The Future of the Yiddish Theatre
THE Jewish people have not been open to the appeal of the theatre. Their social and political status, their lack of a consistent, presentable language, prohibited the development of theatrical art in their midst. But in addition to these obstacles, there was the innate reluctance of a people condemned to obscurity, inequality and personal disabilities, to display in public view either their mystic aspirations or to unbare the souls and the inner life of their own people in public. Just as they were reluctant to express, in the form of images, the likeness of God, or of those formed in his image, so they refrained, from what may be called a sense of spiritual and physical modesty, from portraying on a stage the fictitious longings and struggles of human beings.
The theatre, for these several reasons, made no pretense to existence among the Jews until the middle of the last century. Jewish life in the Russian cities had developed. The Yiddish language had produced quite an extensive literature. The Haskala movement had led the way to an appreciation of alien culture. Jewish life had drifted away, to a great extent, especially in the cities, from the old-fashioned provincialism of Jewish town-life. A large portion of the Jewish people had become secularized, so to speak, and their conduct was modelled on the conduct of the goyim among whom they lived.
The Yiddish theatre was then started, in 1877, was banished from Russia in 1883, renewed its life in America about 1881, and has since flourished, declined, risen again, until in this day, we find the air filled with a lament, that this Yiddish theatre of some thirty years life is on the verge of bankruptcy, and is about to disappear.
In the history of every theatre, you will find periods of ebb and flow. There are great expectations, and then the pessimist regales himself with ominous prophecies.
But the present critics of the Yiddish theatre do not speak of temporary embarrassments; they have come to the conclusion that the Yiddish theatre is absolutely and unequivocally doomed. There is no sign of relief anywhere. In the thirty years of its existence, it has produced only a few worthy dramas, but it has not developed in the least from the time when Goldfaden wrote his first absurd farce or operetta, for the very same Goldfaden model, minus the sincerity of its originator, is now crowding the Yiddish theatre.
Not only has the shund drama, or the drama of rot, taken possession of the Yiddish theatres to a greater extent than ever before, but every avenue of Yiddish theatrical life is now filled with shoddy notions, cheap, inartistic ideals.
Joseph Lateiner, a prince of shreds and patches, the concocter of the cheapest and the most insincere forms of theatrical entertainment, has displaced Jacob Gordin. The plays of David Pinski and others are being held back in order to permit avaricious managers to tempt fortune with inane operettas, in which the cheap burlesque features of the American stage are the chief attractions. The players, in the midst of this scramble for monetary and immediate success, are indifferent to the cultivation of their art, and interested only in being able to retain their present salaries. Where formerly Gordin was the model, and Gordin spelled success, the loftiest desire of the heart and soul of the manager to-day is to secure a second Jewish Heart of Jewish Soul. As a consequence of these conditions, the Yiddish theatre has become rigid; it is not adventuresome in the cause of art; it prefers the