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Bruce Adler, Tony-Nominated Actor, Dies at 63
By Robert Simonson
Bruce Adler, the scion of Yiddish theatre family who went on to have much success on the Broadway stage, winning two Tony Award nominations, died in the early hours of July 25, said his close friend, actor Mike Burstyn. Mr. Adler had been battling liver cancer for several years. He was 63. |  | My life with Leonard
By Sharon Robinson
I first met Leonard when I auditioned for the Field Commander Cohen tour in 1979. I had been working as a singer and dancer in Las Vegas and as a session singer in Los Angeles. I knew of famous songs such as "Suzanne", but I wasn't that familiar with Leonard. My background is blues and R&B. So I didn't really know what to expect. The audition was at a rehearsal space in LA. The band was up on the stage and Leonard was sitting on a couch, listening. I remember noticing that he was really friendly | | Paulina Tajman Maurer: "Last Mohican" of Pre WWII Yiddish Theatre
Paulina Tajman Maurer, the "Last Mohican" of Pre WWII Yiddish Theatre, passed away on April 30, 2008, having just celebrated her 100th birtdhay five days earlier. She was born in Buenos Aires to Bessaravian Jews who fled Chisinau right after the infamous Pogrom and settled in a modest apartment right in the centre of the Argentinean equivalent to Broadway, Corrientes street. | | Broadway looks to Odets: Is Clifford Odets poised for a return to the spotlight ?
By Gordon Cox
A high-profile revival of Odets' 1950 backstage drama "The Country Girl," with Mike Nichols helming a cast toplined by Morgan Freeman, Frances McDormand and Peter Gallagher, is only the latest mark of renewed interest in the scribe's work. That follows the Lincoln Center Theater's Broadway production of "Awake and Sing!," which took home the 2006 Tony for play revival, and a 2007 staging of the play at London's Almeida Theater. | | Actor Charlton Heston dies at 84
By Gregg Kilday and Duane Byrge
Charlton Heston, whose chiseled-granite looks and commanding manner led him to portray some of history's most extraordinary men -- from Moses to Michelangelo, John the Baptist to El Cid -- has died. He was 84 | | Frank London the king of klezmer music plays 'A Night in the Old Marketplace'
By Delfín Vigil
Because even though the title is totally true for the 50-year-old trumpet player, who has more klezmer records out than years living on the planet, it still tells only half of London's musical story. "Let's see," London says, talking by phone from his home in New York, while washing dishes. "Through the years, I've played in salsa bands (clink), Haitian bands (clink), Calypso bands (clink), Balkan bands (clink), jazz bands (clink), improv bands (clink), bebop bands." | | Helena Yaralova: Another stage in her career
By Zipi Shohat
Ultimately, at the end of the first performance last week it was already clear to any spectator that Yaralova is the latest discovery in Hebrew theater. She is a versatile actress with a captivating stage presence, who succeeds in modulating naturally in accordance with changing moods from one scene to another in short, swift transitions. Omri Nitzan, the play's director and also the Cameri Theater's artistic director, says the theater needs to make sure an actress like Yaralova remains in the c | | The Voice speaks his mind
By John Nathan
“I’m in a business where there are 5,000 people going for every role. Any-thing that gives you a recognisable edge is a good thing,” he says about the acting half of his career. “On the phone I’ve been called madam, which really makes me laugh,” he says. Even so, Fierstein is sick of interviewers focusing on his voice. “Come on, ask me some questions,” he says in the hope of moving the conversation away from that familiarly benign growl and on to La Cage aux Folles, the award-winning musical for | | The Yiddish theater legend Fyvush Finkel in David Ives' new play, 'New Jerusalem.'
By Frank Lovece
The Yiddish theater legend, Fyvush Finkel, who transitioned to mainstream stage, TV, and film work is currently starring off-Broadway in David Ives' new play, 'New Jerusalem.' | | David Masters has spent a theatrical lifetime with Fiddler on the Roof
By Susan E. Lindt
For David Masters, the world's most beloved musical about tradition is tradition. When "Fiddler on the Roof" opens at Fulton Opera House next week, Masters will be there on stage, as he has been for so many "Fiddler" opening nights - this time playing the rabbi | | Artist in Spotlight : George Brandt
Throughout his long career at the University of Bristol's drama department, Brandt taught many students who went on to have successful careers in the media. Moreover, by virtue of his warm, enthusiastic, lively and intellectually rigorous personality he was held in great affection by many whom he taught and who worked with him. | | Warren Mitchell : I try to stay vertical most of the time
By Karen Price
WARREN Mitchell may be best known for playing the bigoted and cantankerous Alf Garnett, but it is not his favourite role. Instead, it is the part of a Jewish widower in the stage show Visiting Mr Green which has given him the most pleasure. And he enjoys playing the pensioner so much that he is now touring with the production for the third time. | | Artist in Spotlight : Hannah Moscovitch is already famous
By Richard Ouzounian
The 29-year-old playwright is at the start of what will prove to be a banner year for her. Next Wednesday night, Tarragon Theatre presents the world premiere of her play East of Berlin and, early next year, Factory Theatre will be mounting a double bill of her SummerWorks successes from 2005-'06, Essay and The Russian Play. | | Bip: The master of mime who transformed silence into poetry Dead at 84
Marcel Marceau, the master of mime who transformed silence into poetry with lithe gestures and pliant facial expressions that spoke to generations of young and old, has died. He was 84. Wearing white face paint, soft shoes and a battered hat topped with a red flower, Marceau breathed new life into an art that dates to ancient Greece. He played out the human comedy through his alter-ego Bip without ever uttering a word. | | From Yiddish theater to Shakespeare
Director of the University of Houston’s School of Theater and Dance since 1969 and co-founder of the Houston Shakespeare Festival in 1975, Berger was honored on Aug. 10 by U.S. Rep. Gene Green with a Congressional Record Plaque at Miller Outdoor Theatre in Hermann Park. The presentation was made just prior to the Houston Shakespeare Festival’s performance of “Love’s Labors Lost,” which Berger is directing. Not bad for a guy raised on Manhattan’s East Side, who didn’t speak English until the age | | Playwright George Tabori Dies in Berlin
Hungarian-born playwright and director George Tabori, a legend in Germany's postwar theater world whose avant-garde works confronted anti-Semitism, has died, the Berliner Ensemble said Tuesday. He was 93. | | The Floating Tower : Andre Hajdu speaks on The Ha'oman Hai Ensemble
Two seemingly impassable obstacles are positioned opposite one another: one is the Mishna and the Talmud, about which ordinary people know hardly anything, while on the opposite side is contemporary concert music, which is also a mystery to most people. Two terrifying cliffs, as the composer Andre Hajdu describes them, which are equally threatening and are not connected to each other. | | Artist in Spotlight : Yosef Bar-Yosef - Misunderstood genius
By Zipi Shohat
There is something Russian about Yosef Bar-Yosef's face. At times, he looks like a character in a Chekhov play. But until a few years ago, the Jerusalem-born Bar-Yosef, an eighth-generation Israeli, had no connection to Russia aside from an endless veneration of Russian literature and the illustrious playwrights, especially Chekhov, Gogol and Gorky. | | Hy Zaret, 99, Tin Pan Alley Lyricist, Is Dead
By Douglas Martin
Mr. Zaret liked to tell about the time the composer Alex North called him to say he had written a song for a movie and needed words. Mr. Zaret replied that he was busy painting his house. But he found time to write the lyrics for “Unchained Melody.” The movie itself, “Unchained,” a low-budget prison film, turned out to be a lot less memorable than the song. | | Jonathan Hadary brings a class act to the detention-room disciples of 'Spamalot'
By Michael Elkin
Small world, isn't it? Within 17 years, Jonathan Hadary has gone from king of the squares in "Gypsy" to king of the roundtable in "Spamalot." Indeed, from haimish Herbie to courtly King Arthur just proves how artful Hadary the heartfelt really is. Evidence is right there every night on stage at the Shubert on Broadway as Hadary hightails it to the hilarious clippity-clop hi-jinks of Monty Python's "Spamalot," where it's good to be king. Make that it's great to be king. | | Artist in Spotlight : Elmer Rice (1892-1967)
By Jane Mendenhall
Today most people have never heard of Elmer Rice. But in the 1920s and 1930s, he was a playwright who was as popular as Eugene O'Neill. His career is an example of the great American success story because as an amateur, his very first professionally produced play was a great success. Spanning fifty years and almost fifty plays, his career is a remarkable testament of a man's dedication to his art and his personal vision. | | Oscar-nominated director Luzzati dies
Emanuele Luzzati, whose haunting fairy tale images graced opera stages and animated films, has died in his home in Genoa, officials said Saturday. He was 85. Luzzati died after falling ill Friday evening, said Laura Grendanin, a spokeswoman for a museum dedicated to Luzzati in his native city. The cause of the death was not disclosed. | | Yiddishpiel Theater actor and singer Karol Markowitz dies at 68
Actor and singer Karol Markowitz, one of the stars of Yiddisphiel in the past decade, passed away on 29 December 06 | | Israeli Literary critic Gershon Shaked dead at 77
By Shiri Lev-Ari
One of Israel's most important literary critics, Professor Gershon Shaked, died yesterday at the age of 77, following an operation at Sha'arei Tzedek hospital in Jerusalem. Shaked, who won the Israel Prize in 1993, is survived by his wife, Dr. Malka Shaked, two daughters and six grandchildren. His funeral will be held on 29 December at the Givat Shaul cemetery in Jerusalem. | | Richard Gilman, Theater Critic, Dies at 83
By Ben Brantley
Richard Gilman, the drama and literary critic whose elegant, contentious voice resonated through four decades in American letters, earning him both admirers and enemies of partisan fierceness, died Saturday at his home in Kusatsu, Japan. He was 83. His death, after many years of illness, was announced by his daughter Priscilla Gilman, who said he was originally found to have terminal lung cancer in 1997 | | Caching up with Wesker
By Golda Zafer-Smith
"How terribly strange to be 70" wrote the young Paul Simon (Bookends, 1967), conjuring images of "old men lost in their overcoats waiting for the sunset". A generous five-hour interview with Arnold Wesker shortly before his 70th birthday confirms that this image bears no resemblance to the prolific playwright old friends call 'Wizzie'. His continuous output includes 42 plays, four books of short stories, two collections of essays, a children's book and an autobiography. He also crosses continent | | German Goldensheteyn (1934 - 2006)
Clarinetist and musicologist German Goldenshteyn was born in 1934 in the Bessarabian shtetl of Otaci, then in Romania, now in Moldova. He lost his parents in the Holocaust and after the war, he and his siblings entered an orphanage in Odessa. As a young man, Goldenshteyn successfully auditioned for the army band school, after which he spent 10 years playing in military orchestras and completing his service | | Rudi Stern, Who Made Theatre Out of Light, Dies at 69
By Robert Simonson
Rudi Stern, who manipulated light and neon to create theatrical environments for everyone from Joseph Chaikin to Timothy Leary to the Doors, died Aug. 15 in Cadiz, Spain, where he had lived for the last few years. The cause was complications from lung cancer, the New York Times reported. He was 69. | | Aaron Spelling, Prolific TV Hitmaker
By Adam Bernstein
Aaron Spelling, 83, who produced a staggering number of commercial television hits over four decades and whose hallmarks were glamour, violence and sexy escapism, died Friday in Los Angeles. He died at home after suffering a stroke June 18, his publicist said. | | Neil Simon : 2006 Mark Twain Prize Recipient
The Kennedy Center will award the ninth annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor to Neil Simon on Sunday, October 15 at 8 p.m. in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. The award, named to honor one of America’s—and the world’s—greatest humorists, will feature a star-studded ceremony. The program will be taped and will air on PBS stations nationwide this fall as ‘The Kennedy Center Presents: The 2006 Mark Twain Prize.' Tickets for the event will go on sale to the general public on Friday August 11. | | Pinter's dramatic impact
Harold Pinter, who is celebrating his 75th birthday, is widely regarded as the UK's greatest living playwright with a long and acclaimed career as a dramatist. Pinter's impact on the world of literature has led to his name passing into general use as a byword for his style. "Pinteresque" is the label often given to many things theatrical and otherwise, summing up something English, tense and ambiguous. It came into usage in 1960, just three years after the first performance of his first play, sh | | Red Buttons (1919-2006) Comic and Oscar winner
By Bob Thomas
Red Buttons, the carrot-topped burlesque comedian who became a top star in early television and then in a dramatic role won the 1957 Oscar as supporting actor in Sayonara, died Thursday. He was 87. | | Vincent Sherman (1906-2006 )
By Ronald Bergan
To filmgoers for whom the names of Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Ida Lupino and Ann Sheridan evoke the glory days of Warner Brothers' "women's pictures" of the 1940s and early 1950s, the director Vincent Sherman, who has died aged 99, was something of a hero. According to a friend, Sherman, who had the virile looks of a middle- weight boxing champion, discovered a way of dealing with difficult leading ladies: "He went and slept with them. After that, the next morning, they were angels." | | Mandy Patinkin : Movies? Don't make me yawn
By Phillip McCarthy.
How does a nice Jewish boy from New York end up opposite Madonna? Just boredom, writes Phillip McCarthy. WOMEN don't throw panties on stage, in the signature Tom Jones show tradition, when he performs live. Of course his repertoire, heavy on songs by Sondheim and Berlin, doesn't invite that sort of reaction: not in the way that What's New Pussycat? does. | | Robert Brustein Stages His Work on the Vineyard
By Lauren Martin
Robert Brustein loves a good fight. His production of Samuel Beckett's Endgame so enraged the Irish Nobel laureate, he demanded it be shut down; Mr. Brustein refused, but allowed the playwright a program note informing audiences they should be disgusted. Then there was the New York town hall run-in with African-American Pulitzer winner August Wilson, who called Mr. Brustein "a sniper, a naysayer and a cultural imperialist." | | Leonard Cohen: Poet, Prophet, Eternal Optimist
By Sharonne Cohen
A famous songwriter whose novels and poems explore the soul of the Jewish community.
The Montreal Jewish Community has produced a plethora of Jewish writers with unique literary expressions of Jewish identity, including A.M. Klein, Irving Layton, Mordechai Richler, and Leonard Cohen. Cohen is a poet and novelist, though he is best known as a singer-songwriter, with signature songs such as "Suzanne" and "Hallelujah." Cohen grew up in a family deeply rooted in Judaism, living within a strong Jewis | | Woody Allen's Memory Lapse
By Ted Merwin
Watching Woody Allen’s lackluster play, “A Second Hand Memory,” directed by the author at the Atlantic Theatre Company, one wonders if Allen really knows his limitations. For Allen, the pre-eminent filmmaker who seems to have lost touch with who he is several years ago, writing and directing serious drama turns out to be more of a stretch than he can handle. The result is a painful experience of watching a master misapply himself, making the worst of a stellar cast. A play about betrayal becomes | | Arthur Miller: Theater to Change the World
By C. .J.
Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is the story of Willy Loman, a decent man driven to despair and suicide when his life is declared over by the cold workings of American capitalism. He kills himself in his car so his son can collect his life insurance. Miller describes Willy Loman as someone who "gave his life, or sold it, in order to justify the waste of it." | | Yiddish singer and actress Ruth Levin's tribute to her father Leibu Levin
By Greer Fay Cashman
Popular, prize-winning Yiddish singer and actress Ruth Levin's career is no small measure due to her love and devotion to her late father, Leibu Levin, a well-known actor, singer and composer. | | Poet of homecoming whose optimism celebrated the spirit of the new Germany : Hilde Domin (1909-2006)
By Ben Hutchinson
From the publication of her first collection, Only a Rose for Support (1957) onwards, Hilde Domin, who has died aged 96, won almost every German literary and cultural award, including the Rilke, Nelly Sachs and Hölderlin prizes. In an era of prose, her distinctive poetry rapidly attained the status of modern classic in her homeland. Direct and affectingly simple, her work elicited a rare warmth of emotional response beyond the narrow confines of the academy. "A refugee from the east," she once w | | Anti-intellectual poet, artist and performer Ivor Cutler (1923- 2006 ) delighted and irritated for 50 years
THE poet, humorist, illustrator and composer Ivor Cutler possessed a disconcerting talent and a singular ability to view the world from an oblique perspective. His admirers spanned the generations, from those who had become fascinated by his doleful Scottish tones in the late 1950s to members of the modern pop generation. His recordings were championed by John Peel on Radio 1 over many years, and in 1997, at the age of 74, he was signed up by the record label Creation, the home of Oasis. | | Oscar-nominated 'English' actress Rachel Weisz
By Ed Vulliamy
Call it the Helen Mirren factor: an entwinement between brains, beauty, level-headedness and raw carnality that now marks out another "English" actor as being both adored by, but somehow distant from, the tack of Tinseltown. That rare entwinement in part accounts for Rachel Weisz's Oscar nomination this week for her role in The Constant Gardener. Acknowledgement, along with a Golden Globe, that she now joins the ranks of our most successful actors with what critics and writers call her bewitchin | | Shoshana Damari, diva of Israeli popular song, 1923-2006
By Helen Kaye
Born in 1923 in the city of Damar in Yemen, Shoshana Damari, diva of Israeli popular song and an Israel Prize laureate, came to Israel at the age of two. She began her long musical career as a young child, accompanying her mother, who sang at functions. Damari left her parents' home at age 13 and moved to Tel Aviv, where she met her manager Shlomo Bushmi. The two married three years later. | | Rabbi Yehuda Chitrik a walking encyclopedia of Hasidic tales, Is Dead at 106
By Wolfgang Saxon
Rabbi Yehuda Chitrik, a legendary storyteller in the Lubavitcher community, died on Tuesday at Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn. He was 106 and lived in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, the hub of the worldwide Lubavitcher Hasidic movement.
The death was announced by Rabbi Zalman Shmotkin of the Chabad Lubavitch Media Center in Brooklyn. One of Rabbi Chitrik's grandsons, Ari Chitrik, said he was hospitalized on Feb. 8 after suffering a heart attack. | | Pulitzer Prize winner Wendy Wasserstein Dies at 55
By Caharles Isherwood
Wendy Wasserstein, who spoke for a generation of smart, driven but sometimes unsatisfied women in a series of popular plays that included the long-running Pulitzer Prize winner "The Heidi Chronicles," died today after a bout with lymphoma, Lincoln Center Theater announced. She was 55. Starting in 1977 with her breakthrough work "Uncommon Women and Others," Ms. Wasserstein's plays struck a profound chord with women struggling to reconcile a desire for romance and companionship, drummed into the b | | Red-hot mamma Sue Kelvin to play Sophie Tucker
If there is one woman who can do the big, bold and brassy vaudeville star Sophie Tucker, it's Sue Kelvin. Not only she is Jewish and, in her words, overweight', but also the Manchester actress's grandparents knew the singer now known as the original Red-Hot Mamma'. "It was kind of fate that I should play her," said Kelvin, 46, of Muswell Hill. "I was brought up listening to these stories about Sophie Tucker." | | Magical Modernist : Marc Chagall .
By Richard Lacayo
Sometimes it doesn't pay to be too popular. By the time of his death in 1985, at age 97, Marc Chagall was suburbia's favorite genius. He offered modernism without tears, without the headaches of Cubism or the thin air of abstraction. For middle-class Jews, he was also the chronicler of the world of their fathers, the poet of that lost, enchanted universe. By the mid-1960s, when Fiddler on the Roof took its title from one of Chagall's best-known motifs, his popular reputation was at its peak. | | Harold Leventhal (1919 - 2005 )
Impresario who advanced the careers of such singers as Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez
HAROLD LEVENTHAL appeared on British television screens only a week before his death — in No Direction Home, Martin Scorsese’s acclaimed documentary about Bob Dylan, he reminisiced about his part in the singer’s early career. | | Roman Polanski :Film and theatre director, script writer, actor and producer
By Ewa Nawoj
Roman Polanski, the film and theatre director, script writer, actor and producer, was born in Paris in 1933. When he was three, his family moved to Poland. During the war Polanski spent two years in the Cracow's ghetto - his family being Jewish - but then escaped and went into hiding. Polanski's mother, however, perished in a concentration camp. As a teenager Polanski acted in children's radio plays and on the stage. His film acting debut took place in 1953. A student of film directing at the Na | | Lillian Lux (1919-2005) Yiddish Theatre Star, Dead at 86
By Kenneth Jones
Lillian Lux, a star of the Yiddish theatre and matriarch of the Burstein theatre family, died June 10 at St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan, the family announced. Ms. Lux was 86. Her many performance credits include productions with her husband Pesach'ke Burstein and twin children Susan and Michael. The latter, as Mike Burstyn, appeared in Broadway's Barnum and Ain't Broadway Grand and will appear soon Off-Broadway in On Second Avenue, the critically acclaimed salute to the bygone era of Yiddis | | Taylor company presents a true gift
Nothing could warm a balletomane's heart during the holiday season more than a visit by one of the world's greatest dance groups, the Paul Taylor Dance Company, performing the founder's imaginative, varied and downright brilliant choreography. There was even a touch of Hanukkah spirit on the program at the Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater with the local premiere of "Klezmerbluegrass," a work commissioned by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture to mark 350 years of Jewish life in America | | Paul Taylor's Marvelous Melting Pot
By Sarah Kaufman
Jewish folk dance and Appalachian square dance are woven together with Taylor's trademark fluidity. He reformulates both in a direct, muscular way. There is some hand-holding, some bowing and curtsying, dancing in a line or in whirling circles. But rather than specific ethnic steps, what you see is what communal dancing feels like, that bubbly high you get from the group dynamics. | | The ballad of Rebecca Miller
By Hap Erstein
If you're looking for evidence that talent might be genetic, consider novelist-director-screenwriter Rebecca Miller. She is the daughter of the late Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Arthur Miller and famed photographer Inge Morath. As her father did, she writes complex characters often at crossroads of crisis. But Miller, 42, has chosen to express them more like her mother — in the visual world of movies, rather than the stage | | Thousands mourn at Manor's funeral (1941-2005)
By Talya Halkin
Thousands mourned the passing of prolific songwriter Ehud Manor Wednesday afternoon as admirers, family members, close friends and Israel's top musicians and public figures gathered for a moving funeral ceremony in Binyamina. Manor, who died of heart failure on Monday night, was laid to rest in the town he was born in and of which he wrote frequently with much love. His father Yisrael Weiner and his brother Yehuda, who was killed in the War of Attrition, are also buried in the Binyamina cemetery | | Nobel laureate Saul Bellow dies (1915-2005)
Bellow was the most acclaimed of a generation of Jewish writers who emerged after World War II, among them Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth and Cynthia Ozick. To American letters, he brought the immigrant’s hustle, the bookworm’s brains and the high-minded notions of the born romantic. ‘Backbone of 20th-century American literature’
“The backbone of 20th-century American literature has been provided by two novelists — William Faulkner and Saul Bellow,” Philip Roth said in a statement Tuesday. “Toget | | In the End, the World Was a Stage
By Joseph Farrell
The Pope was a writer as well as churchman, and his Polishness is obviously most strongly felt in his literary works. The history and culture of his native place gripped the young Wojtyla, who read avidly its poets and playwrights, forming a special attachment for the patriotic writers of the Romantic era. At university, he began publishing poems and plays of his own, and he would continue writing verse for the next 40 years, seemingly stopping only when he was elected to the throne of St Peter. | | Sophie Milman : Young Jazz Singer Soars by Creating 'Food for the Soul'
By Aliyah Baruchin
The photograph that adorns the cover of Canadian jazz singer Sophie Milman's debut album is classic cabaret-glamour fare. In it, the very young, very blonde Milman poses in jazz uniform: the obligatory black dress and copious long-stranded pearls, a sultry lock of hair draped over one eye, her Slavic-model looks tastefully deployed to help album sales along. But open the jacket and there's a surprise: a very different photo of Milman, seated, wearing a turquoise camisole, her hair pinned up. Rea | | America's greatest living playwright Arthur Miller dead at 89
Arthur Miller, the Pulitzer prize-winning playwright whose most famous fictional creation, Willy Loman in "Death of a Salesman," came to symbolize the American Dream gone awry, has died, his assistant said Friday. He was 89.
Miller, who had been hailed as America's greatest living playwright, died Thursday night at his home in Roxbury of heart failure, his assistant, Julia Bolus, said Friday. His family was at his bedside, she said. | | Ephraim Kishon passes away at age 81(1924- 2005)
By Philipp Blom
Concentration camp survivor who became a writer of satirical novels.It is a particular irony that Kishon's satirical stories and novels enjoyed most success in Germany, where he soon became a household name. Kishon took it in his stride that his phenomenal success never really took off in the English-speaking world but that he became the purveyor of humour to the German economic miracle: "It is a great satisfaction for me to see the grandchildren of my executioners queue up at all my readings," | | You can't mistake the voice :Harvey Fierstein portraying Tevye in "Fiddler on the Roof."
By Michael Kuchwara
Somewhere between a rumble and a squawk, it finds its way from the stage into the vast expanse of the Minskoff Theatre and explodes. Harvey Fierstein is back on the boards, and he's not taking the easy way out in the vocal department.
In his first Broadway role since playing Baltimore hausfrau Edna Turnblad in "Hairspray," Fierstein has taken on another classic, portraying Tevye the milkman in the current revival of the musical "Fiddler on the Roof." | | Israeli actor Avraham Chalfi (1904-1980 )-The Poet with the cane and green coat
By Boaz Trinker
On Friday, January 7th 2005 the Cameri theatre held a special event commemorating Chalfi's 100th birthday, as part of their regular series homages to prominent cultural figures who lived and worked in Tel-Aviv. The show itself was a rare tribute to the artist, comprising of readings of his poems by veteran actors such as Shlomo Vishinsky, Zaharira Harifai and Yosef Carmon and also performances by Miki Kam, Alon Oleartchik and some of the theatres young new recruits. The full venue (of 1000 seats | | Poet and playwright Elisheva Greenbaum dies (1965-2005)
By Vivian Eden
Poet and playwright Elisheva Greenbaum was born in 1965 to parents who immigrated from the United States, Judith and Professor Charlie Greenbaum of the Psychology Department of the Hebrew University. She was a graduate of the Tel Aviv University theater department, the creative writing department at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (summa cum laude) and the 1997 Helicon Workshop for Young Poets. | | Jerry Orbach dead at 69 (1936 - 2005)
Actor Jerry Orbach, best known for his long-running role as New York police detective Lennie Briscoe on "Law & Order," has died. He was 69. Orbach died of prostate cancer Tuesday night, a spokesman for the program confirmed Wednesday. The actor had been undergoing treatment for his illness for several weeks, Audrey Davis of the public relations agency Lippin Group told The Associated Press.
He had recently been in production for a "Law & Order" spinoff featuring Briscoe, "Law & Order: Trial by | | Carl Esmond , actor (1905-2004)
By Tom Vallance
Born Willy Eichberger in Vienna in 1905, he was educated at Vienna University and at the State Academy of Dramatic Arts, but initially worked as a bank clerk before switching to acting. He was pursuing a successful career on the stage (as Willy Eichberger) in both Vienna and Berlin before seeking refuge in London from Nazi persecution in 1933.
The previous year he had appeared in his first German film, co-starring with Marta Eggerth in the popular Kaiserwaltzer (The Emperor Waltz, 1932), and he | | Dame Alicia, the woman who brought ballet to the people, dies at 94 (1910 - 2004)
By Nadine Meisner
Many spectators thought Markova was Russian, but her name had undergone the regulation Russianisation by Diaghilev. She was born Lilian Alicia Marks in Finsbury Park, London, in 1910, the eldest of four girls. Her father Arthur was a mining engineer whose ancestors had been involved in the design of Tower Bridge and the lights on Broadway. Arthur was Jewish and his wife Eileen Barry had converted to Judaism. The family prospered. By 1914, Arthur had a factory in the Caledonian Road, manufacturin | | Tadeusz Kantor (1915-1990)
By Malgorzata Kitowska Lysiak
Born in 1915, died in 1990. Stage director, creator of happenings, painter, scenery designer, writer, art theoretician, actor in his own productions, lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. Kantor was inspired by Constructivism, Dada, Informel art, and Surrealism. He was educated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, studying under the eye of Karol Frycz, an outstanding stage designer of the inter-war period. | | Grieving for Israeli music maker: Uzi Hitman 1952-2004
By Sagi Bin Nun
For 33 years Hitman, one of the most popular artists in Israel, wrote many successful songs that have made their mark on Hebrew vocal music and were influenced by varied musical styles - Mediterranean, Jewish, pop and children's songs. At ACUM (the Association of Composers, Authors and Publishers of Music in Israel), there are 658 songs registered for which he wrote music and lyrics, many of which have become hits and anthems, among them a version of Adon Olam, "Who Knew It Would Be Like This," | | Two literary treatments of Jewish folklore’s ‘Dybbuk’ at BAM’s Next Wave Festival
The Dybbuk interweaves Yiddish writer and socialist activist Szymon Ansky’s landmark 1920 play with contemporary Polish-Jewish novelist Hanna Krall’s 1996 short story of the same name. Ansky’s drama, set in prewar Poland, tells of ill-fated lovers who are separated by the woman’s disapproving and greedy father, who insists she marry someone with more money. Her beloved dies and returns to possess her body in order for the two to be together again, and the woman must choose between a loveless mar | | Comedian Rodney Dangerfield Dies at 82
By Martin Weil
Rodney Dangerfield, 82, the nightclub, television and movie comic who made millions laugh with his ironic, rapid-fire recollections of what he claimed were his personal humiliations and inadequacies, died yesterday in Los Angeles.
Mr. Dangerfield underwent surgery Aug. 25 to replace a heart valve. He later fell into a coma from which he emerged last week to kiss his wife and squeeze her hand, according to a statement from his publicist. | | David Raksin(1912 - 2004) Film composer and writer of 'Laura' died at 92
By Dick Vosburgh
"Laura / is the face in the misty light / Footsteps that you hear down the hall / The laugh that floats on a summer night / That you can never quite / Recall . . ." One of the most recorded of all popular songs, "Laura" was written over a hectic weekend in 1944 by the 32-year-old David Raksin. Composer of more than 100 film scores, he also wrote for television, the theatre and the concert hall. When asked in a Radio 3 interview how he decided on the appropriate style of music for a given film, h | | Samir Naqqash (Baghdad 1938 – Petah Tiqva 2004) Obituary
By Shmuel Moreh
The untimely passing away of our friend, the novelist and playwright, the Late Mr. Samir Naqqash on July 6, 2004 was a great shock to his friends and admirers all over the world. Although he wrote mainly in canonical Arabic he developed a genuine Arabic style with allusions to Jewish and Muslim history, proverbs, idioms, folklore and cultures. In his dialogues he uses various Iraqi colloquial dialects mainly those of the Muslim majority, Christians and of the formerly Jewish minority dialects of | | A "Forgotten Composer" Remembered :Ernst Toch (1887–1964) and his Cantata of The Bitter Herbs
"Fetters fell, the captive rose. Old is the memory of Israel's escape from Egypt. Told and retold for thousands of years, the story has given strength to the weary, hope to the disheartened." Thus begins Ernst Toch's CANTATA OF THE BITTER HERBS, a unique musical-dramatic work begun during the great German-Jewish composer's forced exile to the United States, and premiered in Los Angeles in the midst of World War Two. Toch's retelling of the Passover story is cast as an appeal for universal justic | | The unique voice and style of Arik Lavi died at the age of 77 (1927 - 2004)
By Gidi Avivi
The unique voice and style of Arik Lavi, who died on Tuesday 29 june at the age of 77, have been a staple for radio listeners and lovers of Israeli music for so many years that it's impossible to imagine Israeli music without him.
Since he began his professional career with the Carmel troupe in 1949, and especially after he attained stardom as part of the Arava Trio in 1957, it seems Lavi has always been there - energetically performing songs with a rare combination of humor and pathos. | | A comic actor's grief resonates with Israelis
By Ben Lynfield
Vishinsky observed the traditional one-week mourning period - then shaved his stubble, a sign of bereavement, and headed back to the comic stage. "The audience pays money and they deserve the best show possible," he says. But, he adds, "people usually used to laugh more at me; now they are sighing, and I am hearing that sigh." Offstage, he is now devoting his energies to getting Israel out of the coastal enclave, calling for a withdrawal in interviews and appearances so that, he says, other Isra | | Joseph Chaikin, actor and director (1935 -2003)
By Moti Sandak
Joseph Chaikin, actor and director, was born in Brooklyn in 1935 and educated at Drake University. He directed one of the most influential experimental theater groups in the United States, the New York City based Open Theater, which he founded in 1963 after working as an actor with the Living Theater. For nearly a decade, the Open Theater devoted itself to the collaborative creation of drama, investigating the essential problems of human existence. Joseph Chaikin died on June 22, 2003. | | Award-winning dramatist Jack Rosenthal died aged 72 (1931-2004 )
By Philip Purser
Jack Rosenthal, who has died from cancer aged 72, was television's Charles Dickens, inexhaustible, ever inventive, usually scaling the heights, once in a while paddling around in the shallows, but rarely failing to find rich comedy in every walk of life.
Over 42 years, he furnished more than 250 scripts, a number of which charted his own life - Bar Mitzvah Boy (1976), for example, recalling the embarrassments but also the eventual fulfilment of a Jewish boy's rite of passage, or Eskimo Day, 20 | | Comedian and Actor Alan King Dies at 76
By Adam Bernstein
Alan King, 76, the dyspeptic wisecracker whose withering stare, Brooklyn accent and mockery of modern American life made him a comic favorite for six decades, died May 9 at a hospital in New York. He had lung cancer. The comedian, known also for his ever-present cigar, amused audiences in nightclubs and on stage and television with routines about the ailments of suburban living. His acts exemplified an old school of Jewish New York humor in which one could practically hear the rimshot after each | | Robbins' Sister Dies at 'Fiddler' Opening
The sister of Jerome Robbins, who directed and choreographed the original production of "Fiddler on the Roof," died Thursday of a heart attack while attending the opening night of the musical's latest Broadway revival.Sonia Cullinen, 91, was stricken before the curtain went up at the Minskoff Theatre ... | | ART's Brustein explores Jewish identity in his play in progress :Spring Forward,Fall Back
By Maureen Dezell
Spring Forward, Fall Back," a story of three generations of fathers and sons confronting their Jewish identity in America, is a play in progress, says Brustein. Excerpts were performed in this year's Boston Theater Marathon. Now the play is about to receive its first full staged reading. will be followed by a panel discussion sponsored by the New Center for Arts and Culture and the ART. ...Brustein has harbored a lifelong interest in Jewish subjects, he says. He explored themes and variations in | | Playwright James Sherman speaks on " From Door to Door "
By Kenneth Jones
The play's title is a reference to a phrase in the Hebrew prayer book, "l'dor v'dor," which means "from generation to generation." The play focuses on "three generations of the same family," Sherman explained. "One woman of my grandmother's generation, one woman of my mother's generation and one woman of our generation. The play covers 65 years, from 1935 up to just about the present." "I think all plays are autobiographical, the more I think about it," Sherman said. "Edward Albee wrote Three Ta | | Comedian Jackie Mason still a master of wit and timing
By Bill DeYoung
Onstage, Jackie Mason stands in front of a microphone, his hands thrust into the pockets of his navy blue suit. There's no set and no spotlight, and the 72-year-old comic doesn't use a single prop. Just his mouth. And that's plenty. | | Molina,The man who plays Tevye is preparing his dressing room
By Blake Green
"I was trying to make it comfy because, please, God, we'll be here for a while," he says about settling in for the new revival of "Fiddler on the Roof." The man who plays Tevye is a Brit and, perhaps even more notable, a gentile. Unlike many of his older redecessors, at 50 he is of an appropriate age to have young daughters...What attracted him to "Fiddler" was the father-daughter relationship, having raised a daughter himself. | | Maia Morgenstern speaks on the work with Mel Gibson and "The Passion of the Christ"
By Tim Ryan
"I am Jewish, yes, and my parents were Holocaust survivors. 'Passion' is not anti-Semitic, as some have claimed," says Maia Morgenstern "Mel Gibson is an artist, a director. He never imposed his religious convictions on anyone. "There are many messages in the film, but certainly I think the most important one is social-political. It's how people can be manipulated by their leaders." | | Michael Frayn:Getting to the nucleus of Copenhagen
By J. Kelly Nestruck
Michael Frayn's unlikely hit play about a 1941 meeting between two atomic physicists has won critical praise but upset some historians : "When I wrote it [for the Royal National Theatre in London], I thought that no one else would perform it," recalls Frayn, speaking on the phone from his house on the Thames over the holidays. ("It's a relief to sit down and chat rather than the chaos of the grandchildren," the grandfather of eight comments before the interview begins.) | | Andrei Malaev-Babel never knew his grandfather Isaac Babel (1894-1940),
By Jane Horwitz
Andrei Malaev-Babel never knew his grandfather, the great Russian Jewish writer Isaac Babel (1894-1940), who was shot by Stalin's secret police long before his grandson was born. Even so, the producing artistic director of Stanislavsky Theater Studio says of his upcoming solo turn performing several of Babel's short stories, "Whether I want it or not, it is a personal production" for him. | | Kazimierz Dejmek Polish Actor , Director and Minister of Culture (April 17, 1924-December 31, 2002)
By Monika Mokrzycka
In 1988 Kazimierz Dejmek was elected chairman of the Union of Polish Stage Artists. Between 1993 and 1996 he was Minister of Culture under Prime Minister Waldemar Pawlak. After years of being away, he returned to the New Theatre in Lodz, where he directed Tadeusz Slobodzianek's contemporary piece SEN PLUSKWY / THE BEDBUG'S DREAM (2001). He passed away a handful of weeks before the premiere of his newest production, a staging of William Shakespeare's HAMLET. | | Lenny Bruce granted posthumous pardon
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Gov. George Pataki has pardoned the late stand-up comedian Lenny Bruce for a 1964 obscenity conviction. "The posthumous pardon of Lenny Bruce is a declaration of New York's commitment to upholding the First Amendment," Pataki said Tuesday. "I hope this pardon serves as a reminder of the precious freedoms we are fighting to preserve as we continue to wage the war on terror." Kitty Bruce, Bruce's 48-year-old daughter, said she was overwhelmed by the news. | | It's a Happy New Year For.. MIKE NICHOLS,ITZHAK PERLMAN,TONY KUSHNER,HARVEY KORMAN...
By Nate Bloom
Nate Bloom ,editor of www.Jewhoo.com , a Jewish biographical site selects for us the lucky Jewish artists for 2003 :MIKE NICHOLS,ITZHAK PERLMAN,TONY KUSHNER,HARVEY KORMAN ,STEVEN SPIELBERG and more... | | Felix Fibich, the 86-year-old Yiddish dance star
By Judith Brin Ingber
'At my age this shouldn't be happening," acknowledged Felix Fibich, the 86-year-old Yiddish dance star. Fibich is still in disbelief over his own upcoming schedule: From December 23 to 29, he will give daily dance workshops for six days in a row as one of the master artists presented at KlezKamp, the 19th Annual Yiddish Folk Arts Program at the Swan Lake Hotel in New York's Catskill Mountains. | | Dora Wasserman, The indefatigable founding director of Canada's only Yiddish theatre died at 84.
By Alan Hustak
Dora Wasserman, the indefatigable founding director of Canada's only Yiddish Theatre, died last night at the Montreal Jewish General Hospital. She was 84. Wasserman not only created a vibrant company of actors who are among the most respected non-professional groups in the country, she helped nurture Yiddish language and culture.
"Theatre has nothing to do with language. If language is the problem, its not a problem, " | | Mining for Golda
By Lisa Bornstein
Actress Tovah Feldshuh turns research for Broadway role into revealing cabaret act | | Saul Reichlin Brings Sholom Aleichem to New York
By Irene Backalenick
One day, in the late 80’s, on one of my annual visits to South Africa to see my mother in Cape Town, I had stopped over in Johannesburg to visit some relatives, Morrie and Ekkie Fine, who had become close family when I first lived there as a newly qualified attorney. While I was idly looking at the books in their bookcase I spotted a book of short stories by Sholom Aleichem. ‘Ooh, can I borrow this, I called out, waving the little book?’
‘You can have it’, Ekkie called back, ‘Your mother gave i | | Ellen Cassedy's play inspired by Elderly woman's diary
"There are timeless lessons in Jessie's journal about how you survive as an elderly woman by finding dignity and meaning in even the smallest banalities of life," Cassedy says. Cassedy also learned that the autumn of Jessie's life was given purpose at a place called the Jay Center on Ocean Ave., where a social worker named Sunny Brandler taught a poetry therapy class, using Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," to show how each of us in our own special way is a valuable part of a greater who | | Lotte Berk 1913-2003
Lotte Berk, who died on Tuesday aged 90, invented an exercise regime followed by millions of women over the past four decades;Lieselotte Heymansohn was born in Cologne on January 17 1913, one of two daughters of a Russian-born tailor; her mother was German.In 1932 Lotte Berk danced as a soloist at Mannheim, but, as she was Jewish, the rise of Hitler made her position precarious. In 1933 she was due to perform at Cologne with her husband, but was told that, if she went on stage.... | | Angels in America playwright Kushner to speak at Wake Forest University
By Ally Diljohn
Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Tony Kushner will visit the Wake Forest University Nov. 13 to speak in Wait Chapel. Kushner is the author of the two-part play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, the first of which was performed by the theatre department in September. Students will have several opportunities to interact with Kushner. His main speaking engagement will take place at 7 p.m. in Wait Chapel. | | Tovah Feldshuh talks about Golda and more...
By Ellis Nassour
“I’ve never drawn parallels between Diana Vreeland, Tallulah Bankhead and Golda Meir!,” she continues, “but there are parallels. They were women with access to power who demanded respect – or, in Tallulah’s case, disrespect. None of ‘my’ women made apologies for rubbing people the wrong way. Vreeland set new trends in fashion, Bankhead saw herself as a groundbreaking member of the full life movement and Meir envisioned a state. All were women to be reckoned with.” | | Tamara Johnson plays legacy of the pioneering female actress Laura Keene
By Karl B. Hille
Some people know Laura Keene as the actress who walked onstage as President Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theater. But for Tamara Johnson, that tidbit overshadows the much more expansive legacy of the pioneering female actress and theater manager. She also co-authored and starred in another one-woman show about a Russian Jewish woman for the Jewish Museum of Maryland. | | Robert McKee-Lessons of a screenwriting guru.
By Ian Parker
You’ve got to ask big questions. ‘Why am I attracted to this material? Because I’m Jewish and I want to get at those Nazis one more time?’ My advice is stop focussing on this one guy. I don’t think there’s anything at the end of that road. ” says Mckee. | | Deb Filler's new show Filler Up feeling hungry at Auckland Festival
By Linda Herrick
Filler, you see, bakes Jewish challah bread on stage. By the end of her 90-minute monologue and the "ping!"of the microwave, the theatre is filled with the fragrance of steaming bread, which - thankfully - she then shares with the audience. | | Kudos for the King of 'Clowns' Playwright Herb Gardner
By Wendy Wasserstein
Playwright Herb Gardner found success when he was just 27 years old. The Brooklyn boy, who graduated from the High School of Performing Arts and sold orange drink at the Cort and National theaters, won the New York Drama Critics Prize as most promising playwright of the season when his show "A Thousand Clowns" opened on Broadway in 1962. His play won acclaim from every corner — except the Jewish Daily Forward. ...At every Gardner family Seder, the review of "A Thousand Clowns" from the Forward w | |
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