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Essay on A Theater of My Own

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A Theater of My Own



My grandmother, Annie was a seanchai, an Irish storyteller. She was the only great actor I have known intimately. Her stage was the kitchen of her cottage in the West of Ireland and her stories were about her friends and neighbors. She recreated their trials and triumphs and with her talent for mimicry accorded each a speaking part. Her one woman show held me spellbound. She commanded my tears and fits of laughter depending on the content of her story or dictated by a whim. It was she who made me stage-struck years before I even saw a stage.



I was thirteen before I acted my first conventional role. My high school English teacher, Mrs. Doyle, directed us in Strindberg's Motherlove. I played the …show more content…

The self deprecating wit prevalent throughout his works was reminiscent of the Irish sense of humor. I read every one of his books available in our school library and then moved on to the Boston Public Library where I discovered the story telling gifts of his brother I.J. Singer and his contemporary, Chaim Grade. Having exhausted the English language collection of Yiddish writers, I became determined to explore their works in their original form.



Upon entering university, I decided to concentrate my studies on the language and literature of Yiddish. Although no Yiddish courses were offered at Boston University, the University Professor's Program allowed me to design my own course of study. I studied Yiddish and Hebrew at Hebrew College, the National Yiddish Book Center, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Harvard University.



It was Yiddish and another dynamic teacher that pointed me again toward the theater. Last year in what was to be the most exciting and challenging course of my college career, I studied Yiddish theater with Professor Ruth Wisse. My deepest understanding of the Yiddish language and literature came from her class. She began her lecture by putting a play in context and placing its author in world literature. The second half of class was devoted to reading carefully prepared works aloud with each student playing a different role. She pushed and prodded us until we came up with an intelligent and original

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