Theatre of the Wandering West

PASSWORD: metamorphosis

Much has been written about the encounter between Kafka and the Yiddish Theatre, and particular inspiration has arisen from the writer’s outpouring in his diaries about Millie. Contained here is some of the archive and links to artists and writers for whom this moment in time has been something of a lodestar.

Included here is a letter from Bernard Mendelovich, a child actor in Whitechapel’s Yiddish Theatre who Millie took under her wing after her wanderings across Europe.

The Tschissiks, the Chiziks, the Chissicks, the Czyżyks, the Chiswicks) 

When Millie meets jaunty-hatted Yiddish Theatre actor, Emanuel Tschissik (Chizik in the Yiddish theatre archives, Czyżyk in Polish meaning siskin – a small colourful bird, Tschissik in Anglised Russian, Chiswick when conflated with the London borough on arrival in the UK – Millie’s descendents’ passport name was Chiswick) in the inn of Millie’s father in Czestochowa around 1897 (Millie was in fact born Mania Fersztenfeld in Bedzin near Czestochowa) the theatre is in its infancy.
Everything is possible and Millie and Emanuel seize the opportunity to escape the confines of shtetl life aloft this new and exciting adventure. Or at least that is the story we have postulated! Millie’s father follows in hot pursuit, chasing them across “half of Poland” until they eventually agree to return, Emanuel growing a beard and returning to a more respectable trade in the eyes of his new in-laws: the wedding comedian and all-round entertainer or badkhn . Son of Binem Badkhen from a family of badkhonim this is an act he knows well. Millie’s mother is reputedly pleased, but the road soon beckons the new couple back, and they return to the itinerant lifestyle of the Yiddish theatre pioneers, touring shtetls under the radar of the Czarist ban on Yiddish, or spanning the archipelago of European theatres that host performances for their Jewish communities.
In the late 1890s, Whitechapel, London is one of these islands where Emanuel’s equally theatrical brother and sister (Joseph/Yosl and Lea Tschissik) have established themselves in the Yiddish theatres. Emanuel and Millie join them but he is unable to secure work and is forced to sell cigars. They return to the continent in 1906 to more success – Paris, Belgium, Berlin and the soon to be fragmented Austro-Hungarian Empire – this time with children Sidney and Anne.
Prague, 1911, and Millie is seen performing by a Jewish writer, Franz Kafka with ‘the German-Jewish Company from Lemberg’ (the Klugs, Sami, Isaac Lowy and the Tschissiks), bequeathing an incredibly fortuitous historical document to the Tschissiks’ ancestors in the shape of his dairies, and for many academics interested in Kafka’s relationship with both the theatre and Jewish culture.
On the eve of war, 1914, Emanuel and Millie separate in Paris and Millie, for reasons unknown to us now, and she moves back to London for a second and final time. Emanuel, suffering ill health, never returns to the stage. After the war he performs alone, or writes Yiddish verse and lyrics which he sells in the corridors of the theatres, trading anecdotes with passing friends “from far-off times”. He remains sanguine despite recurring ill-health, described by S.J.Harendorf as “not one of those people who complain about their own tragedies”. He dies in 1947 in Paris.
Whitechapel, 1915-1965: Millie performs prolifically at the Pavilion Theatre, where the great Jacob Adler also played, and later at the Grand Palais, the last great Yiddish theatre in Europe. She leaves the stage in her 80s only when a foot operation prevents her wearing proper shoes. She dies in 1976.
Like Kafka, the Yiddish speaking immigrants of Whitechapel had in more than a century of the Yiddish theatre found not only a celebration of their Jewish culture but also, in the words of Bernard Mendelovitich, Millie’s friend and fellow player, “a sense of belonging”. Theatre of The Wandering West is a performance by Kieron and the Cabinet which brings together graphic novel animation charting Millie’s journey as an itinerant actress and her meeting with one of the century’s most celebrated writers with a live score written by Emanuel and Millie’s ancestors, Jack and Kieron Maguire, including Yiddish ballads and klezmer.
Historical detail with the kind assistance of Guido Massino, the Museum of Family History and Kafka’s Diaries.