Yosl Cutler

Yosl Cutler, an orphaned son of a butcher, was born in Troyanov (today Troyaniv, Zhytomyr Raion), Russian Empire, and came to the United States in 1911 with an older brother.

[5] In 1923, along with friends Zuni Maud and Jack Tworkov, he was hired as a stage and costume designer for the Yiddish Art Theatre of Maurice Schwartz, where he developed experience with puppeteering.

Plays were delivered with an artful and sharp satire of Yiddish life,[9] with a left-wing political outlook, but maintaining a comic edge.

The history of Slavic anti-Semitic puppet shows combined with the Jewish injunction against creating graven images made puppetry "a thoroughly un-Jewish art form.

[3] The struggles of the working class were portrayed, with Franklin Roosevelt and William Randolph Hearst turned into comic rabbits.

[15] Maud and Cutler were popular with general audiences, intellectuals, and "won critical acclaim from all precincts of the Yiddish press."

[3] In 1929 Modicot toured for three years, first in America, then Europe, with visits to London, Paris, Vilna, Warsaw, Amsterdam and finishing in the Soviet Union.

In Warsaw the Yiddish press had unmitigated praise for Modicot, recommending it to "all Jewish workers," and noting: The entire program is full of extraordinary folk humor, wonderful ideas, and splendid technique.

[18] Emanuel Levy considers Cutler to have been a "Jack of all trades", a puppeteer, craftsman, cartoonist, set designer and poet.