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I'll always have the memories of how you used to make me see
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!)
(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!)
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Speaking of things I want a time machine for!
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“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.”
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(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.)
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I'm so glad to hear it!
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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.)
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*hugs*
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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!