The Moscow Yiddish Theater

The Moscow Yiddish Theater (later called GOSET) was born in 1919 and almost immediately became one of the most remarkable avant-garde theaters in Europe. It flourished in the 1920s but under Bolshevik pressure soon lost much of the originality that had distinguished it. In 1948, Stalin's henchmen slaughtered GOSET's legendary actor and director Solomon Mikhoels, and the theater was liquidated. This book focuses not on how the theatre was persecuted, but on its ambitious beginnings as a revolutionary organization of passionate artistic exploration. The book brings to English readers for the first time selected writings that reflect the aesthetics and politics of the Yiddish revolutionary theater. The book also incorporates miraculously salvaged images of Marc Chagall's famous theater murals, as well as paintings of costumes and stage sets created by the best artists of the day. These illustrations, discovered only after the fall of the Soviet Union, have never been published before. With emphasis on the theater's early achievements and its centrality in Moscow's burgeoning theater world, the book makes a major contribution to the understanding of modern Jewish culture and the art of theater.

ISBN 030011513X   DEWEY edition DC22 ISBN13 9780300115130 (What's this?)   Pages 256 Publisher Yale University Press   Volumes 1 Imprint Yale University Press   Weight (grammes) 603 Format Hardback   Published in New Haven Publication date 11 Jan 2008   Height (mm) 254 Translator Benjamin Harshav, Barbara Harshav   Width (mm) 203 Library of Congress 2007019926   Spine width (mm) 20 DEWEY 792.094731   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate

Pt. I		The Yiddish Avant-Garde Theater
1		The Yiddish Art Theater		3
2		Chagall's Theater Murals		36
Pt. II		Essays, Plays, Memoirs
3		The Quarrel between Art and Theater		57
		The Artists of Granovsky's Theater (Excerpt; 1928) by Abram Efros		57
		My Work in the Moscow Yiddish Theater (1921-1928) by Marc Chagall		70
		My First Meeting with Solomon Mikhoels (1944) by Marc Chagall		75
		Mikhoels and Chagall (1964) by Yosef Schein		81
		Letter to the Management of Gosekt (1921) by Marc Chagall		81
		Invitation to the Exhibition (1921)		82
4		The Program of the Yiddish Chamber Theater on Its Opening in July 1919		83
		The Jewish Theater Society and the Chamber Theater by Lev Levidov		83
		Our Goals and Objectives by Aleksey Granovsky		85
		The Past and the Future of Yiddish Theater by M. Rivesman		86
		In Our Studio by Sh. Mikhoels		90
5		The Reception of the Moscow Yiddish Theater in the West		99
		Contemporary Responses to the Moscow Yiddish Theater (Excerpts)		99
		The Moscow Yiddish Theater (1928) by Alfred Kerr		104
		Diary (Excerpt; 1923) by David Ben-Gurion		107
6		The Moscow Yiddish Academic Theater (1928)		109
		A Salute to the Yiddish National Theater by Ernst Toller		109
		The Moscow Yiddish Theater by Joseph Roth		110
		The Yiddish Theater in Moscow by Alfons Goldschmidt		117
		More...

"'The tasks of world theater serve us as the tasks of our theater, and only language distinguishes us from others.' A. Granovsky, first director, GOSET"

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