National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene Presents Folksbiene! LIVE: 'Welcome To Our Suke/Sukkah'

This October, National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene (Folksbiene)-led by Zalmen Mlotek, Artistic Director, and Dominick Balletta, Executive Director-presents Folksbiene! LIVE: "Welcome to Our Suke/Sukkah", a four-day festival of family-friendly performances during Chol Hamoed (the intermediary days of Sukkos) from October 5th to 8th, and a special virtual play reading of "It Can't Happen Here", a dramatization of the 1935 novel by Sinclair Lewis, adapted for the stage by John C. Moffitt and Sinclair Lewis, imagining the rise of an American fascist dictator, in collaboration with a number of prestigious theatre companies.

Presentations include Kids and Yiddish: The Reunion Special (October 5th); Tatiana Wechsler in Concert (October 6th); Budd Mishkin's interview with the Grammy Award-winning Klezmatics; and, A Bisl Borscht: A Tribute to Mickey Katz, starring Ben Liebert (Motl from Folksbiene's Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish) (October 8th).

"Sukkos is the Jewish festival celebrating the shelters in which our ancestors lived following the annual harvest as they journeyed to the temple in Jerusalem. During this holiday it is a mitzvah to extend hospitality to ushpizn (guests) and break bread together inside our shelters," said Motl Didner, Associate Artistic Director at National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene. "This year, the virtual world has become our shelter as we are away from home at the Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. And we invite you to be our guest and share our cultural bounty with a festival within a festival of Yiddish performing arts."

"Welcome to Our Suke" begins with a not-to-be-missed event, Kids and Yiddish: The Reunion Special. The hour-long special, only available online for 96 hours from 1:00 PM Eastern Time on Monday, October 5th.

Kids and Yiddish was originally a concert created by Zalmen Mlotek with Adrienne Cooper, Joanne H Borts, and Michael Fox for the Workmen's Circle in 1993. In 1998, Joanne H Borts teamed up with Mlotek and Michael Fox to create a show that was modeled after Saturday Night Live and Sesame Street. It was then presented annually until 2011 at the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene. With glowing reviews in The New York Times, Folksbiene created a CD called "Kids and Yiddish - A Musical Adventure." The original cast was just the four original creators, but in subsequent theatrical versions produced by the NYTF, children were added along with more actors and musicians, most of whom are joining for this online reunion special. The reunion special was created by two of the then-children of the show, Elisha and Avram Mlotek.

Later that month, debuting on October 28th and available through November 1st, Folksbiene will present "It Can't Happen Here," a dramatization of the 1935 novel by Sinclair Lewis imagining the rise of an American fascist dictator. In 1936, "It Can't Happen Here" was adapted for the stage by John C. Moffitt and Sinclair Lewis and presented simultaneously by 21 theater companies under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Theater Project. These productions included translations into Yiddish, Italian, and Spanish.

The event will be presented in partnership with other theater companies, including Kairos Italy Theater, Turkish American Repertory Theater, New York Classical Theatre, New Heritage Theatre Group/ Impact Repertory Theatre, Israeli Artists Project, Pan Asian Repertory Theatre, and Repertorio Español, among others, for a multi-lingual reading - in Yiddish, English, Spanish, Italian, Turkish and Hebrew - of this landmark play in order to bring attention to the need for greater support of our industry, which has been impacted deeper than most industries during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Launched in March, Folksbiene! LIVE is an online celebration of Yiddish culture, featuring live-streamed theater, American Jewish performers, concerts, lectures, talks, and other events. Programming provides inspirational and entertaining experiences as cultural and arts venues across the country and the world remain closed amid the coronavirus pandemic.

All Folksbiene! LIVE programs are presented at 1:00 PM. Stay in the loop and get reminders about new episodes by subscribing to Folksbiene's newsletter, and catch up on past episodes on-demand, at nytf.org/live. Kids and Yiddish: The Reunion Special is a benefit for the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene through permission from Theatre Authority, Inc.

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