For some time Adler was successful, but he grew more and more dissatisfied with his repertory. He could find no plays which seriously portrayed the life of the people or contained any serious ideas. Only the translated plays were good from his point of view; he wished something original, and looked about for a playwright. One night in a restaurant he was introduced to Jacob Gordin, who afterwards wrote the greater part of the only serious original Yiddish plays which exist.
Gordin at that time had written no plays, but he was a man of varied literary activity, of a rarely good education, a thorough Russian schooling, and of uncommon intelligence and strength of character. He is Russian in appearance, a large broad-headed man with thick black hair and beard. As he told me in his little home in Brooklyn, the history of his life, he omitted all picturesque details, and emphasized only his intellectual development. He was born in the same town as Gogol, Ubigovrod in southern Russia, of rich parents. As a boy he frequented the theatre, and like Adler, became a local critic and hissed down what he did not approve. Like Adler, too, he was often carried off to the police station and fined. He married early, became a school-teacher and then a journalist (in Russian), writing every sort of article, except political, and often sketches and short stories for newspapers and periodicals in Odessa, where he finally controlled a newspaper—the Odessakianovosti. He was a great admirer of Tolstoi, and desiring to live on a farm to put into practice the Count's ideas, he came to America in 1891, and nearly starved. He became an editor of a Russian newspaper in New York and contributed to other journals. In his own paper he wrote violent articles against the Russian Government, as well as literary sketches. In Russia, Gordin had never been in a Yiddish theatre, and when he met Adler in the New York restaurant he knew little of the conventional Yiddish play. So he wrote his first play in a fresh spirit, with only the character of the people and his own ideals to work from. Siberia, produced in 1892, was a success with the critics and actors, and may fairly be called the first original Yiddish play of the better type.
The play struck a new note. It fell into line with the Russian spirit of realism now so marked in intellectual circles in the Ghetto. Life and types are what Gordin tried for, and Jacob Adler had found his playwright. Since then Gordin has written about fifty plays, some of which have been successful, and many have been marked by literary and dramatic power. Some of the better ones are Siberia, the Jewish King Lear, The Wild Man, The Jewish Priest, Solomon Kaus, The Slaughter, and the Jewish Queen Lear. Jacob Adler has been until recently his chief interpreter, altho Mogalesco, Kessler, and Thomashevsky take his plays.
MADAM LIPTZEN
For several years an actress, Mrs. Liptzen, was the main interpreter of Gordin's plays. She is one of the most individual, if not one of the most skillful, actresses on the stage of New York's Ghetto, and is sometimes spoken of in the quarter as the Yiddish Duse. She is the only actress of the east side who is thus compared, by a sub-title, with a famous Gentile artist, altho in many directions there is a great tendency in the Ghetto to adopt foreign names and ideas. As a matter of fact, her art is exceedingly limited, but she has the unusual distinction of appearing only in the best plays, steadfastly refusing to take part in performances which she deems to be dramatically unworthy. She consequently appears very seldom, usually only in connection with the production of a new play by Jacob Gordin, who at present writes many of his plays with the "Yiddish Duse" in mind.
Mrs. Liptzen was born in Zitomir, South Russia, and was interested exclusively in the stage from her childhood. The founder of the Yiddish stage, Abraham Goldfaden, and Jacob Adler, played in her town for a few nights when she was about eighteen years old. Her parents were orthodox Jews, and to go to the theatre she was forced to resort to subterfuge. She became acquainted with Goldfaden and Adler, and ran away from home in order to accompany them as an actress. At first she sang and acted in such popular operatic plays as Der Schmendrik, and continued for three years in Russia, until the Yiddish theatre was forbidden there. Then she went with a new company to Berlin, where the whole aggregation nearly starved. They were reduced to selling all their stage properties, the proceeds of which were made away with by a dishonest agent. During the time their performances in Berlin continued Mrs. Liptzen received, it is said, the sum of ten pfennige (two and one-half cents) a day, on which she lived. She paid five pfennige for lodging and five pfennige for bread and coffee; and there is left in her now a correspondingly amazing impression of the cheapness with which she could live in Germany in those days.
Jacob Adler was at that time in London with a company, eking out a miserable existence. He wrote to Mrs. Liptzen's husband, an invalid in Odessa, to send his wife to London to play in his company. About 1886 Mrs. Liptzen went to London and played in Esther von Engedi (the Yiddish Othello), Leah the Forsaken, Rachel, The Jews, etc. In London she stayed three years, when, the theatre burning down, she went with Adler to Chicago. They tried to find a place in New York, but the Yiddish company, with Kessler and Mogalesco at its head, already in New York, froze them out, and they tried to get a foothold in Chicago. A little later Mrs. Liptzen left Chicago for New York, called by the Yiddish company there to play leading parts. She began in New York with Leah the Forsaken, and received only $10 for the first three performances. It is said that she now receives from $100 to $200 for every performance, a fact indicating not only her growth in popularity but also the great financial success of the Yiddish theatres in New York.
Twelve years ago Mrs. Liptzen retired for a time from the stage, the reason being that there were no new plays in which she desired to appear, since the demand was entirely supplied by the romantic and historical operatic playwrights, Prof. Horowitz and Mr. Latteiner.
It was not until Jacob Gordin came into prominence as a realistic playwright, that Mrs. Liptzen came out of her dignified retirement. Jacob Adler was the first to play Gordin's pieces; but he played many others, too, trying in a practical way gradually to make the cause of realism triumphant. Mrs. Liptzen, however, made no compromise, and kept quiet until she was able to get the plays she wanted, which soon were written by Gordin.