State Jewish Theater (Romania)
A precursor, the Teatru Evreiesc Baraşeum operated as a Jewish theater through most of World War II, although they were closed during the few months of the National Legionary State, and thereafter performed in Romanian rather than Yiddish through until the fall of Ion Antonescu.
[2] As war broke out in Europe and the antisemitic right-wing politics that had long been a factor in Romania came to the fore, resources for Yiddish theater in Bucharest dried up.
Thalia were on the road when King Carol II abdicated on September 6, 1940, the start of the National Legionary State under General (later Marshal) Ion Antonescu.
[4] The company wanted to rent the Roxy Theater in the central Lipscani district, but were told that they would only be allowed to perform in the Jewish ghetto; the Baraşeum in the Văcăreşti neighborhood met this requirement.
A January 17, 1941 document from the Minister of Culture and from Director General of Theaters and Operas Liviu Rebreanu added new requirements: each individual artist would need approval from the Director General of Theaters; no plays could be performed on major Christian holidays, nor on the three "legionary holidays"; they could use only the front door of the Baraşeum on str.
These new requirements were relaxed after the defeat of the Iron Guard, and Rebreanu wrote on February 19 that "in view of the current situation" they could open on March 1.
[7] During the war years, the Baraşeum Jewish Theater premiered over thirty productions, about half of them directed by Sandru Eliad.
Although officially exclusively Jewish, at times various Gentile intellectuals helped the company illegally, especially with translations; this was well enough known to provoke indignation from at least one antisemitic newspaper.
For example, on one occasion they were required to drop the lines "Je sais bien que demain tout peut changer" ("I know that tomorrow everything could change") and "L'histoire est à tournant" ("The story/history is at a turning point") from a French love song, lest they be understood politically.
Drawing its mostly young, professional actors from cities around Romania, their production of Moşe Pincevski's new play Ich Leb (I Live) about resistance in a forced labor camp put them on the map in a Bucharest where the Communist Party was moving toward hegemony.
Others, including Sevilla Pastor, Dina König, Seidy Glück, Moris Siegler and Marcu Glückman, reorganized under Bernard Lebli, and became the new permanent company of the Baraşeum, with an unprecedented subsidy from the government.
They began their new season January 11, 1948 with Dos Groise Ghivens; this was followed by Nekomenemer (The Song of War) by French Yiddish writer Haim Sloves.
Subsequently, TES, The Yiddish Theater in Iaşi, and other Theaters in Romania played a series of his plays, (The Grunwald Family in 1952, The Return of Christopher Columbus, 1955, Dor Hamidbar, or The Desert Generation in 1957, An Unfinished Trial in 1961, White Night, 1963, and Meeting on the Mountain in 1969), and Bruckstein became, before his 1972 emigration to Israel, the most important Yiddish playwright of post-war Romania, as mentioned in the Encyclopaedia Judaica, see also YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe on Romanian literature.
TES also staged works by Romanian playwrights such as Victor Eftimiu, Victor Ion Popa, Tudor Arghezi, and Lucia Demetrius, and but also a vast array of works from world theater: Bertholt Brecht's Threepenny Opera, Reginald Rose's Twelve Angry Men, Georg Büchner's Woyzeck, Lion Feuchtwanger's Raquel, The Jewess of Toledo, and Friedrich Dürrenmatt's Frank V.[19] More recent additions to their repertoire include works by Israel Horovitz and Ray Cooney, and an adaptation by Dorel Dorian of Saul Bellow's Herzog.
Conversely, non-Jewish actors such as George Trodorescu, Lucu Andreescu, Ştefan Hablinski, and Dan Jitianu played major roles in productions at TES.
