Vilna Troupe - Bucharest

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, Helene Gottlieb, Judith Lares, Hanna Mogel, and Miriam Orleska, and actors Alexander Stein, Joseph Buloff, Aizic Samberg, Joseph Kamen, Jacob Weislitz, Leib Kadison, Samuel Schäftel, Benjamin Ehrenkrantz and Haim Brakasch. The director of the company was Mordechai Mazo. Author, businessman and Zionist activist Al. 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." 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 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. 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. 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. Der Zingher… 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…, 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, that Romanian writers and artists invited Yiddish actors to their get-togethers, all of which apparently formed a stark contrast to Warsaw at the same 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… 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.