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The Vilna Troupe and the Rise of a Transnational Yiddish Art Theater Movement

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The Vilna Troupe and the Rise of a Transnational Yiddish Art Theater Movement Staging Jewish Modernism: The Vilna Troupe and the Rise of a Transnational Yiddish Art Theater Movement The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. Caplan, Debra Leah. 2013. Staging Jewish Modernism: The Vilna Citation Troupe and the Rise of a Transnational Yiddish Art Theater Movement. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University. Accessed April 17, 2018 4:03:23 PM EDT Citable Link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:11125995 This article was downloaded from Harvard University's DASH Terms of Use repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA (Article begins on next page) Staging Jewish Modernism: The Vilna Troupe and the Rise of a Transnational Yiddish Art Theater Movement A dissertation presented by Debra Leah Caplan to The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts April 2013 © 2013 – Debra Caplan All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Ruth R. Wisse Debra Caplan Staging Jewish Modernism: The Vilna Troupe and the Rise of a Transnational Yiddish Art Theater Movement ABSTRACT This dissertation is the first study of the avant-garde Yiddish art theater movement, which flourished across five continents during the interwar period. From Warsaw to San Francisco, Buenos Aires to Winnipeg, Mexico City to Paris, and Johannesburg to Melbourne, the Yiddish art theaters were acclaimed by critics and popular with Jewish and non-Jewish spectators alike. These theaters had a significant impact on renowned theater practitioners around the world, who credited the Yiddish art theaters with inspiring their own artistic practice. In tracing how a small group of Yiddish theater artists developed a modernist theater movement with a global impact, my project provides a key and heretofore missing chapter in the history of the modern stage. I argue that the spirit of innovation that characterized the activities of the Yiddish art theaters and enabled them to become so influential was a direct product of the transnational nature of their movement. Operating in a Jewish cultural context unbounded by national borders, the success of these companies was propelled by a steady exchange of actors, directors, scenic designers, and critics across the world. Buoyed by a global audience base and unconfined by the geographical-linguistic borders that limited the national theaters of their neighbors, Yiddish theater artists were uniquely able to develop a fully transnational modernist theater practice. The global reach of the Yiddish art theaters is best exemplified by the Vilna Troupe (1915-1935), the catalyst for this movement and the primary focus of my study. The Vilna Troupe was the epicenter of the international Yiddish art theater movement throughout the interwar period. I demonstrate how the Troupe remained itinerant throughout its history, iii enabling it to reach an ever-larger global audience and inspiring dozens of other Jewish actors to create Yiddish art theaters of their own. Where previous generations of Yiddish actors had been subject to the double disapproval of Jewish and non-Jewish intellectuals alike, the Vilna Troupe legitimized the Yiddish art theater movement as a key contributor to the global theatrical avant- garde. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements vi Note on Transliteration x Prologue THE SUN NEVER SETS ON THE YIDDISH STAGE 1 Chapter 1 WAITING AT THE FOOTLIGHTS (1905 – 1911) 18 High Hopes 21 A Series of Extraordinary Failures 41 The Third Act 83 Chapter 2 “OUR ART LIVES!”: ORIGINS OF THE VILNA TROUPE (1915 – 1919) 94 Genesis 94 Exodus 132 Chapter 3 THE TURN TO MODERNISM (1920 – 1924) 158 Realism and the Vilna Troupe 164 Fusion Modernism 170 Earning Citizenship on the Global Stage 200 “That’s Marvelous! Who Wrote It?” 227 Chapter 4 THE TRANSNATIONAL VILNA TROUPE (1924 – 1929) 235 The Vilna Troupe Phenomenon 239 1924 249 Sixty Cities A Year 289 Chapter 5 THE VILNER LEGACY 318 The End of the Vilna Troupe 332 The Vilna Troupe Network 346 Microhistory Redux 364 Epilogue STAGING JEWISH MODERNISM 381 Bibliography 390 v Acknowledgments This project was the work of my hands. First and foremost, I am grateful to my dissertation committee, Ruth R. Wisse, Martin Puchner, and Joel Berkowitz, who were endlessly enthusiastic about this project and always managed to provide precisely the feedback I needed to hear most. I remain astounded by their collective knowledge and wisdom, and consider myself lucky to have been their student. I could not have asked for a better committee. Several institutions provided research support at critical junctures. The preparation of this manuscript was made possible by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research’s Maria Salit-Gitelson Tell Fellowship; the Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences’ Merit Fellowship; Targum Shlishi, a Raquel and Aryeh Rubin Foundation; and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies provided research support and an office during the early stages of this project, and the Posen Foundation supplied a generous grant that enabled me to attend the Posen Seminar in Secular Jewish Literature. Finally and crucially, the Foundation for Jewish Culture’s Maurice and Marilyn Cohen Dissertation Completion Fellowship and the Raphael and Deborah Melamed Fellowship at Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies enabled me to devote a full year solely to this manuscript. At YIVO, Dr. Paul (Hershl) Glasser provided invaluable feedback on my work in progress, Jesse Cohen patiently guided me through hundreds of Vilna Troupe photographs, Gunnar Berg and Fruma Mohrer helped me find rare Vilna Troupe treasures not listed in any finding aid, and Nadia Kahn made sure that I never got lost. James P. Rosenbloom helped me find rare periodicals in the Brandeis Judaica collection. I owe special thanks to Dr. Charles Berlin, Elizabeth Vernon, and Vardit Samuels at the Harvard College Library’s Judaica Division for their gracious assistance in facilitating my access to the collections and their good humor in vi granting me de facto office space for several months while I combed through the entirety of the Joseph Buloff Jewish Theater Collection. My “cohort” at Harvard provided me with that rarest of occurrences: a local kehile of Yiddish scholars. Special thanks to Eitan Kensky, Sunny Yudkoff, and Ofer Dynes for inviting me to present work in progress at Harvard’s Modern Jewish Worlds Workshop, and to Jessica Fechtor, Mihaly Kalman, Yuri Vendenyapin, and Sasha Senderovich for making Harvard my Yiddish home. Elsewhere in Cambridge, Ingrid Anderson patiently listened to me talk through the project chapter by chapter, and taught me that it was possible to be a scholar and a mother at the same time. Away from Harvard, I was fortunate to find a vibrant transnational Yiddish intellectual community of my own. Thanks to Sonia Gollance, Sebastian and Asya Schulman, Anna Torres, Zohar Weimar-Kellman, Avia Moore, Shane Smulyan, Mandy Cohen, Jordan Finkin, and Agi Legutko for advice along the way. Though I did not know it at the time, the seeds of this project were planted on my first visit to Vilna under the auspices of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute. There I was privileged to study ,and Fania Bransovsky ,(ז”ל) under Yitskhok Niborski, Avrom Lichtenboym, Pesakh Fishman who schooled me in Litvak dialect and taught me to fall in love with Vilna, that shtot fun gayst un tmimes. I have thought of them often while writing this dissertation. My experience at the Mellon School of Theater and Performance Research was instrumental in shaping my scholarly voice. For this, I am grateful to Martin Puchner for bringing me on board as Executive Director and giving me the professional opportunity of a lifetime. Matthew Wilson Smith’s and Bernadette Meyler’s Mellon seminars helped shape my thinking on the Gesamtkunstwerk and the politics of the stage, respectively. Katherine Biers and the participants in the 2011 Mellon dissertation workshop provided valuable feedback on an vii early draft of Chapter 1. Rebecca Kastleman deserves special thanks for providing crucial feedback on Chapter 3, for keeping the Mellon School afloat, and for her friendship. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to present portions of this dissertation in progress at a variety of conferences, workshops, and invited lectures at the American Society for Theatre Research, the Association for Jewish Studies, the Modern Language Association, the American Comparative Literature Association, Harvard University, the University of Maryland, Simmons College, the Posen Seminar in Jewish Literature, the Boston Workmen’s Circle, the Montreal International Yiddish Theater Festival, and Target Margin Theater Company. I’d like to especially thank Christopher Balme, Zachary Baker, Edna Nahshon, Ron Robboy, Rachel Rubinstein, Naomi Seidman, and Michael Steinlauf for their feedback on these presentations. Julie Stone Peters and Alyssa Quint provided valuable suggestions on my dissertation prospectus that guided the shape of this project. Joanna Nizynska’s mentorship was crucial as I wrote my prospectus. Magda Romanska mentored me through the writing of this project and was always available for advice. Laurence Senelick encouraged me to pursue this project and shared his personal collection of Vilna Troupe photographs. I am also grateful to the members of the Jewish theater working group at Harvard for their encouragement of this project: Stacy Wolf, Stuart Hecht, Judah Cohen, and Max Shulman. Several descendents and friends of the Vilner reached out and gave me access to their photographs, recordings, ephemera, and family lore. Dan Ben-Amos introduced me to his great uncle Noah Nachbush over tea. Sharon Asro and Alexander Zaloum told stories that brought their grandparents and great-grandparents Alexander Azro and Sonia Alomis to life.
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