I don't know whether the tests [probes] that are now being conducted in the Yiddish Actors' Union give a precise understanding of the fenigkayten or inconveniences that the candidates face, but they are highly amusing and remarkably interesting. In this there can be no doubt. Every test is a performance, but a performance in which every one of the "actors" and every one of the "spectators" is bloodily interested.

The long, narrow hall of the Actors' Club is filled with members of the union. Five hundred dollar stars and seventy-dollar, "flesh and blood," sitting there as equals. The first smokes the thick Havana cigars, the last -- cheap cigarettes. They wait for the performances.

Newspaper people, managers of theatres, musicians, activists, and ordinary, happy people, who have appeared to be stealing, mingle with the actors and wait with great impatience for the performance. Many of them came to "work" for candidates, gaining "sympathy" for them. Others will have to put themselves to the test a week later, having come to observe the field, "preparing the nervous" for Judgment Day.

The small stage of the hall is illuminated from above and is in the whole post. Only the chairman stands up for you and calls the people to order.

It is calm in the hall.

A young girl comes our and begins to play a role from a melodrama, her fingers nervously pressing the handkerchief that she holds in her hand, her voice trembling, her entire body bending under the pressure of one hundred and fifty eyes that pierce her.

These are all kinds of eyes. They cook with contempt, with sympathy, with indifference, with irony, with a smile, with interest; you see eyes that look sideways, as if guilty. They are the eyes of the honest actors. They know in advance that the candidate will not be taken in, and they feel a little guilty about what they have to go through in vain, the heartache and the shame of failure.

The eyes that look to the side are the best predictors of whether the candidate will pass nor not. Take a look at the eyes that are lowered as if hidden on the floor, or those that avoid the glances of visitors, and you will know how many votes the candidate will have received.

The "machine" is working properly when it has to work, and it has to work when it wants that a candidate should pass. If you do not know whether a candidate will pass or not, the machine should not put a hand in cold water. The candidate will surely fail ... The general "nature" of the assembly is not included.

When I say the "machine," I do not mean it in the acceptance of the word. The administration has in mind the general condition of the theatre profession. It knows what the profession needs, and it knows what the trade needs, and it seeks to satisfy the demand for certain goods.

Now they need to have soubrettes in the theatre. Young, lively, cheerful girls who can sing and dance. The administration feels that it is healthier for a profession to include such candidates. How does one realize this desire?

On the stage there springs up a young, blonde, touching girl, and from her smile becomes thus brighter in hearts. She sings, she carries on, she flashes with her eyes, and she forgets that it is only a probe, that such a girl will surely attract visitors to the theatre.

The administration also thinks so. It also means this to many members of the union. The majority of the voters, however, are women, and they must be taken with storm.

Even before the blonde youth on stage shows up to finish her first number, a sudden storm of applause comes over the hall. This was how Hymie Jacobson and his friend prepared the "grand attack." The female half of those present is caught off-guard. When the sunny soubrette reappears on stage again and begins her second number, she is met by a wave of applause. She is frightened, blushes, asks with made-up naive fear, what is going on, but in the corners of her full lips the smile of victory trembles ...

She is taken into the union with an unexpected vote.

The administration with the "grand attack" became a common occurrence at the probes, that the Executive Committee was forced to adopt a resolution against them.

I always thought that obscenity was very uninteresting to the actors themselves, and even meaningless. People have to use obscenity in melodramas and operettas so often that the words lose their meaning to them. Secondary words, I mean now, are nothing more than "tools" of the "profession" for an actor.

It turns out that I have a made a mistake. On the stage a soubrette makes a probe. She sings a song from those songs ... and the audience swells. I see in the eyes of those present the same light of pleasure that I see in the audience in the theatre.

I liked that. This shine in their eyes is a sign that the actor's sense of purity and impurity, of what is allowed and forbidden, has not died out. And what is forbidden tickles them, just as it tickles the theatre audience, which they themselves amuse.

Gussie Bulman, still just a kid, I don't know if she is eighteen years old, makes a probe. On her tender face lies the innocent radiance of childhood.

A year ago, her young father, Actor [Max] Bulman, died suddenly, and she was on the streets that year to support her mother and younger children. Just as she once played child roles on the Yiddish stage, she went looking for a job there. Last year she played for Bernard Elving in Newark; she played all year there, and also for over a year she has also been employed there.

Even before Gussie Bulman spoke her first words from her role as Benjamin from "The Wedding Day," the entire audience already was crying. The role is known as an orphan and has been adapted for the young actress. The audience wept no worse than the large crowd Friday night at the Yiddish theatre.

It has been said that the charming Gussie will enter the union with a big vote.

On one side also stood Elving, who wept bitterly. A comedian commented on this:

"He is crying because he will have to pay her union wages next season for a couple of more roles."

Hymie Prizant made a probe as "Liovke Molodietz," and is taken in. But woe, woe, the jokes that have been brought into his possession!

A comedian, already of an older age, listens to Prizant's song and mutters to one side: "Lebedeff, a spirit in him, can also sing."

And when the votes were counted, and it became known that Prizant had entered [the union], Olshanetsky already solemnly proclaimed once, "Already a Liovke Molodietz; even with the union he has been a success."

In with a storm in the union is Irving Jacobson, Hymie Jacobson's brother. Irving is a second edition of Hymie. Even if he lacks even Hymie's personal charm, he possesses the same agility, the same restless temperament, the same humor. He was accepted by the audience so quickly when he went onto the stage. A laughter of joy echoed across the hall, as he jumped onto the boards.

Hymie Jacobson accompanied his brother on the piano, and the colleagues asked Hymie:

"Oy, Hymie, you have cooled yourself after all."

"Chairman, I make a suggestion that Hymie should take an optrist card from the union," -- jokes Kalmen Juvelier.

"Do we need two Hymies now?" -- jokes Boris Rosenthal.

The chairman, Louis Goldstein, bangs the gavel and calls to order; Charles Cohen shouts and calls out the names of the actors that they should vote for. He shouts and calls out the names of the actors so that they can go and vote; a long line of actors draws to the two booths on both sides of the hall. Abe Sincoff and Lazar Freed will bet on the number of votes that Jacobson will receive -- there is a tumult and a commotion.

And outdoors stand the candidates of the next probe, and their hearts pass with fear every second.

Oh, the Day of Judgment, the Day of Judgment, how many sleepless nights, how many tears and bloodshed it costs! To a large audience of actors, however, it is a "regular show."