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Between the two world wars, a number of professional Yiddish theaters operated in Bucharest, two in Cernăuți, one in Iaşi and one in Cluj. Besides, prominent theater troupes such as the Vilner Trupe, were invited to perform in Bucharest, and many smaller cities and towns entertained visiting troupes.
In Bucharest, there were two permanent troupes that performed works from the classic Yiddish repertoire, a sophisticated Yiddish cabaret theater (kleynkunst) , and several travelling troupes that presented lighter entertainment.
Itinerant troupes were often family businesses, with husbands, wives, and children as members, such as the Pastor, Kanner, and König-Kamen families, the core of theater companies that toured the country's Jewish communities.
In 1917 Iacov Sternberg, one of the key figures in the development of Jewish theater in Romania, began his artistic activity by creating a theater review in Yiddish, an avant-garde project, also known as The Yiddish Theater of Bucharest. In this theater he staged satirical reviews based on scripts written by him and his collaborators, writers Jacob Botoshansky and Moyshe Altman.
An important impulse for the creativity of Jewish artists in Romania, was the meeting with the celebrated Vilner Trupe that was invited in 1923 by Isidor Goldenberg to perform in Bucharest. Between 1924-1927, Sternberg was its artistic director. In his work with the Vilner Trupe Sternberg was influenced by I. L. Peretz's idea that just like European art, the new Jewish art must represent the Jewish people’s highest aesthetic and moral aspirations. Due to Sternberg's interest in modernism and avant-garde the Vilner Grupe achieved great success and became an avant-garde theater with innovative perspectives on directing and staging.
In 1930 Sternberg created another successful studio, Bukareshter Yidishe Teater-Studiye (BITS) housed in Bucharest's Jewish quarter of Văcărești, that played a prominent role in the development of modern trends in Jewish European theater. It staged works of Osip Dymov "Yashka the Musician", I.L. Peretz "A night at the old market", Shalom Aleichem " The enchanted tailor", Nikolai Gogol 's The Marriage – mostly musical comedies with elements of grotesque, but also "Yoshe Kalb "and his own play "Theater in Flames" on the theme of the then-ongoing Spanish Civil War. In BITS's productions Sternberg cooperated with modernist painters like Reuven Rubin, M.H.Maxi and Jules Perahim as stage designers.
Sidi Tal was one of the actresses active in the Bukareshter Yidishe Teater-Studiye troupe. In 1935, following many remarkable roles in the Romanian Yiddish theater, she joined Sternberg's troupe and became one of its best actresses.
The Baraşeum theater, the first house of the Yiddish theater in Bucharest was built at the end of the 19th century, and was originally intended to be a hospital.
From 1930s it was the home of the Yiddish theater, and on the verge of World War II, it housed the Thalia company, one of the four professinal Yiddish theater companies in Bucharest at that time.
Due to all this activity, in the interwar period it became possible for the Yiddish-speaking theater-goers to see excellent dramatic productions of Yiddish classics, such as Peretz’s complex “dream play” Bay nakht afn altn mark, staged by the Vilner Trupe; modernist productions of Goldfaden, many versions of The Dybbuk, and Sholem Asch’s Motke ganev; as well as plays by Shakespeare, Hugo, O’Neill, and Dreiser.
Israil Bercovici, O sută de ani de teatru evreiesc în România ("One hundred years of Yiddish/Jewish theater in Romania"), 2nd Romanian-language edition, revised and augmented by Constantin Măciucă. Editura Integral (an imprint of Editurile Universala), Bucharest, 1998, 100-151
