Newsday from New York, New York • 115

THIS IS IT, THIS IS THE i i 4 I I 1 Yiddish theater veteran Seymour Rexsite: After this goes, we will have no signs that there was ever a Ylddlah theater In New York. took in any entertainment that would bring in a paying audience, from Yiddish tragedy to mainstream vaudeville and burlesque to rock musicals. If the Yiddish theater in general has been a fading constellation of vagabond stars, to use Sholom Aleichems phrase, this particular playhouse has been a stationary vagabond. But reality would eventually come to 12th Street, as it had to every other corner of the avenue. Last week, the managers of the theater confirmed that after 62 years of presenting live actors, the building would be converted into a movie house under new mmuipmmt.

The men and women in their 60s and 70s whose memories comprise the remaining core of Yiddish theater in America have heard these announcements many times before. They have seen their old stage doors bridled up and forgotten, the marquees that once trumpeted their names crash to the sidewalks in a roar of crumbling iron and glass. Punk-rock bands now prowl their ainlai; tfia onfy familiar sight is that of the rickety fire escapes on the same surrounding tenements. But this bit of news cut, and deeply. Its hot that the Yiddish theater would once again have to pack its carpetbag and continue its search for a home; most of the productions at 12th Street had not been Yiddish fin-many veers.

But as long as curtains and lights and stage sets were still in Maurice Schwartz, who built what was then the Yiddish Art Theater, Is greeted by tan Albert Einstein after a production of Yoshe Kalb All those theaters on Second Avenue were built for Yiddish theater, said Miriam Kressyn, a star of the 30s. When this one goes, a part of us will go with it. And there isnt a very great part left. By David Firestone 4 Part II NY newsoay, TUESDAY, august 2, ises Theater but not by the men who play cards a few blocks down at the Hebrew Actors Union. To them, the theater at 12th Street is whatever it was called when they played it The only Second Avenue Theater they acknowledge was the one at Second Street torn down in 1969.

Most of the other theaters along Second Avenue have been torn down, too, leaving almost no remnant of the avenues days as the Yiddish Rialto. Only the theater at 12th Street, the last structure built as a Yiddish theater and still operating in New York, somehow endured the darfinn of Yiddish and the turbulent fortunes of the Lower East Side. To survive, it IT WAS probably fortunate that Maurice Schwartz, the great Yiddish actor and director who built the theater still standing at Second Avenue and 12th Street in Manhattan, never engraved its name in stone over die door. Over the years, the name has changed often enough to employ permanent crew of It has been the Yiddish Art Theater, the Folks Theater, the Molly Picon: it has been the Phoenix, the Gaiety, the Eden and the Entermedia. Most recently, it has been called the Second Avenue.