sophie Tucker.2 Leola Vendorf acted with Jack Nicholson, Cary Grant, Doris Day, Gene Kelly, Cyd Charisse, Sidney Poitier, and Leonard Nimoy. Baruch Lumet worked with Woody Allen and Jerome Robbins, discovered Jayne Mansfield, and got his son, Sidney Lumet — later a giant of American cinema — his very first acting gig.3 Wolf “Wolfie” Barzel acted under the direction of Sanford Meisner and Lee Strasberg, was close with Zero Mostel, with whom he had a lifelong rivalry, and performed with Ethel Barrymore, Sanford Meisner, Natalie Wood, and Stella Adler.4 Even more significantly, Barzel 1 inspired the theatrical careers of his niece Judy Graubart and nephew Manny Azenberg. Wearing his signature purple pants and a black beret, Barzel would take Graubart and Azenberg to the theater and bring them backstage; inspired by their uncle, the siblings pursued their careers as a comedian and a producer, respectively.5 Judy Graubart became a star in the The Electric Company with Morgan Freeman, Rita Moreno, and Bill Cosby. Manny Azenberg went on to produce nearly every Neil Simon play since 1972, along with dozens of other plays and musicals both on and off Broadway.6 In 2012, Azenberg received a lifetime achievement Tony Award, an award whose former recipients have included Steven Sondheim, Harold Prince, and Arthur Miller. “Wolfie was the inspiration for everyone in the family to go into the entertainment business,” Azenberg told me over coffee in the now defunct Cafe Edison, “because who would have thought of it otherwise? I would give him credit for planting the seed for the next generation of our family.”7 Blayfer, Alomis, Vendorf, Lumet, and Barzel may not be well known, but they certainly had an impact on the course of twentieth century theatre and film. Yiddish theatre tends to be thought of by theatre historians as a somewhat obscure tradition whose influence was limited to a certain geographical sphere (Eastern Europe and the Lower East Side) and confined to a particular period (the sixty-odd years between the mid-1870s and the Holocaust). As such, it is often passed over. Yiddish theatre does not appear even once in Oscar Brockett and Franklin Hildy’s seminal History of the Theatre, nor is it mentioned a single time in John Russell Brown’s The Oxford Illustrated History of Theatre, David Wiles’s and Christine Dymkowski’s The Cambridge Companion to Theatre History, or Phillip B. Zarrilli, Bruce McConachie, Gary Jay Williams, and Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei’s otherwise relatively comprehensive Theatre Histories: An Introduction.8 To be fair, Yiddish theatre has not been absent from the field altogether. Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, and TDR have each published 2 several articles on Yiddish theatre and readers of these publications could be expected to have some familiarity with the subject.9 Still, Yiddish theatre is often excluded from the historical narratives that define our field and the canons that we teach to our students. When included, more often than not, it is treated as peripheral, arcane, or a mere prelude to the rich history of American Jewish actors performing in English.10 I argue that quantitative data analysis and visualization can offer an important corrective to our understanding of what is central and what is peripheral in theatre history. I apply these data-driven methodologies to Yiddish theater to argue for its centrality to modern theater history. Stanislavsky, Meyerhold, Stella Adler, Leon Schiller, Max Reinhardt, David Belasco, Harold Clurman, Eugene Ionesco, and hundreds of other key figures worked alongside, were related to, were friends with, or were directly inspired by encounters with Yiddish performers in the early twentieth century. These interpersonal connections may have vanished from our theatre historiography, but if one looks carefully, their traces remain: in cast lists in theatre programs, in records of letters written and received, in invitation lists to weddings and registers for funerals, in recollections of conversations over dinner in actors’ memoirs, and in the memories of surviving actors and their kin. While these sources are often consulted by theatre historians, it is typically in relation to a particular production or in comparison with other sources of that type.11 Instead, I suggest that theatre programs, cast lists, and correspondence are equally valuable as repositories of historical data. These sources are full of relational data: long lists of names, dates, places, and texts that all connect to one another. Compiling, aggregating, and analyzing the data points contained in these sources, I contend, can offer new perspectives on the conventional wisdom of theatre history: its key figures, its major events, and its dominant narratives about historical significance. 3 Data-driven theater history, at its best, can reveal previously invisible patterns about relationships between diverse groups of artists working across languages and cultures. Visualizing the data from Yiddish theatre programs and ephemera reveals how actors like Blayfer, Alomis, Vendorf, Lumet, Barzel and hundreds of others, who scarcely appear in the annals of theatre history, were in fact influential figures. But the potential implications of data visualization and other data-focused methodologies for theatre history go far beyond elucidating the impact of one particular tradition. Data offers a fresh perspective on figures in theatre history that have often been marginalized or overlooked: like the actors in minor roles at the bottom of cast lists, the assistants to designers and technical directors, or the advertisers in program booklets. If applied to datasets from other marginalized traditions, who knows what other obscure major players a data-driven approach to theatre history might reveal? *** The Vilna Troupe was the entry point for hundreds of actors, directors, and designers to begin their theatrical careers; as such, it cultivated the talent pool for Yiddish theater worldwide. In Poland, former Vilner were at the helm of dozens of professional and amateur Yiddish theater companies including the Warsaw Yiddish Art Theater, Yung Teater, the Ida Kaminska Theater, the Warsaw Nayer Yidisher Teater, the Studio of the Yiddish Drama School, the New Yiddish Theater, Azazel, Ararat, Khad Gadyo, Teater Far Yugnt, Balaganeydn, Nay Azazel. In Latvia, a group of Vilna Troupe affiliates founded the Nayer Idisher Teater. In the United States, Vilner performed in and directed for the Jewish Art Theater, Maurice Schwartz’s Yiddish Art Theater, the Folksbiene, Artef, the Second Avenue Theater, Unzer Teater, the Chicago Dramatishe Gezelshaft, and the Yiddish Theater Unit of the Federal Theater Project, among others. In Paris, a group of former Vilner founded the Parizer Yidisher Arbeter Teater. In Belgium, a team of 4 Vilner ran the Yiddish Folk Theater of Brussels. In Russia, half a dozen former Vilner performed with the Moscow Yiddish Art Theater, GOSET. In Brazil, Yankev Kurlender directed the São Paulo Dramatic Circle. In South Africa, Vilna Troupe members led five different Yiddish theater companies; in Mexico City, Vilna Troupe founders Alexander Asro and Sonia Alomis ran a Yiddish drama school; in Australia, former Vilna Troupe affiliates were among the founding members of the Kadimah Art Theater and its long-lived successor, the Dovid Herman Theater; in Argentina, the Yiddish Folk Theater (IFT) was developed by one-time Vilner; in Johannesburg, Natan Breitman and Hertz Grosbard performed with the Breitner-Teffner Yiddish Theater. Indeed, it was the rare Yiddish theater anywhere in the world that did not have a former member of the Vilna Troupe involved. But Yiddish theater was not the only field where the Vilner made contributions. Others left the Yiddish stage behind to pursue careers in theater and film in other languages. In New York, former Vilner Wolf Barzel and Jacob Ben-Ami performed in several Theater Guild productions. In the 30s, 40s, and 50s, Barzel also acted on Broadway under the direction of Sanford Meisner, Lee Strasberg, and Tyrone Guthrie and performed in major roles alongside Ethel Barrymore and John Garfield.12 Alexander Asro acted on Broadway with Gene Kelly, Martin Martin, Jack Lemmon, and Sophie Tucker, and had a briefly successful Hollywood film career starring in the Marx Brothers 1938 film Room Service alongside Lucille Ball.13 Joseph Buloff also became a Broadway and Hollywood star, performing alongside Paul Newman, Rita Hayworth, Edgar G. Ulmer, Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, Gene Hackman, Diane Keaton, Harold Clurman, Sanford Meisner, Uta Hagen, Agnes De Mille, Helen Hayes, and others.14 In Dallas, former Vilner Baruch Lumet directed the Knox Street Theater and was the founder of the Dallas Institute for the Performing Arts.15 Andrzej Pronaszko, who designed sets 5 for the Vilna Troupe in Poland between 1932 and 1934, continued to design sets for the National Theater in Warsaw, Krakow’s Narodowy Stary Teatr, and the Słowacki Theater, among others.