"The audience feels happy when Mrs. Thomashefsky appears on the stage. And this is no wonder, because she possesses a sense of cheerfulness, agility, and vigor. She does everything that might make the world happy. No means are overridden; words, whether they fit or do not fit are uttered; movements, whether they fit are not expressed, and mainly dance and all sorts of mimicry are applied, and the audience laughs, storms and roars with happiness."
About the impression she had on seeing her first Yiddish theatre production, Bessie recalls in her memoirs:
"When I came home from my first theatre production, which I had ever seen in my life, I was like a newborn. I felt in me something that I had never felt before. Something had spoken to my heart. I dealt with it as if it was a dream. For us at home though, we became sad, and for my father I bore an anger: why he laughed at the Yiddish actors” …
Her first performance was as "The Bride" in Pinkhas Thomashefsky's play, "Rothschild Biography," which Boris Thomashefsky staged with a dramatic club that he had founded in Baltimore.
Bessie describes her first performance:
"On the stage stood 'Rothschild.' Thomashefsky sang a sad song, and the audience applauded so strongly that he had to sing the same song more than once.
Rothschild's mother goes around in rags. They both speak, and 'the bride' is to enter by herself.
That means, however, that I must stand behind the curtain, because I will be going onto the stage ... I listened, as on-stage Thomashefsky says: 'Where is my beloved bride, for she has not entered?'
I stood there but I could not move from my place. Somehow his last words were very strange to me. At our rehearsals I had never heard him say these words. I didn't know then that one could say an 'ad lib,' and I just stood there.
Suddenly I heard him cry out: "Ah, mother, behold, here comes my bride, I have to see her" -- and he came down from the stage, grabbed me by the hand and lead me into the scene.
The stage was lit with candles, but we who were in the light became dark and could not be seen. I remained standing there, like a wooden Indian at a cigar store, and I lost my tongue. I stood there, sweating, and he turned to us and said: 'So, my dear bride, have you nothing to say? Speak!'
As if by witchcraft, speech came to me. I then suddenly began to speak."
Several weeks later Bessie performed as "The Pioneer," and then she performed with couplets in Baltimore. Boris Thomashefsky now became a member of the household in her home, and she received permission from him to travel to Boston, where she performed in the Boston Music Hall in the title role of "Shulamis," together with Boris Thomashefsky and others.
Soon thereafter Thomashefsky brought a group of well-known actors from New York, and together with Avraham Goldfaden staged, "The Two Kuni Lemels."
Soon she traveled to Philadelphia to Thomashefsky, who staged his father's play in a dramatic hall. So that she shouldn't have to return to her parents from whose auspices she wanted to be free of, she married Boris Thomashefsky, and since then performed on the stage under the name of Bessie Thomashefsky.
And the rest, as we say, is history ...
