David Kessler (actor)

David Kessler (1860–1920) was a prominent actor in the first great era of Yiddish theater.

Born and raised in Chişinău (then part of Imperial Russia, now the capital of independent Moldova), as an adolescent he improvised chaotic amateur plays in the stable of his father's inn, using fragments of what he had seen in the performances of Broder singers.

A medical student named Geller apparently wrote him a more structured play, Mechtze the Matchmaker, which he and his friends put on.

[2] In one of the first Yiddish-language productions of Shakespeare, he played the title role in Othello, opposite Jacob Adler's Iago.

He became ill while on stage at the Lyric Theatre in Brooklyn, New York during his performance of Jacob Gordin's dramatization of Tolstoy's "The Kreutzer Sonata".

He is buried in Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York along with his wife Rachel Kessler.