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Two well-known actresses, Berta Gerstin
and Jennie Goldstein, as we have already reported in
the "Forward" last week, arrived back in New York from South
American countries, where they played months-long with
success. According to their [well-known] names, they were also invited to
play in Buenos Aires and other countries during the coming
season, which began on Passover.
Jennie Goldstein left New York last
March, and she traveled directly to the Excelsior Theatre,
together with Shmuel Aires, Ben-Zion Bertichevsky,
Zilberberg, Porel Solomon and Clara Shtramer. In the
company also there were other actors and actresses who
played. Everyone who was there were union members, and the
plays that were there were staged very well and were hits.
Jennie Goldstein was at the Excelsior
Theatre for four months. Then, with her company, she
traveled to the province in Argentina. She also played in
Montevideo, Uruguay, and afterwards in Rio De Janeiro and Sao
Paolo, Brazil. In Brazil she played for two months, and
wherever she played, she performed in Gordin's repertoire
and also played other plays.
"The Jews in Argentina love Yiddish
theatre, -- she said. The Jews come in mass to see Yiddish
plays, because Yiddish theatre there is the only place where
they can be mentally maintained. True, they know American
pictures there, but they don't understand any English, and
secondly the explanations are given live in the Spanish
language, and they, the explanations partly about the
content, disappear so quickly from life that one does not
dare to reread them. They don't go to the motion pictures so
often. When they put on Yiddish theatre, however, they come
with pleasure, and they play for full houses."
"The Jew in Argentina -- she continued
to say -- suffers strongly from anti-Semitism. Before Hitler
entered power there, they did not know the difference
between me and Christ. Hitlerism is now poisoning the air
there. It comes without "the attacker," the poisonous leaf
that comes out of the bloodhound, the striker, and it helps
greatly in igniting the hate towards Jews under the pretext
that they are communists."
As the actresses explained, no one is
allowed to speak Yiddish at a Yiddish meeting, unless the
Yiddish language is reported to the police earlier, that
they will be speaking Yiddish. To such a meeting a policeman
will be sent, and he listens to every word that is uttered
from the platform.
Bertha Gerstin traveled to Argentina
last April, and she played in the Ambu Theatre for six
weeks. She appeared in Jacob Gordin's "Mirele Efros," in
Ibsen's "Nora," in Tolstoy's "Resurrection," and "The House
of Glass," by H. Kalmanowitz. When she became forty in
Buenos Aires, she traveled to Montevideo, Uruguay. There she
played the same repertoire for six weeks. Then she traveled
back to Argentina and played in the Jewish colonies.
"The life of the Jewish colonists --
Gerstin said -- is not a very happy one. The last two years,
due to the drought. I am familiar with life in the great
city of New York, and I however also wanted to become
familiar with the life of the Jewish farmers, and the
situation there is not a holiday. Many of the first
colonists who were there and became settled with the
assistance of the Baron Hirsch Fund, are extinct. The others
are already old. The young continue to flee to the larger
cities."
From the Jewish colonists in Argentina,
Gerstin traveled to Rio De Janeiro, and after to Sao Paolo,
Brazil, where she played for eight weeks.
Also she said that the Jews in the
South American countries are enthusiastic for Yiddish
theatre, and they also love good plays. Every good play is
received by them with enthusiasm. |
