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| Address | Edmond J. Safra Plaza, 36 Battery Place New York City United States |
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| Type | Yiddish Theatre,Performing Arts |
| Opened | 1915 |
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TheNational Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, commonly known as NYTF, is a professional theater company in New York City which produces bothYiddish plays and plays translated intoYiddish, in a theater equipped with simultaneous superscript translation into English. The company's leadership consists of executive directorDominick Balletta and artistic directorZalmen Mlotek. The board is co-chaired by Sandra Cahn and Carol Levin.
Folksbiene (Yiddish:פֿאָלקסבינע,IPA:[ˈfɔlksˌbɪnə],People's Stage) was founded in 1915, under the auspices of thefraternal and Yiddish cultural organizationWorkmen's Circle,[1] on New York City’sLower East Side, as anamateur theatre group with high artistic ideals.[2] It is the oldest consecutively producing theater company in the United States, English or Yiddish, commercial or not.[3] The era when it was founded is considered to be the height ofYiddish theater; at the time there were 15 Yiddish theatre companies in theYiddish Theater District in New York and many more worldwide. Due to the destruction ofEuropean Jewry by theGerman Nazis, the Folksbiene is one of only five professional Yiddish theatre companies still in operation; also in New York City is the New Yiddish Rep, and the others are inBucharest,Warsaw andTel Aviv.[1]
In late 2017, National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene announced that it would stage the American premiere ofFiddler on the Roof in Yiddish, which has not been staged since its world premiere production in Israel more than 50 years ago.[4] It was announced in a March 2018 issue of Forbes Magazine that Academy Award winner-and-Tony Award winnerJoel Grey would direct the production.[5] Their productionFidler Afn Dakh had its first preview on July 4, 2018.[6] The opening performance was July 15, 2018.[6] The production won the 2019 Drama Desk Award For Best Musical Revival.
The company's 2006 production ofDi Yam Gazlonim, a Yiddish adaptation ofThe Pirates of Penzance, by Al Grand, was nominated for the 2007Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical Revival, and their 2012/13 Off Broadway production ofThe Golden Land was nominated for the 2013Drama Desk Award for outstanding Musical Revival. In the summer of 2012, Folksbiene announced their plans to create an international Festival of new works in celebration of their Centennial in 2015. A play contest accompanying the festival was juried by producer Emanuel Azenberg; the Tony Award-winning composer and songwriter Jason Robert Brown ("Parade"), and the playwrights Joe DiPietro (Tony Award for "Memphis"); Obie Award-winning Israel Horovitz, and Pulitzer Prize finalist Jon Marans ("Old Wicked Songs").
A revival of the 1923 operettaThe Golden Bride in 2015/16 drew press attention as aNew York Times Theatre Critics Pick and garnered Drama Desk awards as well.[7][8] The Folksbiene was a producer on the 2015/16 Broadway play "Indecent."
In the Fall of 2017, the company staged an enhanced production of Abraham Goldfadn'sThe Sorceress as part of their restoration project – an endeavor that will restore lost or nearly lost Yiddish works to the canon of Yiddish culture.[9] A fully stage production was mounted two years later in December 2019.
In 2022, the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene presentedHarmony: A New Musical, the New York debut of the musical byBarry Manilow and his longtime collaboratorBruce Sussman. The musical tells the true story of theComedian Harmonists, an ensemble of six talented young men in 1920s Germany who took the world by storm. The show ran at theMuseum of Jewish Heritage from March 23 to May 8, 2022.[10]
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