On Stage, Off Stage: Memories of a Lifetime in the Yiddish Theatre - Softcover

Kadison, Luba; Buloff, Joseph; Genn, Irving

9780674637269: On Stage, Off Stage: Memories of a Lifetime in the Yiddish Theatre

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674637267 ISBN 13: 9780674637269

Publisher: Judaica Division of the Harvard College Library, 1992

For more than half a century, Joseph Buloff was a dominant figure in the Yiddish theatre. In "On Stage, Off Stage", his wife and partner, Luba Kadison Buloff, has written an account of their careers. Covering a 60 year period - from the early 1920s to the early 1980s - their story mirrors the history of the Yiddish theatre in the 20th century. Drawing on the correspondence of her husband Joe, whom the "New York Times" hailed in 1930 as "the most gifted actor on the Yiddish stage in America", Luba Kadison presents a fascinating behind-the-scenes tale of what it was like to be a Yiddish actor during these tumultuous years. She relates their story beginning with the Vilna Troupe, their great successes in Poland and Rumania, and the subsequent career, based in the United States and punctuated by frequent performances abroad - in Europe, Latin America, Israel and South Africa. The text is accompanied by over 100 illustrations drawn from the Joseph Buloff Yiddish Theatre Archive in the Harvard College Library. The illustrations include rare photographs of the Buloffs in various roles on tour with the Vilna Troupe in Poland and Rumania in the 1920s and 1930s, from performances in Latin America in the 1930s and 1940s, from Israel in the 1960s and 1970s, and from their work in the United States over half a century. Facsimiles of theatre programmes, posters, correspondence, and other documents combine with the photographs to provide an illustrated commentary on the narrative. This is the biographic background to Joseph Buloff's fictional autobiography, "From the Old Marketplace".

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