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W. of Haggerty • 453-2002 1111111111MINIO •ells11 ■ 11 ■ 1111 I• ■ gella ■ L I s■ ell•1111111111111 ■ allsr •••••••••••••• li •■ ■■■se■eg■• ••••• ■ ••∎ • Give every NEWBORN Quality Food, Simple Setting, Reasonable Prices Le Metro Wishes Its Customers and Friends A Very Healthy & Happy New Year 29855 Northwestern Hwy. • Applegate Square • Southfield • 353-2757 138 111111U111111111 the advantage ..111111Etnt. The Restaurant of-the '90s FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1990 Continued from Page 136 Masterbard I Wish It's Customers and Friends A Happy and Healthy New Year • • • • Yiddish Theater Support the March of Dimes EMP11-1 OFF FCIS FOUNDADON !••• , ••i • rious Yiddishist education at home and school, with classes in Yiddish as well as Hebrew, English, and — be- cause this was Montreal — French. Yiddish theater has always attracted to itself the community's strong feelings about the culture as a whole. So twenty years ago, when Moishe was a long-haired idealistic college kid, he de- termined to be a Yiddish actor. "Then I got a call from a well-known manager. The legendary Polish Yiddish star Ida Kaminska had arrived in New York. First they were going to create a huge national tour. Then they were going to organize an ensemble to do reper- tory. He said I would be a welcome member." Moishe talks about love behind a particularly matter-of-fact voice. "So I went." Between one class and the next he caught a Greyhound bus south. When the border guards discovered he had only 40 Canadian dollars in his jeans pocket, not even enough for a return ticket, they turned him around and sent him home to Montreal. But it didn't occur to him to give up his big chance. Three months later a lift with a respectable-looking uncle got him across the border — still without enough cash for a ticket back. The huge national tour folded, and the welcome member earned not quite enough to live on, but Moishe took an extra job as Yiddish newscaster at Radio WEVD, the Station That Speaks Your Language, and made Yiddish theater his home. He worked with the older actors. He watched them from the wings. He sat in their dress- ing rooms and listened to their stories of trouping on six continents. They were his glamorous, witty, demanding, brave, temperamental zeydes and bubbes; he was their gentle dreamy grandson. "Those were pretty amaz- ing years, because that was the end of when all those actors were alive. You could still have the atmosphere. Madame Kaminska, for in- stance — her bearing was still that of an aristocrat. You always felt honored to be in her presence, drawn to her. She was a magnet. I was privileged. I am the last link in the goldene keyt, the golden chain. Now that Moishe has become the adoring father of a baby girl, he is more de- termined than ever to preserve the chain of culture for posterity. Although he continues to perform in American theater and films as well as in Yiddish — nobody can live solely on Yiddish theater — he has es- tablished an agency called Golden Land Connections, a "Jewish entertainment resource," and is currently producing Those Were the Days, his third successful musical revue. He marvels that when they played at the mammoth Westbury Music Fair on Long Island, "they loved it!" His eyes widen but his voice is quieter than ever. "Imagine it! Three thou- sand people, a full house, three thousand people laughing! Imagine! They were loving Yiddish theater!" What needs bridging above all is language. As a producer, Moishe grapples with Yiddish itself, the theater's heart and also its heartache. If a show mixes in too much English, it is Yiddish theater no longer. It becomes "Jewish" theater, i.e., a show which is in some way of Jewish interest, or a show based on Yiddish original material. (Both these genres are popular. The Jewish Repertory Theatre in New York City, an "American" theater, re- Yiddish theater has always attracted the community's strong feelings. cently produced Goldfadn's classic operetta The Witch with the dialogue translated into English but with the song lyrics in the original Yiddish.) On the other hand, if the actors speak only Yiddish, many potential ticket- buyers will stay away. By now even older au- diences have usually grown up speaking English and continually whisper transla- tions from row to row. So producers avoid the more literary repertoire and often try English synopses in the playbills, or narrators who come out in front of the cur- tain between scenes to ex- plain what's going on. Sometimes bits of dialogue in English are woven in to make sure everyone is following. ("What do you mean, why am I crying too.") Technology helps: subtitles projected against the wall beside the stage, or simulta- neous translations through headphones.