The Living Corpse
This first golden age of Yiddish drama in America ended when the period from 1905 to 1908 brought half a million new Jewish immigrants to New York. Once again, as in the 1880s, the largest audience for Yiddish theatre was for lighter fare. The Adlers and Keni Liptzin hung on doing classic theatre, but Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky returned to the earlier style, making a fortune off of what the Adlers despised as "shund" ("trash") theatre. Plays like Joseph Lateiner's "The Jewish Heart" succeeded at this time, while Gordin's late plays like "Dementia Americana" (1909) were initially commercial failures. It would be 1911 before the trend was reversed, with Adler's commercially successful production of Tolstoy's "The Living Corpse" (also known as "Redemption"), translated into Yiddish by Kobrin. Both the more and the less serious Yiddish theatre persisted. As Lulla Rosenfeld writes, "Art and "shund" alike would find their audience."