Stockholms Jiddische Teateramatorn
Stockholms Jiddische Teateramator'n was foundet in 2008 by Sylvia Sauter and Barbara Zylberzweig. Since the first premiere, Sayd azoj git in 2009, seven more productions have been presented.
The group that was established in 2008 under the name Stockholms Jiddische Teateramator’n consisted of ‘second generation Yiddishists.’ Most of them had learned Yiddish at home from their parents, which limited their vocabulary to a kitchen language. There were no schools for Yiddish-speakers and therefore they never learned to read Yiddish newspapers and books, printed in Hebrew letters. This turned out to be a problem when the group’s members were looking for play texts. What did they want to stage and what were they capable of playing? This question became the theme for the group’s first production, Sajt azoj git – Please, in 2009.
The production included a number of fragments from various plays, among them Shakespeare’s King Lear, followed by an excerpt from Jacob Gordon’s Mirele Efros, a female King Lear, and Strindberg’s The Father, in which a monologue is copied from Shylock’s speech in The Merchant in Venice (“… Has not a Jew/man eyes, has not a Jew/man hands, bodyparts…”). In between these quite serious pieces, one of the actresses addressed the audience “Ladies un Gents, Katchkes un Genz” (Ladies and Gentlemen, ducks and geese) and told a bold, witty story. Thereafter a discussion was resumed regarding what Yiddish theatre of the twenty-first century can and should present on stage. There are hardly any new plays. Should they play the nostalgic pieces that are located in the East European “shtetln” of the nineteenth century and always end with a wedding under a chupe, the wedding canopy? No! someone exclaims, I refuse to participate in such sentimental nonsense, which only exoticizes the Jews. Another actor claimed that these orthodox, bearded men with their funny fur hats just strengthen anti-Semitism. In the middle of the discussion, another performer raised his voice shouting: “Yiddish theatre – that’s song and music!” and they started to sing the well-known songs and the audience joined in.[1]
The question of what and how one can play theatre in Yiddish has followed the group over all these years. After each production the dilemma was the same: what will we do next? For certain members of the ensemble the type of shtetl-Romantic plays was completely out of question, no matter how popular they once were in North America. Nor did they want to play the kind of revues, in which Yiddish is reduced to a number of songs and the texts in between are in Hebrew like in Israel or in English like in the USA. All in all, it was difficult to find interesting topics in the existing dramatic corpus. Nobel Prize Laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer has characterized the content of Yiddish literature like this: “Far too often it’s the story of a girl who is forced into a marriage of convenience by her parents while she is in love with another boy. Very often the girl belongs to a rich family and the young man is the son of a tailor or shoemaker” (Singer 1978, 49). Among the things never dealt with Singer mentions:
Both Yiddish and Hebrew literature avoided to touch the big adventures of Jewish history – the false Messiah figures, the expulsions, enforced baptism, emancipation and assimilation which create the conditions for Jews to become ministers in England, Italy and America, professors at the big universities, millionaires, party leaders and journalists of world-known newspapers. Yiddish literature ignored the Jewish underworld with all their thieves, pimps, prostitutes and white slave traders in Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro and even Warsaw (Singer 1978, 50).
This sharp statement by Singer, written in 1978 in an autobiographic essay, can still be provocative for some. The repertoire of Stockholms Jiddische Teateramator’n was worked outstep by step and resulted in the six following productions:
· Doktor Rubinstein is a Polish comedy, which has localized Molière’s Malade immaginaire (The Imaginary Invalid) to the turn of the twentieth century. The play had been further adapted by the group’s director, Judith Hollander, who moreover had actresses play the two main characters.
· A snorrerspil (A Beggars Play) is an adaptation of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera from 1728 with a few loans from Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera. The music was performed on accordion and double bass.
· Gimpel Tam, a short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer from 1945, translated into English by Saul Bellow, about the ‘fool Gimpel’ who lives in a Jewish shtetl and accepts mischiefs and injustice with listlessness as his survival strategy. The drama adaptation was written by Moshe Yassur who also attended the play’s first night in Stockholm.
· The Clever Ones of Chelm plays in another shtetl close to the German Schildburg, where the citizens try to stop the village fool from getting children. This parodic topic was also used by Singer, but the drama adaptation here was carried out by Mojshe Gershenzon and as usual revised by director Judith Hollander.
· Der Inspector is an adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s Russian classic The Government Inspector. The translation to Yiddish is from the 1880s and Judith Hollander localized the play to the Swedish town of Köping in the 1950s. A small group of refugees had built up a community and were afraid that Swedish authorities would send an auditor.
· A troimschpil, the Yiddish version of A Dream Play by the national Swedish dramatist August Strindberg, performed in his own Intimate Theatre from 1907 that had recently been restored, attracting a broader audience than their earlier productions.
In summary, it can be stated that all seven productions illuminated different sides of Jewish life, even though the plays were originally written for other purposes: Molière’s imaginary invalid is treated by a Jewish doctor, Gay’s and Brecht’s gangsters and beggars act in a Jewish underworld, and the question of whether a Swedish auditor in the 1950s could be speaking Yiddish was debated in Der Inspector. Both of the pieces inspired by Singer could be described as existential comedies – Gimpel is a touching figure – in small towns, at the same time parodying conceit and gossip among the citizens. Certainly the comedies dominated, but there were also dark shadows under the happy surface. When Mack the Knife wants to escape from the police, it turns out that there is no place where he could feel safe; the story about the inspector opened with a touching description of how these refugees had ended up in Köping to rebuild a Jewish life – the frame of the story that referred to actual events in the 1950s.
Since a wedding always was an ingredient of Yiddish drama, weddings were mandatory in each production: Doctor Rubinstein is about to marry his patient’s daughter, Mack the Knife takes Polly to the ‘altar’, Gimpel is urged to take care of a pregnant woman, in Chelm the ‘fool’ is coupled to an old widow, Indra’s daughter in A Troimschpil, here called Annele, marries the Lawyer. The wedding canopy is frequently in use and has become a kind of signum: a chupe has – seriously or as a parody – put the dot over the i in each production. It has become an internal joke, but whether this is brought home to the audience is difficult to know.
In all performances, music is an important asset. There are some good singers in the group and in some productions a Yiddish choir completed the show with well-known melodies. One, two or three musicians accompanied the plays. Music lifts the atmosphere, which certainly is true. It gives both actors and spectators a moment to breathe and sometimes the audience feels invited to sing along. The musical pieces strengthen the impression of a recognizable Yiddish theatre. This can be a positive feeling and contribute to the warm atmosphere in the auditorium. At the same time, it confirms the stereotypical picture of Yiddish theatre as easy entertainment without artistic ambitions.
The impressions and reflections that spectators take along from the performances of Stockholms Jiddische Teateramator’n might have a wider impact, beyond the individual experience. Together the group and their audience manifest Yiddish not only as a spoken, theatrical and expressive language, but also as a living phenomenon. This has been noticed by Swedish authorities who have placed Yiddish abreast of other official minority languages such as Sami, Romany, Meänkieli and Finnish. I have already mentioned that Yiddish performances imply a strong reminder of the Yiddish culture that the Holocaust has annihilated. The consciousness of the atrocious anti-Semitism of the Nazi-era levers the struggle against the prosecution of Jews wherever it happens today. The rigorous security measures at all Jewish institutions are clear signs of this. Maybe it seems far-fetched to believe that the pictures of Jewish life that the theatre amateurs put on stage counteract the conspiracy theories about the “Jew” who owns all the world’s money, media and power. In the struggle against anti-Semitism, or more generally against xenophobia, nothing should be left unnoticed. Affective practices can have long-term effects.
In many countries the prohibition of local languages has harassed minorities. Catalan, Kurdish, Tibetan – the list extends endlessly, including until quite recently the Sami language in Sweden, as Sami children were forced to speak Swedish even in the school yard. Language prohibition is a political weapon. To maintain, practice and expose a language is a political action. A single action might not be significant in itself, but the affective solidarity lays the ground for collective achievements.
When the Stockholm theatre amateurs received a warm applause after their performances, they were honoured for their contribution to the phenomenon of Yiddish – not just for some hours of entertainment in the theatre, but for maintaining and manifesting an oppressed and marginalized language. Actors and spectators shared the feeling that history has been awakened that evening and will carry them into the future.
- ↑ Trailers or sections from all productions can be found on the group’s homepage: https://teateramatoren.se.