I ENTERTAINMENT I

Yiddish Theater

RICHARD, NATALIE & ALLAN STEINIK
and DR. MICHAEL & NORMA DORMAN
And The Employees Of

Continued from Page 132

Detroit
Bagel Factories

WISH EVERYONE A
VERY HEALTHY and HAPPY

Q)k
-

NEW YEAR

Break The Fast With
Hot Bagels

From Our Orchard Lake, S. of 14 Location,
Open Saturday, Sept. 29, 2 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Please Call Your Orders In Early (5 doz. or more)

851-4284

001den

PETER'S K

Restaurant

Chinese American Restaurant

Wishes Its
Customers And

Friends
A Most Joyous
And Healthful New Year

4067 W. Maple, Just E. of Telegraph

642-8386

BOB MCDONALD
AND
ROMAN TERRACE CATERING
GRATEFULLY THANK
THEIR CUSTOMERS
AND FRIENDS AND
WISH EVERYONE THE
VERY BEST IN HAPPINESS
AND GOOD HEALTH ON
THE NEW YEAR

25920 GREENFIELD at Lincoln
Oak Park
968-4060

WISHES ITS
FRIENDS &
CUSTOMERS
A HEALTHY
AND
HAPPY
NEW YEAR

DYSAUTONOMIA

Dysautonomia is organized
and operated for educational
research purposes to maintain
evaluation and treatment of
afflected children.

23666 Orchard Lake Rd., Just S. of 10 Mile Rd.

Dysautonomia Foundation Inc.

476-1986

3000 Town Center, Suite 1500,
Southfield, MI 48075 (313) 444-4848

134 FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1990

Reissa perform on the
Yiddish stage. They perform
mostly in New York City or
in New-York-based com-
panies that tour Miami and
elsewhere. Montreal has its
own troupe and small ama-
teur groups exist in other
cities.
The young actors appear
with established Yiddish
stars or sometimes just pin-
ch-hit when a tour comes
through from Israel, Latin
America, or Eastern Europe.
Some thirty actually belong
to the Hebrew Actors Union,
which is affiliated with
Actors Equity.
Like Eleanor, most of them
are outsiders to the world
that created Yiddish
theater. They missed the
high moment. Because their
connection with Yiddish cul-
ture tends to be fragmen-
tary, so is their connection
with Yiddish theater,
though their Yiddish theater
experiences often draw them
closer to Yiddishkeit as a
whole. Since their attitudes
toward Yiddish theater
reflect their individual at-
titudes toward their own
Yiddish heritage and Jewish
identities, they may be seen
as a sketchy cross-section of
their generation in Ameri-
can life.
Eleanor is typical of the
pros, for whom Yiddish
theater means above all a
job. It even brings her some
professional benefits beyond
Equity minimum pay since
it's so much smaller a world
than the mainstream, she
has already had oppor-
tunities to choreograph and
direct.
But for an ambitious
American actor Yiddish
theater can be dangerous.
In yet another reworking
of the interplay between
ethnic exclusion and ethnic
self-consciousness, there is a
way in which this makes
Yiddish theater more attrac-
tive to these actors. Only in
Yiddish theater is Eleanor
"not an off- beat ethnic type.
I'm simply an actress and an
attractive woman and a ver-
satile performer — just a
real Jane Doe!"
In Yiddish theater,
paradoxically, Eleanor is
liberated from Jewishness
into theater. Playing in
Yiddish theater has proved a
sideways route into her own
identity.
Eleanor lives her "real
life" in English. But Yiddish
was her first language —
though she can read her
scripts only when
transliterated into English
characters — and Yiddish
theater releases her into the
speech of her early

childhood. "When I do
Yiddish theater, I like
speaking Yiddish. I like it. It
feels . . . The words feel . . ."
In an effort to analyze her
own reactions, Eleanor
smacks her lips experimen-
tally as if trying a mouthful
of wine, and the taste seems
to surprise and amuse her.
"The words feel good in my
mouth!" Playing Yiddish '-
theater on tour in Israel
opened Eleanor to Zionist
sympathies. And last year,
backstage with the cast of
Songs of Paradise, she found
a tiny community of insiders
within an insiders' world:
four out of the cast of five
are, like her, children of sur-
vivors.
Another of the four experi-
enced the expansion of his
Jewish consciousness more

There are no
Yiddish actors any
more; there are
only young actors
who play in
Yiddish.

violently. "For me to be do-
ing Yiddish theater,"
reflects David Kener, dizzy
with reversal, "is as weird as
it gets." An actor in his
twenties, with "ethnically"
dark, tough-guy. looks, David
grew up in Brooklyn, hostile
to Jewish authority and cul-
ture. When his father sent
him to yeshiva, he fought
back by becoming a fresh- -
mouthed cut-up who drove
the teachers crazy and
played hookey as much as
possible.
He emerged with a halting
knowledge of Yiddish, most-
ly punchlines, and so angry
at all Jewish institutions
that the first time he was
offered a Yiddish role, he
wheeled at the last minute
and actually bolted.
"Those old guys, that
whole atmosphere — I
couldn't take it." It took the
personal prestige of Joseph
Papp, who produced Songs of
Paradise at the Public
Theatre, to lure him back,
years later. (In fact, the
Backstage casting call for
Songs of Paradise for actors
"who speak Yiddish or have
access to the language" drew
four hundred auditioners.)
And though David still
seems jittery and poised for a
jailbreak out of the Yiddish
world, theater has allowed
him reconciliation without
defeat. He is still hungry for
mainstream success but
astonished to find himself
also working on his Yiddish

Continued on Page 136