Dora Wasserman

Dora Wasserman was an actress, a playwright and a Theater director.

Youth Time

She was born June 30, 1919 at Jytomyr in Ukraine less than a handful of years after the Russian Revolution ^[1] where she learned about and performed in live-performance theatres. She is the younger child of a modest Jewish family. His father is a locksmith. After studies at the School of singing Rimsky-Korsakov of Moscow, she enters to the Jewish Theater of Moscow ( the GOSET), where from she goes out in 1939, after 4 years of formation with great masters particularly Shloyme Mikhoels. With her diploma, Dora Wasserman quits Moscow for Ukraine, but the second world war forces him to leave in Kazakhstan. She makes theater tours in Uzbekistan and in Tadjikistan. Here she meet Sam Wasserman, a Polish refugee whom she married on March 8, 1943. Ella, their first daughter, was born in Jambul on January 19, 1944. They survived the war. Dora Wasserman heard nothing from her family for decades. Sam and Dora Wasserman joined the stream of refugees moving from one transit camp to another, finally arriving in Vienna. At the Rothschild Hospital, Dora Wasserman began to perform for the refugees, creating programs and entertaining in various displaced persons camps. In 1947 their second daughter Bryna was born in Vienna.

Arrived at Canada

The Wassermans arrived in Montreal on January 21, 1950. Intent on finding work, she began to seek a place for herself, approaching Yiddish cultural and community organizations. Her activities were many and varied: recitations in schools, singing for organizations, performing at festivals and conventions. While her connection with visiting and local writers was sustained in weekly literary evenings, she also began to hold children’s theater workshops at the Jewish Public Library of Montreal. Wasserman teach Yiddish's lessons and introduces young Montreal Jews to the Yiddish Theater.The group of gifted youngsters whom she gathered around her eventually grew into the backbone of her adult company, to which she attracted performers to form the Yiddish Drama Group in 1956.

Montreal Yiddish Theatre

In 1958, she founded of what is today called (Montreal's) Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre. With the support of the comedian Gratien Gélinas, she succeeds in producing Yiddish shows with amateur adults and children^[2].Between 1958 and 1963, Wasserman mounted many productions, including Hanna Szenes by Aaron Megged, The Lottery by Sholem Aleichem, Sholem Asch’s Kiddush Hashem and Uncle Moses. By 1964, when Yiddish theater, both amateur and professional, was disappearing the world over, Wasserman determined that her group needed to grow not only in scope of repertoire but in the establishment of a permanent venue. In 1967 the newly-opened [Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts] became a permanent home for the Yiddish Theater. In 1968 a fertile collaboration began between Wasserman and the composer Eli Rubinstein which made possible the dynamic, large-scale musical comedies that challenged her group and elicited enthusiastic response from audiences and critics alike.

Between 1974 and 1988 Wasserman worked with Isaac Bashevis, adapting six of his works for her company, among them In My Father’s Court (1974), Yentl (1979), Gimpel The Fool (1982) and The Ball (based on The Gentleman from Frampol) (1988). In 1992 the Yiddish version of Les Belles Soeurs by Michel Tremblay, received a dynamic staging, furthering ties with Montreal’s French people.

In 1992 Dora Wasserman was awarded the highest honor bestowed on civilians by the Canadian government: The Order of Canada ^[3]. She makes many Yiddish classics or translates authors contemporary as Michel Tremblay. In 1996, she officially handed direction of the Montreal Yiddish Theater to her daughter Bryna.

Dora Wasserman died in December 2003 at Montreal.

Although Wasserman did not live to see it, her daughters Ella (who lives in Israel) and Bryna (who lives in Montreal) helped celebrate the 50th anniversary ^[4] of their mother's eponymous accomplishment.

References

1. ^ http://jwa.org/thisweek/apr/21/1993/dora-wasserman
2. ^ http://www.yiddishtheatre.org/pdf/fr/Une_grande_dame-La_Presse.pdf
3. ^ http://www.gg.ca/honours/search-recherche/honours-desc.asp?lang=e&TypeID=orc&id=3123 lists her "Appointment" date as Oct. 21, 1992 and her "Investiture" date as April 21, 1993.
4. ^ http://theseniortimes.com/article/2009/05/dora-wasserman-if-play-is-good-you-will.html

External links

• Gail Geltner, Dora Wasserman, Jewish Women Encyclopedia
• an article of Jewish Theatre.com

Book

• (in French) Jean-Marc Larrue. “Le théâtre yiddish à Montréal” Éditions Jeu, 1996.

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Name	Wasserman, Dora
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