Juliusz Berger – aktor dwóch scen
Juliusz Berger – actor of two stages

Author(s): Maria Napiontkowa
Subject(s): Theatre, Dance, Performing Arts, Fine Arts / Performing Arts, Sociology of Art, History of Art
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
Keywords: Juliusz Berger; Jewish Theater; Polish Theater
Summary/Abstract: The article recalls the outstanding actor Juliusz Berger (1928-1999), who was one of the few twentieth-century artists in Poland who played simultaneously in two different languages – Polish and Yiddish. Raised in a completely assimilated intelligentsia home in Łuck, deported deep into Soviet Union, he returned to the country, where he graduated from high school, law studies in Wrocław, and then joined the theater. He started his stage career at PTD in Wrocław under the supervision of Edmund Wierciński and Wilam Horzyca. Here Ida Kamińska, who was already managing the Jewish Theater at that time, saw him and offered him the main role in the play - her own adaptation of Eliza Orzeszkowa's novel Meir Ezofowicz, which required him to master the Yiddish language, which he did not know. I present Berger's artistic profile on the example of his two most famous roles: Meir Ezofowicz from 1953 at the Jewish Theater and Tewi (Fiddler on the Roof, 1984) at the Musical Theater in Gdynia. The context for them is Brecht's Schweizerkez [Schweizerkas] in Mutter Courage und ihre kinders (1957) and Cadyk in An-ski's The Dybbuk (1991).

• Details
• Contents