ARTEF

ARTEF. A Yiddish workers’ theater company existing from 1925 to 1940, ARTEF combined left-wing politics, Soviet-inspired aesthetics, and Jewish folk culture into innovative productions that drew large Jewish immigrant audiences while influencing the New York theatrical scene of that period. Begun during a period when the Jewish Left was in its heyday, the founders of the ARTEF, the Arbeiter Theater Verband (Workers Theater Group), sought to create a theater in Yiddish, reflecting the lives and struggles of the Jewish working class. They also set high dramatic standards, hoping to provide an alternative to the popular commercial Yiddish theater of “Second Avenue,” which they derided for its vaudevillesque, off-color, melodramatic style.

Following up efforts of the Yiddish communist daily, the Freiheit, to establish a dramatic studio, a group of young workers, led first by Jacob Mestel and then joined by Benno Schneider of the Soviet Jewish folk troupe Habima, spent three years (1925–1928) undergoing intense dramatic training. Known as the “ARTEF Studio,” they began with twenty-six students who worked days and studied nights and weekends, supporting the studio’s costs largely from their day jobs as shop workers.

From this, an Actors Collective was formed, producing its first play, By the Gate, in 1928. Praised by New York theater critics, it was criticized by Communist Party cultural officials for emphasizing Jewish folk themes over the “ideals of class struggle.” Nevertheless, the ARTEF was closely associated with the Communist Party’s Jewish Bureau, receiving the bulk of its audience and publicity through affiliate organizations. This support was crucial, as the more moderate, social democratic Jewish organizations, such as the Jewish Daily Forward, banned ARTEF reviews and advertising, while the Hebrew Actors Union denied affiliation to ARTEF members.

The ARTEF was strongly influenced by Soviet theater, incorporating styles of Stanislavsky, Vakhtangov, and Meyerhold, and combining elements of realism, naturalism, impressionism, and agitprop. Dramatic emphasis was on the actors’ ensemble as opposed to “stars,” integrating dance, music, and song, set off by modernist, multilayered scenic design by M. Solatoreff. Along with regular performances in several New York theaters, the ARTEF toured major cities, including Philadelphia, Boston, Montreal, and Toronto.

While the ARTEF saw its mission as educating the Jewish working class to left-wing ideology, its overriding commitment to high dramatic standards and experimental forms resulted in its recognition as a popular Yiddish “art theater” that also attracted leading figures of the American theater. Most of its plays dealt with the conditions of Jewish life in eastern Europe, adapted from stories by popular Yiddish writers such as Shalom Aleichem. Its other plays were taken from the Soviet stage. Of the eighteen plays presented to 1937, only two dealt with conditions of the Jewish American worker, and these were considered dramatic failures.

By 1940 the ARTEF folded. Improved conditions of the late 1930s removed the pressing social issues of the Great Depression and receptivity to radical ideas. A number of ARTEF actors left the company, joining the Federal Theater Project of the Works Progress Administration. The ARTEF’s move to a larger theater in the mid-1930s raised operating costs, which they couldn’t cover. The biggest factor was the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939, which alienated a large portion of their Jewish audience because of their association with the Communist Party.

ARTEF. Ten Years ARTEF: Published for the Tenth Anniversary of the ARTEF. New York: Posy-Shoulson Press, 1937.

Kline, Herbert, ed. New Theatre and Film, 1934–1937: An Anthology. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985.

Rifson, David, S. The Yiddish Theatre in America. New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1965.

Sandrow, Nahma. Vagabond Stars: A World History of Yiddish Theatre. New York: Harper and Row, 1977.

Artef Theater Collection, 1925-1940. Guide. YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. http://www.yivoarchives.org/index.php?p=collections/controlcard&id=32903