Jewish Immigrant Theatre and the Argentinean Avant-Gardes: The Case of Ibergus in 1926 Buenos Aires

Abstract

The 1926 production of Yiddish playwright Leib Malakh’s Ibergus, a naturalistic play featuring a Jewish prostitute, has been interpreted as the culmination of Jewish immigrant efforts to “cleanse” the Argentinean Yiddish theatres of their supposed proprietors: a ring of Jewish pimps. Scholars focus on how Ibergus, directed using avant-gardist staging techniques by Yakov Botoshansky, contested the influence of the Jewish prostitution ring, which allegedly insisted that Yiddish impresarios produce a “lowbrow” repertoire rather than modernist plays. This essay offers a new understanding of the significance of Ibergus by arguing that it continued a longstanding trend of avant-garde Yiddish theatre in Buenos Aires and within transnational performance networks. By attending to multiple dimensions of this production – including the surrounding intra-ethnic conflict, construction of public discourse, and staging elements – I show how the creators of Ibergus exploited dominant assumptions about the Yiddish theatre’s rumoured relationship to prostitution for their own professional gain. Doing so reveals the significance of Ibergus in the history and theorization of the theatrical avant-gardes and contributes to conversations about the relationship between discourse and practice in global theatre histories.