A Life on the Stage

Just past the middle of his memoirs, Jacob Adler describes a crisis that nearly ended his acting career. After three years of wandering through southern Russia, Ukraine, and Lithuania with a traveling Yiddish theatre troupe, Adler has become a father, his company has disintegrated, and he returns to his native Odessa. His parents, who had never approved of his career, now expect that he will find more stable work, and this time, he tries to oblige them. All to no avail: "Like a shadow wherever I went, my 'bad name,' the name of an 'actor' followed me. My friends thought of me now as a merrymaker, a sort of clown. They asked for a song, a dance" (221). Fate thus forces his hand, and before long, he and his wife return to their lives of theatrical vagabondage

Art · Art history · Dance · Front (military · Geography · Literature · Memoir · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Shadow (psychology · Wife · History · Law · Psychology · Theatre and Performance Studies