Maurice Schwartz-Renown Actors

Maurice Schwartz was not only one of the world's foremost Yiddish actors, he was also the founder and leader of the Yiddish Art Theatre of New York. Under his leadership, the talented theatre troupe performed in many high-quality Yiddish productions, always striving to maintain Schwartz's high artistic standards.

Maurice Schwartz was born in a town in the Ukraine in 1890. He immigrated to the United States in 1902.

A renowned Yiddish actor and director, Schwartz began his life in the Yiddish theatre by performing with a number of Yiddish theatrical troupes. Even at this early stage in his career, he had the desire to introduce Yiddish versions of popular European plays to the American audience, many of whom were immigrants like himself.

Though he did not succeed in this venture, Schwartz in 1918 formed "The Yiddish Art Theatre," in which he produced and performed in many Yiddish plays for more than three decades. The theatre was located in New York City, though the troupe, over these many years, would move their theatre to different locations within the New York metropolitan area.

Over more than a thirty-year period, Schwartz and his acting troupe performed nearly two-hundred works in Yiddish to audiences in New York City alone.