The Vilna Troupe (; ; ; ), also known as Fareyn Fun Yiddishe Dramatishe Artistn (Federation of Yiddish Dramatic Actors) and later Dramă şi Comedie, was an international and mostly Yiddish-speaking theatre, one of the most famous in the history of Yiddish theater. It was formed in and named after the city of Vilnius (Vilna) in the Russian Empire, later capital city of Lithuania. Distinctly Modernist, and strongly influenced by Russian literature and by the ideas of Konstantin Stanislavski, their travels in Western Europe and later to Romania played a significant role in the dissemination of a disciplined approach to acting that continues to be influential in the present day.
Early years
Founded in 1915 or 1916 says 1915; says 1916, as does during World War I, the troupe began with the deserted Vilna State Theatre as their base, toured Kovno, Białystok and Grodno, and soon moved to Warsaw. Their repertoire epitomized the second golden age of Yiddish theater, with works by S. An-sky, Sholem Aleichem and Sholem Asch, as well as Molière, Maxim Gorky, Henrik Ibsen, plus some Jewish-themed plays by non-Jews, notably Karl Gutzkow's Uriel Acosta. . Their uniform Lithuanian Yiddish stood in contrast to the mix of dialects often heard in Yiddish theater at the time.
They were the first to stage An-sky's The Dybbuk. Early versions of the play were written variously in Russian and Yiddish, but Russian director and method acting pioneer Stanislavski (who first encountered the work in Russian) made several suggestions to An-sky. One of these was that for the sake of authenticity the piece should be in Yiddish. Stanislavski's death prevented the play from being produced at the Moscow Art Theater. At the time of An-sky's death, on November 8, 1920, the play was complete but had never been professionally produced. As a tribute to An-sky, the Vilna troupe, under the direction of David Herman, utilised the 30-day period of mourning after his death to prepare the play, which opened December 9, 1920, at the Elysium Theatre in Warsaw.Olin Downes, "VILNA TROUPE REVIVED On the 20th Anniversary of Its Founding 'Dybbuk' Is Given", The New York Times, February 24, 1937, p. 18.; this is the citation for the name of the theater. Its unanticipated success established the play as a classic of modern Yiddish theater.
They toured extensively; they played in New York City, London and Paris.. Their 1923 London production of Sholem Asch's The God of Vengeance at the Pavilion Theatre, Whitechapel was shut down by the censor (who had originally passed it based on an English-language synopsis)."LONDON NOTES: Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES", The New York Times, October 28, 1923, p. X2. The play includes a portrayal of a lesbian relationship, which is the most favorably portrayed relationship in what is otherwise dark play. Bud Coleman, "The God of Vengeance Opens on Broadway" , excerpted from Great Events from History: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Events (Lillian Faderman, Yolanda Retter, Horacio Roque Ramírez, eds., December 2006; ), Salem Press. Accessed online December 10, 2008. Among the members of the troupe was Joseph Green, later a Yiddish-language filmmaker.
Bucharest In 1923, the Vilna troupe came to Bucharest at the invitation of Isidor Goldenberg of the Jigniţa Summer Theater. At the time, the troupe included actresses Hanna Braz, Luba Kadison, Helena Gotlib, Judith Lares, Hanna Mogel, and Miriam Orleska, and actors Alexander Stein, Joseph Buloff, Aizik Samberg, Joseph Kamen, Jacob Waislitz, Leib Kadison, Shmuel Sheftel, Benjamin Ehrenkrantz and Chaim Brakarz. The director of the company was Mordechai Mazo. ; Author, businessman and Zionist activist A. L. Zissu was instrumental in helping the transition and was reportedly the company's main financial backer after 1923. Zissu was the brother-in-law of the Romanian poet Tudor Arghezi.
According to playwright and cultural promoter Israil Bercovici, their disciplined approach to theater impacted not only Romanian Yiddish theater but Romanian theater generally. Their audience went beyond the usual attendees of Yiddish theater: they drew the attention of the Romanian-language press, the Romanian theater world, and of "men of culture" generally. An August 23, 1924 article in the daily newspaper Adevărul noted: "Such a demonstration of artistry, even on a small stage such as Jigniţa and even in a language like Yiddish ought to be seen by all who are interested in superior realization of drama." , especially pp. 126–8; the Adevărul quotation is on page 128 Romanian literary critic Paul Cernat argues that the Vilna Troupe acted as a ferment for the local avant-garde, Expressionist environment, and by extension, for cutting edge Romanian literature. Cernat noted that while most Romanian avant-garde shows were "simple playful curiosities", "expressionist aesthetics were not without consequences on the [new Romanian] theatrical texts".
In Cernat's view, the Vilna Troupe accomplished this in tandem with various local companies and promoters. Among the latter, he cites Zissu, Benjamin Fondane, Ion Marin Sadoveanu, Armand Pascal, Sandu Eliad, Scarlat Callimachi, Dida Solomon, George Ciprian and various authors affiliated with Contimporanul magazine. Citing cultural historian Ovid Crohmălniceanu, Cernat also concludes that the branch of Expressionism favored by the company followed a distinct path, having its roots in Hasidic Judaism.
The Vilna Troupe was instantly made notorious by its staging of The Deluge, a work by Swedish-born dramatist Henning Berger, which was positively reviewed by the prominent literary magazine Rampa. , Realitatea Evreiască nr. 280-81 (1080-81) The Deluge was a headliner by the company, until it was replaced by Maxim Gorky's The Lower Depths (August 1924) The artistic praise did not pay the bills, and touring elsewhere in Romania only made the financial picture worse. According to modernist author Mihail Sebastian, the actors' commitment and the quality of the shows contrasted heavily with the venues they were touring. Sebastian referred to one of the latter as "once destined for Jewish pornography", and recounted how news of the Vilna Troupe "miracle" had spread by word of mouth. Mihail Sebastian, "Atitudini. Trupa din Vilna se reîntoarce" ("Attitudes. The Vilna Troupe Is Back")], Realitatea Evreiască nr. 277 (p. 1077) The situation was aggravated when the actors had to take a break from performing at the Jigniţa, following the death of its female owner, Sofia Lieblich. During that period, several actors left their temporary home in Romania, most of them settling in the United States.
Their fortunes were salvaged by a 1925 production of Osip Dymov's Der zinger fun zayn troyer ("The Singer of His Sorrow"), created in collaboration with Jacob Sternberg's troupe. The production was another critical success: writer Victor Eftimiu called it "a model of stylized realist theater", ; while dramatist Ion Marin Sadoveanu argued that it was comparable to "the best scenes" produced in France by the acclaimed director Jacques Copeau. It was an unprecedented hit, and ran at length at Bucharest's Central Theater. On their 40th show with the play, the actors were rewarded with portraits specially drawn by caricaturist Jacques Kapralik. The company was by then also being reviewed by the modernist platform Integral, and especially by its two main columnists, Ion Călugăru and M. H. Maxy, both of whom later chose to become directly involved in its activities. Their initiative followed their dissatisfaction with the choice of Der zinger fun zayn troyer and in particular with Joseph Buloff's directing: the magazine accused Buloff of having "abused color in order to complete a null text." For a while, Călugăru replaced Mazo as director of the troupe, while Maxy provided the scenic design for several productions.
The positive reception indirectly helped establish close cultural connections between the newly-emancipated Jewish-Romanian community and sections of the ethnic Romanian majority. Cernat notes that this was in glaring contrast to a parallel phenomenon, "the recrudescence of antisemitic manifestations, particularly among the students". Solidarity with the company and the Jewish community at large was notably expressed by left-wingers such as Arghezi, Gala Galaction, N. D. Cocea and Contimporanul editor Ion Vinea.
In an article for the leftist magazine Lupta, Victor Eftimiu also expressed his opinion that the cultural renaissance heralded by the Troupe could enforce cultural patriotism and nationalism among Romanian Jews, and thus make "Jewishness" prove itself more worthy than "the braggadocios" of other nationalist discourses. Writing in the Warsaw Yiddish-language Literarishe Bleter during the run of Der zinger fun zayn troyer, Joseph Buloff was amazed at the positive reception that Yiddish theater received among the gentiles of Bucharest. Buloff noted that the Romanian actor Tanţi Cutava was equally comfortable acting in French and Yiddish as in his native Romanian, that he often heard ethnic Romanians singing songs from the Yiddish theater over a glass of wine, and that Romanian writers and artists invited Yiddish actors to their get-togethers, all of which apparently formed a stark contrast to Warsaw at that time. Following the November 1924 establishment of an Amicii teatrului evreiesc (Friends of the Jewish Theatre) association designed to help the troupe recover from its financial slump, several such clubs were set up by Jews and non-Jews in various Romanian localities.
The company also registered success when, in late 1925, it decided to reinstate The Deluge as its headliner. Apparently, the production was the work of several directors, and underwent significant changes from one staging to another, in both direction and assignment of roles. It earned further praise from critics, especially after Luba Kadison replaced Orleska in the play's sole female role. (Buloff and Leib Kadison, who had been assigned the title roles in the original variant, had by then withdrawn.) Der zinger fun zayn troyer and The Deluge were followed by successful Bucharest productions of David Pinsky's Melech David un zaine Froien (King David and His Women) and Tolstoy's The Living Corpse. Pressured, in part, by a 32% tax on performances by foreign troupes, by the end of 1925, the troupe had decided to reconstitute themselves as a Bucharest-based troupe, taking the Romanian-language name Dramă şi Comedie.
Dramă şi Comedie "The wandering troupe from Vilna will stay put... after an era of prolonged touring", reported Integral. "They will fix on a program, which will no longer oscillate between melodrama and an expressionist mural. Apparently, the prospect launched today is precise: a new group tending to go along the route of modern innovation. 'No compromise with lack of taste—no compromise with bad taste': a shout that justifies an existence and would be worthy of realization."Integral nr. 6-7/1925, quoted in Partly rendered in
The "no compromise" slogan came from the statement of program, really more of an artistic manifesto, with which the reconstituted group launched itself. The same document also declared the troupe's intent "to offer the masses and intellectuals simultaneously an institution of culture". The new troupe included such actors as Braz, Kadison, Lares, Orleska, Stein, Buloff, Kamen, Waislitz, Sheftel, and the Kadisons from the 1923 roster, plus Noemi Nathan, Yokheved Waislitz, Jehuda Ehrenkranz, Samuel Iris, Simkhe Natan, Sholom Schönbaum, Henry Tarlo, and Simi Weinstock.