Peretz Hirshbein

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Peretz Hirshbein (born 1880 in Melnik, Grodno – died 1948 in Los Angeles) was a Yiddish-language playwright, instrumental in the revival of Yiddish theater in Russia shortly after the 1904 lifting of the 1883 ban on theatrical performances in that language. Prior to his involvement in Yiddish theater, he wrote several plays in Hebrew; these were published in the periodical Hazman, but there was no audience at that time for Hebrew-language theater.

Because his work focused more on mood than plot, he became known as "the Yiddish Maeterlinck". His work—as a playwright and through his own shortlived but influential troupe—laid much of the groundwork for the second golden age of Yiddish theater that began shortly after the end of World War I.

The dialogue of his plays is consistently vivid, terse, and naturalistic. Unusually for a Yiddish playwright, most of his works have pastoral settings: he had grown up the son of a miller, and made several attempts at farming.

The Hirshbein troupe, founded 1908 in Odessa, Ukraine, toured through Imperial Russia for two years, performing his own plays and those of Sholem Asch, David Pinski, Jacob Gordin, and Sholem Aleichem. The troupe's high literary standards and high standards of ensemble acting strongly influenced the later Vilna Troupe and the New York-based Yiddish Art Theater.

After his troupe broke up for financial reasons, Hirshbein travelled extensively; in 1911 alone, he visited Vienna, Paris, London, and New York City. For a while in 1912, he tried farming in New York's Catskills (later, home to the Borscht Belt); he then returned briefly to Russia, and went from there to Argentina for another attempt at farming, this time in a Jewish agricultural colony. At the start of World War I he was en route to New York on a British ship, which was sunk by a German cruiser. He was briefly taken captive, then let off in Brazil, from where he eventually reached New York.

His 1916 play Green Fields continues to be often anthologized and staged.

[edit] Works

Yiddish-language plays, unless otherwise noted.

Miriam (a.k.a. Downhill, 1905, in Hebrew)
Oif Yener Zeit Taikh (On the Other Side of the River, 1906)
Die Erd (Earth, 1907)
Tkais Kaf (Contract, a.k.a The Agreement 1907)
Oifn Shaidveg (Parting of the Ways, 1907)
Die Goldene Keyt (The Golden Chain, 1908) [1]
Die Puste Kretshme (The Haunted Inn, 1912)
A farvorfen Vinkel (A Neglected Nook or A Hidden Corner, 1912)
Griene Felder (Green Fields, 1916)
Dem Schmids Tekhter (The Smith's Daughters, 1918 or earlier)
Navla or Nevila (1924 or earlier) [2], [3]
Where Life Ends
Joel
The Last One
The Infamous
A Lima Bean
Roite Felder (Red Fields, 1935, novel)
Hitler's Madman (screenplay for 1943 English-language film, the American debut of director Douglas Sirk)