“It’s a Yiddish Theatre, You Know?”: The Jewish Amateur Theatre Collective of Soviet Vilnius

Abstract

“It’s a Yiddish Theatre, You Know?”: The Jewish Amateur Theatre Collective of Soviet Vilnius” explores an amateur Yiddish language theatre troupe operating in Vilnius, Lithuania from 1956-1995. This dissertation demonstrates how and why the Vilnius amateur Yiddish theatre flourished in spite of constrictions on Yiddish language and Jewish culture production at large. Across the Soviet Union similar attempts to produce Yiddish theatre were stymied. By engaging in multiple methodologies, including experimental archival processing and narrative as research through biographical imagining, this dissertation shows how The Jewish Folk Theatre created community spaces and how Yiddish theatre persevered in the postwar Soviet Union.