I'll always have the memories of how you used to make me see

[sovay]

How can I have not known that the role of Khonen opposite Hanna Rovina's Leye in the legendary 1922 Habima production of An-sky's The Dybbuk was originated by a female actor, Miriam Elias? I just checked the three books I own on An-sky and the two different translations of The Dybbuk and none of them mention this fact, so signally queer and not irrelevant to the gender-bending of the play and its production history. I understand that Elias was not identified lifelong with the role like Rovina; that after the death of Yevgeny Vakhtangov, future stagings by Habima employed only male actors as Khonen—of some of them, I'd seen pictures. I can't believe a contemporary theater has never resurrected this casting that I know of, even a community or a college production. I'm not even attending live theater right now! I just want to hear that someone's done it.

(How I got here: because I keep forgetting it's 2023, it turns out last month was the centenary of the arrest and prosecution of the entire English-language Broadway cast of Sholem Asch's God of Vengeance for indecency, cf. Paula Vogel, and then I went down the rabbit hole of the Digital Yiddish Theatre Project. Chag sameach Pesach!)

Comments

[gwynnega]

Wow.

[sovay]

Wow.

Speaking of things I want a time machine for!

[asakiyume]

Wow, and apparently not the only case of a woman playing the role. Very cool. I liked this line from the theater historian:

“The casting of a female to play the role of Ḥanan is a prefiguration of one of the dominant attributes of the dybbuk: a masculine presence within a female body.”

[sovay]

Wow, and apparently not the only case of a woman playing the role. Very cool.

Right, but not since the '20's? Clearly a reprise is overdue!

(Female dybbuks are not impossible but much more rare, which is one of the reasons I wrote one.)

[larryhammer]

Chag sameach Pesach!

(We had guests at a seder for the first time in three years, outdoors on the back patio, where it was barely warm enough. It was good.)

[sovay]

(We had guests at a seder for the first time in three years, outdoors on the back patio, where it was barely warm enough. It was good.)

I'm so glad to hear it!

[selkie]

I mean, you have a vest. We can put peyes on you with greasepaint.

[sovay]

I mean, you have a vest. We can put peyes on you with greasepaint.

*hugs*

[skygiants]

YES the virtual Yiddish theater class I took last year made a point of mentioning this and it blew my mind!

[sovay]

YES the virtual Yiddish theater class I took last year made a point of mentioning this and it blew my mind!

Good for your virtual Yiddish theater class! People should have their minds blown by this fact! I resent that it took so long for me!