Yiddish Plays for Reading and Performance

✍ Scribed by Nahma Sandrow (editor)

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Year: 2021
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 352
• Series: SUNY series in Contemporary Jewish Literature and Culture
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Three stageworthy plays and nine individual scenes that offer an introduction to Yiddish theater at its liveliest.

Yiddish theater was first and foremost fine theater, with varied repertory and actors of high quality. The three stage-ready plays and nine individual scenes collected here, most of them well-known in Yiddish repertory but never before translated, offer an introduction to the full range of Yiddish theater. Fresh, lively, and accurate, these translations have been prepared for reading or performance by award-winning playwright and scholar Nahma Sandrow. They come with useful stage directions, notes, and playing histories, as well as comments by directors who have worked in both English and Yiddish theater. In the three full-length plays, a matriarch battles for control of her business and her family (Mirele Efros; or, The Jewish Queen Lear); two desperate women struggle over a man, who himself is struggling to change his life (Yankl the Blacksmith); and, in a charming fantasy village, a poetic village fiddler gambles on romance (Yoshke the Musician). The nine scenes from selected other plays are shaped to stand alone and range in genre from symbolist to naturalist, operetta to vaudeville, domestic to romantic to avant-garde. In her preface, Sandrow contextualizes the plays in modern Western theater history from the nineteenth century to the present. Yiddish Plays for Reading and Performance is not nostalgia―just a collection of good plays that also serves as an informed introduction to Yiddish theater at its liveliest.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents
Preface: Yiddish Theater in Theatrical Context
Plays
Mirele Efros; or, The Jewish Queen Lear
Introduction
Characters
Act 1
End of Act 1
Act 2
End of Act 2
Act 3
End of Act 3
Act 4, Scene 1
End of Act 4, Scene 1
Act 4, Scene 2
End of Act 4, Scene 2
Act 4, Scene 3
The End
Notes
Allen L. Rickman: Thoughts on Reviving Mirele Efros
Yankl the Blacksmith
Introduction
Characters
Act 1
End of Act 1
Act 2
End of Act 2
Act 3
End of Act 3
Act 4
The End
Notes
Moshe Yassur: Director’s Thoughts
Yoshke the Musician (The Hired Bridegroom, The Rented Bridegroom, The Singer of His Sorrow)
Introduction
Characters
Prologue, melting into Act 1
End of Act 1
Act 2
End of Act 2
Act 3
The End
Notes
Eleanor Reissa: Director’s Thoughts
Scenes
From Uncle Moses
Introduction and Notes
Characters
End of Scene
From Homeless
Introduction and Notes
Characters
End of Scene
From Safo
Introduction and Notes
Characters
End of Scene
From Carcass
Introduction and Notes
Characters
End of Scene
From Between Day and Night
Introduction and Notes
Characters
End of Scene
From Mishke and Moshke; or, Europeans in America (Mishke and Moshke; or, The Greenhorns)
Introduction and Notes
Characters
End of Scene
From Khantshe in America
Introduction
Characters
End of Scene
From Riverside Drive
Introduction and Notes
Characters
End of Scene
From The 2,000 (The Big Prize, The Big Lottery, The Jackpot)
Introduction and Notes
Characters
End of Scene
Appendix: How to Pronounce Yiddish Words and Names
How to Pronounce Yiddish Words and Names