Yiddish Popular Theatre, 1880-1920: Performance as Knowledge

Project Information

DYBBUK

Grant agreement ID: 948150

DOI

10.3030/948150

EC signature date 22 October 2020

Start date 1 October 2021

End date 30 September 2027

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 499 800,00

EU contribution

€ 1 499 800,00

Coordinated by

TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY
Israel

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - DYBBUK (Yiddish Popular Theatre, 1880-1920: Performance as Knowledge)

Reporting period: 2023-01-01 to 2024-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The Yiddish popular theatre produced a staggering volume of theatrical entertainment consumed by millions of Jews. Most of this mass-appealing output was, however, delegitimized by Jewish intellectuals, journalists, and scholars as ‘a flood of trash’, dismissing it as a primitive, plagiarized, vulgar, banal, and worthless form of art, while calling for a radical reform in the theatre. Under the division of Shund (trash) versus Kunst (art), a valuable component of the cultural experience of the Jewish diaspora in modern times, and by extension, of the 20th century mainstream culture has been overlooked. The DYBBUK project aims to uncover, restore, and analyze the neglected, yet influential, corpus of the Yiddish popular theatre.

The DYBBUK project pursues three objectives: (1) Surveying, and mapping the dramatic and musical themes of the Yiddish popular theatre. (2) Reconstructing and analyzing its audio-visual forms. (3) Reenacting and examining its theatrical and vocal practices. DYBBUK combines musicological, theatrical, historical, and philological scholarship with practice-base theatre research. To grasp the theatrical spectacles, expressions, and images that attracted the Jewish masses to the theatre, and the influence this theatre had on the formation of the modernist Jewish canon, the project integrates sound analysis of early commercial theatre recordings and musicological examination of music sheets with dramatic manuscripts and libretti, photographs and visual images, biographies, theatre ephemera, and criticism. It aims to bridge the gap between the transient theatrical experience and its archival remains, and leap beyond the textual barriers of the drama, by producing a meticulously planned reenactment of a Shund musical play in a practice-based theatre research, thus revealing the acting and vocal techniques, theatrical forms, and messages staged in the Yiddish popular theatre. Through this integrative research, we aim to advance our understanding of 20th century mass popular culture.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The project began with an extensive multi-site archival research, gathering all sort of materials related to creators of the Yiddish popular theatre. All the information we collected was inserted into an online queryable database, that includes biographical details and theatre activities. The database enables us to discover professional roles and networks in and around the Yiddish theatre world, and to conduct a comparative study to detect patterns and intertextual relationships and propose interpretive models. Furthermore, the data recorded provides valuable information for scholarship about the theatrical activity and concerning public taste of Jews at the turn of the 20th century. It shows us where Lateiner’s and Hurwitz’s work was most popular, and which of the themes and dramas were most frequently staged.
In order to organize this information in ways that reflect the partiality of the archive knowledge available, as well as various historical contradictions and inconsistencies that loom from the archive and from the many chronicles and lexicons describing Yiddish popular theatre, we designed a relational database model, that is devised to deal with predicament by accommodating multiple and conflicting assertions. Our data model attributes levels of certainty and accuracy by providing an authority source to each assertion. Each statement in the database includes an ‘assertion’ feature that connects it to specific references. The assertion feature is a critical tool for evaluating the reliability of information gleaned in various archive, providing a rich set of metadata and contextual information about each statement. Many of the archival manuscripts we found were written by hand on decaying paper, photographs have faded, notebooks are torn and, at times, preserved in incomplete form. In order to preserve them, we scanned the materials and created an inventory catalogued according to plays, performances, and creators involved in each performance, with relevant sheet music and sound recordings associated with it.
Delving into handwritten Yiddish texts, we identified the need for a digital solution for deciphering the handwriting. We trained an AI powered OCR recognition model that would be able to ‘read’ and decipher Yiddish handwritings of various sorts. This model can potentially facilitate and boost research into hidden treasure troves.
Among the significant archival findings of the project are three handwritten prompting notebooks of Joseph Lateiner’s performance ‘The Dybbuk,’ as well as its entire music scores. We have digitized, deciphered and reconstructed their texts and musical notes. We then prepared a digital synoptic edition that enables us to trace alterations and changes in the texts over time and to examine the performance history of this play. In the next stage, we comprised from the three versions an additional, new, performance text of the play, that presents an inclusive representation of Lateiner’s drama that reflects its performance history. Finally, we translated this comprehensive version of the drama into English. Alongside the textual reconstruction, we have worked towards the restoration, adaptation and reenactment of the archival musical score. Dr. Uri Brenner, a composer, transcribed the archival musical score, reconstructed it, and arranged it for adaptation. Based on this work, our musical exploration also included a digital adaptation of significant parts of the score, and a live-performance of the musical score.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The DYBBUK project offers a new understanding to the evolution of modern Jewish theatre, as a process developed and fertilized through a dynamic dialogue with the Shund. The project made a substantial step toward uncovering this ignored performance culture by creating a database that maps its creative scope and by studying its forms, themes and practices and in examining their connections with mainstream European and American popular culture.
DYBBUK aims to move beyond the state of the art by expanding the conventional analytical toolkit for the study of theatre and performances. It integrates sound analysis of early sound recordings and sheet music with dramatic manuscripts and libretti, biographies, theatre ephemera, and criticism. Performance reconstruction and historical analysis, together with practice-based theatre research, enable us to trace and study the acting and vocal techniques, theatrical forms, and messages staged in the Yiddish popular theatre.

The outputs of the project include:
(1) An interactive searchable digital database storing, curating, and sharing archival data on the dramatic works, artists, libretti, and music staged in the Yiddish popular theatre.
(2) The Dybbuk OCR model is the first automated AI language model for deciphering Yiddish handwriting.
(3) An online (open access) synoptic edition of three prompting notebooks documenting the performance history of Lateiner’s play ‘The Dybbuk.’
(4) Scholarship in the form of peer-review articles and monographs exploring the aesthetics and historical impact of the Yiddish popular theatre, including an edited annotated English translation of Lateiner’s ‘The Dybbuk’.
(5) A theatre reenactment of an early popular yet forgotten musical performance of ‘The Dybbuk’.

A screen­shot of the Tran­skribus desk­top ver­sion with a hand­writ­ten Yid­dish doc­u­ment and OCR