Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre at 50: Le Chayim!
May, 2009
While she lived, Dora Wasserman (1919-2003), founder of the Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre, believed in tomorrow. “She always said ‘what was – was’ and that you have to focus on the future,” recalled her daughter Ella Wasserman. Though she resides in Israel,Ella was summoned to Montreal by her sister Bryna, to help celebrate the 50th anniversary of their mother’s labour of love.
“What better way to honour Dora than to assemble the five existing Yiddish theatres of the world,” said Bryna Wasserman, now artistic director of the award-winning theatre.
Invited Yiddish theatres from Poland, Romania, France, Israel and the US will each present a main stage performance as well as a second, “more cutting-edge,” production. Of special note are an anticipated reunion of Yiddish Theatre “alumni” (anyone who’s ever had anything to do with Dora’s theatre in the past) and an exciting multi-media outdoor event on June 21 in the park behind the Segal Centre, organized by the third generation of performers, the Young Actors for Young Audiences (YAYA), in a special welcome to the community at large.
In the early part of the 20th century, Yiddish, the language of European Ashkenazi Jews, was spoken by 18 million people, but it was nearly decimated by the Holocaust. Now there is renewed interest in the language that originated between 900 and 1100 C.E. and whose roots, for many, reach into the very heart of Jewish identity (the word Yiddish means Jewish). Yiddish studies are now taught in major universities, including Columbia, Oxford and McGill.
Writers like Isaac Bashevis Singer and Sholem Aleichem who write in Yiddish and performers like the young people nurtured by Dora and now Bryna Wasserman continue to make the language – and the culture from which it is inseparable – accessible outside the ivory towers.
Singer, a Nobel-prize winning writer, was not worried about declining Yiddish audiences. “The leaves are falling, but the trunk and roots always stay. It looks bad but our situation looked bad already 3,000 years ago,” he once said in an interview.
Preserving Yiddish is imperative now, but just as the language borrowed freely from other languages – perhaps accounting for its richness of expression – Yiddish theatre has historically adapted and produced great works of literature from various cultures. “It’s important to maintain and tell our stories, culture and song, but also to interpret literature from a Jewish point of view,” Bryna said.
Michel Tremblay’s Les Belles Soeurs was one of the Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre’s earliest productions. The playwright called it one of the best interpretations of the play in a foreign language.
Yiddish Theatre continues to attract non-Yiddish actors and audiences, a testament to Dora’s belief that its universal appeal extends beyond any one element. “Theatre has nothing to do with language. If language is the problem – it’s not a problem. If a play is good, you will feel it.”
The Montreal International Yiddish Theatre Festival runs from June 17 to 25. All Yiddish performances have English and French super-titles. For information, call 514-739-7944 or visit www.segalcentre.org
Howard Richler on keeping languages alive.
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