In or the early part of 1929, after returning from
Moscow where he
had
completed drama studies and familiarized
himself with the workings and direction methods of the
famous Soviet theatre of Meyerhold Tairow and Stanisławski,
Jakub
began his professional career staging Eugene
O'Neill plays with the famed Vilna Troupe.
During this time in
Europe many productions that he directed were filled with
dramatic conflicts that seemed to evolve from the
sociopolitical themes of the day. In January of 1930, he directed the troupe in a play
called Shvartse geto (The Black Ghetto), and in 1931
directed Di broytmil (The Mill). In 1932 he directed
Bunt in oysbeserungs-hoz (Revolt in the Reformatory.)
From
1930
to
1938, Jakub Rotbaum devoted much time to his
other passion
--painting--and,
in many Polish cities (Warsaw, Łódź, Katowice,
Lublin, Vilno, Kovno, Róvne, Gdańsk and others),
he organized
exhibitions of his own work. His work comprised
characteristic portraits: Jewish, Polish,
Russian, Ukrainian, peasant-types and a large
collection of theatrical portraits (the majority
from the Jewish theatre),
e.g. Itzik Manger
and
Nahum Zemach, founder of
"Habima”,
Schkomo Michoels and many others)1.
Throughout his life, Jakub
Rotbaum continued also to paint the Jewish faces
he remembered from his youth; this work received
numerous awards. An exhibition of his paintings
was held at the Museum of Medal Arts in 1994 (as
part of the Cantans festival, September-October
1994.)
Except in the
years 1939-1942, Jakub Rotbaum’s paintings were
exhibited all over the world, beginning in
Warsaw in 1925 and ending in Wroclaw in 1994.
In 1938, Jakub Rotbaum directed a
few Yiddish shows at the then avant-garde Jewish
threatre P. I. A. T. (Parizer Jidiszer Awangarde
Teater).
In 1940 he was invited by Yiddish great
Maurice Schwartz to direct his Yiddish Art
Theatre troupe in three plays: Sholem Aleichem's Sender Blank, Onkl
Mozes (Uncle Moses) by Asch, and Bergelson's
Mir viln lebn (We Want to Live).
From 1942 to 1948 Jakub directed
in New York, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, London,
Paris and Israel. In 1949 he returned to Poland
to direct Yiddish theatre, at the invitation of
Ida Kaminska. In
1952, he became the artistic director of the
Teatr Polski (Polish Theatre) in Wroclaw, and
staged international dramatists in the repertory
rather than Jewish or Yiddish ones. He was
granted many awards and distinctions. In 1968,
due to the anti-Semitic climate in Poland, he
and so many other patriotic Polish Jews, he had
to leave the theatre. This was a deep shock for
him. From then on he would never work in any
Polish theatre again, and his productions in
many European countries as well as in North and
South America were exclusively of Jewish works.
For years, from 1967, when he formally
retired, he directed numerous productions,
including classics such as Shakespeare's
"Hamlet," Brecht's "The Threepenny Opera, and
Chekov's "Three Sisters" and Polish
episodes (such as Wyspianski's "Wedding.") He
also worked in other cities , including Warsaw
and abroad in Sao Paolo, Paris and Bucharest
Later he was still active professionally, but
after the events of March 1968, he was allowed
only to work with the Jewish repertoire .
Jakub Rotbaum is best remembered for directing
A Goldfadn kholem
(A Goldfaden Dream),his
most celebrated play, which for over four
decades he staged all over the world.
He is buried in the New Jewish Cemetery on
Lotnicza
Street in Wroclaw.
Hannowa, Anna. Jakub
Rotbaum: swiat zaginiony: malarstwo, rysunki =
The Lost World: Paintings, Drawings. Wroclaw:
Osrodek Badan Tworczosci Jerzego Grotowskiego i
Poszukiwan Teatralno-Kulturowych, 1995. 87p. Out
of print.
Bibliography:
Szczepan Gąssowski, ed.,
Państwowy Teatr Żydowski im. Ester Rachel
Kamińskiej: Przeszłość i teraźniejszość
(Warsaw, 1995);
Anna Hannowa, Jakub Rotbaum: Świat zaginiony;
Malarstwo, rysunki (Wrocław, Pol., 1995),
text in Polish, German and English;
Anna Hannowa, “The Vilna Years of Jakub
Rotbaum,” Polin 14 (2001): 156–169;
Anna Kuligowska-Korzeniewska and
Małgorzata Leyko, eds., Teatr żydowski w
Polsce (Łódź, 1998), Polish or English,
summaries in English.
Documentary film about Jakub Rotbaum:
Teatr
w Kadrze,
directed by
Artur Hofman (54 min.)