Nonprofit Talk: World’s oldest Yiddish theatre company adapts to new set of challenges

Dominick Balletta is the executive director at National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene. Photo courtesy of Folksbiene

By Dominick Balletta, as told to the Eagle

Dominick Balletta is the executive director at National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, the longest consecutively producing theatre in the U.S. and the world's oldest continuously operating Yiddish theatre company. The company — which presented the acclaimed Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish — is based in Battery Park City in Manhattan.

How has Folksbiene navigated the pandemic?

Like everyone else, we have had to rapidly adapt to this new reality and to make some hard decisions in order to preserve and protect our 105-year-old Yiddish treasure. In the midst of these challenging choices, I am appreciative of the commitment and support from my staff and Board of Directors.

How are you now serving your members and audiences?

Almost overnight, we went from being a live performance operation to an online content producer. A longstanding staffer, Gia Pace, presented the notion of programming online as a way to connect with our audiences during lockdown. The staff and our artists ran with the idea, resulting in Folksbiene! LIVE (nytf.org/live). Our Artistic Director Zalmen Mlotek gives weekly Yiddish concerts; Motl Didner, the Associate Artistic Director, leads 15-Minute Yiddish, a humorous language immersion series, and we have concerts, conversations and a variety of other programming (including a Yiddish trivia game show), available on demand on our website after its premiere.

How about the actors you work with: how are they doing, given that Broadway and Off-Broadway have been and will be closed for some time?

Our artists and artisans are immensely talented, so they aren’t going to let being confined to their homes stop them from making new work.  One of my great joys is watching people who thought Zoom was a sound effect in February bend this technology to their creative will.  And to that point, a big NYTF shout out to Queens native Adam Shapiro, a longstanding Folksbiene performer who has a very funny series of musical theater parodies up on the Internet. Adam is just one of a number of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish veterans that call Queens their home—performers Jennifer Babiak, Ben Liebert, Kayleen Seidl and our stalwart Production Stage Manager Kat West.

You had a hit with Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish, and this was supposed to go abroad next. What’s the status?

In January, as we ended an 18-month run of Fiddler (six months at our home inside the Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, followed by a year-long run Off-Broadway at Stage 42), our plans were to tour China in April and oversee an Australian production while preparing our national tour for a September opening in Los Angeles.  Obviously, we are on to Plan B, but the passion and commitment to our Fiddler by our producing partners around the world makes me very optimistic that we have not seen the last of this landmark event.

What types of support does your sector — and Folksbiene — need now?

It’s going to be a long haul until we get back to doing what we do best – bringing people together to celebrate Yiddish culture and Jewish values through live productions. For our artists and artisans, we need our government to make the investment in the creative industry that gets them to the other side of this pandemic.  The value of a thriving artistic community is very evident now, as people are consuming music, movies, literature and online theater to get them through the day.

For Folksbiene, we are fortunate that our supporters have rallied around us, sometimes with funding, sometimes with words of encouragement (and oftentimes both).  We need that engagement from our nearest and dearest as we work with our government on safely getting us through this and back on our feet.

What is on the horizon for Folksbiene?

We have a number of great productions just itching to get onstage, including the acclaimed Barry Manilow-Bruce Sussman musical Harmony, based on the real life tale of the Comedian Harmonists, the premiere of our Yiddish translation of Paddy Chayefsky’s The Tenth Man, as well as a slew of concerts and readings, including a women’s Yiddish playwrights festival.

What do you think the future holds for the arts and culture sector as a result of the pandemic?

At the ripe old age of 105, Folksbiene is now going through its fifth pandemic (not to mention global financial meltdowns and world wars).  The human spirit always comes out stronger on the other side, and so I look forward to they day we put all of this behind us.

Learn more about National Yiddish Theatre Folkbsiene at nytf.org.