Drive Opens to Establish Yiddish Repertory Theatre by Fall

A drive for $100,000 to open a Yiddish repertory theatre in New York by this fall was launched tonight by the Friends of the Ida Kaminska Theatre Foundation at a news conference and reception in the Greenwich Village townhouse of Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Bikel. The Ida Kaminska Yiddish Art Theatre, to be created and operated by the Foundation, will be a non-profit repertory theatre based in New York. Mme. Kammska, the world-renowned Polish actress and former head of the Jewish State Theatre in Warsaw who is now a U.S. resident, will be the director. The repertory group will travel to major Jewish communities throughout the country, according to B. Z. Goldberg, chairman of the Foundation, and will present plays from classical Yiddish literature as well as translations of works of major international playwrights. Performances will be in Yiddish with simultaneous translation into English. At the news conference, Bikel said the purpose of the Foundation–of which he is a director–was “to safeguard a vital and vibrant Yiddish theatre.” He declared: “For years now, every time a headstone went up in the Jewish cemetery, they took away one chair from the Jewish theatre. This is an attempt to reverse the trend.”