by dan pine
staff writer
Remember that last shot in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” in a cavernous warehouse filled with stacks of crated government archives?
San Francisco State University theater professor Joel Schecter may not be a movie character, but he had an Indiana Jones moment when he discovered a lost masterpiece of the Yiddish theater buried in the National Archives.
“We Live and Laugh” was a 1937 play by Jacob Bergren, a popular actor on New York’s Yiddish stages active in the Federal Theater Project (a Roosevelt-era WPA program that created work for actors, writers and stagecraft professionals).
Not only did Schecter rediscover the play, he has newly adapted it as a musical. The university’s College of Creative Arts will present “Stars: A Yiddish Theater Revue in English” at SFSU and other venues around town, including the BJE Jewish Community Library and the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco.
“We’re not reviving the original,” says Schecter. “Our version has been adapted by Irving Fishman and Julius Schmeler, both SFSU students in Jewish Studies. It’s longer, with new material, and we added Yiddish and English songs like ‘Alle Breeder’ and ‘Grine Couzine.’”
Local Jewish music artist Gerry Tenney serves as the show’s musical director, leading a small ensemble of klezmer musicians.
The story of “Stars” is a kind of play-within-a-play, in which various real life one-time stars from the Yiddish theater discuss ways to save their beloved art form from extinction.
Schecter is one of their true heirs. He has always loved Yiddish theater and has mounted three Yiddish-flavored productions at SFSU. His casts are usually multicultural (with an occasional Jewish actor thrown in for good luck).
One of those cast members in “Stars” is Ian Pugh, a graduate student who plays Menasha Skulnick, a famous Yiddish comedian from the 1920’s and 1930’s.
“He seems like the forerunner of a Woody Allen character,” says Pugh, who did extensive research into his character’s history. “He was described as the Yiddish Charlie Chaplin, which he took great umbrage to. He saw the Chaplin character as a petty thief. He saw his own character as an honest dope, a shlemiel.”
Though not Jewish, Pugh says he quickly found his way into his character, right down to the required Yiddishisms. Says the taller-than-average actor: “My biggest challenge is that [Skulnick] was a short guy with hunched shoulders and a sad little face. I have to find a middle ground.”
To prepare his cast, Schecter reviewed the history of Yiddish theater, especially in New York circa 1930. “Some of [the featured stars] were in the generation following Tomashefsky,” he notes. “We looked at film clips and studied the actors’ styles.”
Last year, while researching a book on Yiddish theater, Schecter visited the National Archives in Washington, D.C., where he came across the play. “It was a great feeling, wondering if I was the first person who read this since 1937,” says Schecter.
Given that Schecter’s students –– Jewish and non-Jewish — likely grew up hearing little or no spoken Yiddish, it would seem a minor miracle that he got them up to speed. However Schecter doesn’t think any miracles were necessary in getting “Stars” off the ground.
“For some reason, the students end up singing better in Yiddish than in English,” he says. “Maybe the Yiddish spirit lives, even if they don’t know it.”
“Stars: A Yiddish Theatre Revue in English” plays 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 29, at the BJE Jewish Community Library, 1835 Ellis St., S.F. Also 2:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 1, at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, 3200 California St., S.F. And 2 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 5 at the Studio Theatre at SFSU, 1600 Holloway Ave., S.F. Admission for all performances is free. Information: (415) 338-1331.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California