Bryna Wasserman Picked To Lead National Jewish Theater

Enthused: In July, Wasserman will take over New York?s oldest Yiddish theater company. Image by Paul Ducharme
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “There are no second acts in American lives.” But there are second acts, apparently, in Yiddish theater lives.
In late June, the National Yiddish Theatre — Folksbiene announced that Bryna Wasserman, formerly the head of Montreal’s Segal Centre for Performing Arts, will take over as executive director, joining the Folksbiene’s artistic director Zalmen Mlotek. The appointment comes as the Folksbiene finishes its 96th season and begins preparations for its 100th anniversary, in 2015.
“I’m looking forward to a new challenge and taking what I’ve learned in the last 15 years and bringing that experience to New York,” Wasserman said from Montreal, where she had just wrapped up the city’s second International Yiddish Theatre Festival.

Enthused: In July, Wasserman will take over New York?s oldest Yiddish theater company. Image by Paul Ducharme
Wasserman’s appointment follows her tenure as both artistic and executive director of the Segal Centre. She began there in 1996 when she took over The Yiddish Theatre, later re-named after her mother, founding director Dora Wasserman. Two years later Wasserman also became artistic director of the Centre’s English-language Leanor and Alvin Segal Theatre. In 2007, Wasserman presided over a $6 million expansion and renovation that included the opening of an academy for the performing arts and the change of the Centre’s name from the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts.
Wasserman also earned critical and popular success. In 2000 she was awarded a Montreal English Critics Circle Award of Distinction. The first International Yiddish Theatre Festival, which she launched in 2009, was lauded as a historic achievement.
“She pushed the limits of what one thinks could be accomplished,” said Jon Rondeau, a director of production at the Segal Centre who worked with Wasserman for two seasons. “She never backed down from a challenge.”
Wasserman won’t be leaving Montreal entirely. For now, she’ll be staying on as honorary artistic director of the Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre, where she plans to direct a Hebrew production of Yigal Mossinson’s “Kazablan” in 2012.
In coming to the Folksbiene, Wasserman hopes to boost the fortunes of another historic Yiddish theater company with which she has a personal history. While attending New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in the late 1960s and early ’70s, she worked as the Folksbiene’s stage manager, alongside such stars as composer Sholom Secunda and actors Jacob Ben-Ami and Ida Kaminska.
Although the Folksbiene has had some success in recent years, launching a touring troupe and receiving several Drama Desk Award nominations, it has failed to find a permanent home since moving out of the Forward Building, at 175 East Broadway, in 1974. Currently it uses a space at the City University of New York’s Baruch Performing Arts Center, on Lexington Avenue. Finding a permanent base for the company is among Wasserman’s top goals.
The company hopes that Wasserman’s expertise in theater both Yiddish and English will help it forge partnerships with other theater companies and appeal to new, and younger, audiences. “The appointment of Bryna is the beginning of a real integration of Yiddish theater into the mainstream of theater life in America and internationally,” Mlotek said. Wasserman added: “It’s about expanding our mandate to attract a young and exciting artistic population through dance, music, theater and film. I want to ensure that the National Yiddish Theatre is at the forefront of preserving, maintaining and advancing Yiddish culture and Yiddish language through the arts, and that there are audiences for generations to come.”
Contact Ezra Glinter at [email protected]
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward ‘Another Jewish warrior’: Fine wins special election for U.S. House seat
-
Fast Forward A Chicagoan wanted to protest Elon Musk — and put a swastika sticker on a Jewish man’s Tesla
-
Fast Forward NY attorney general orders car wash to stop ripping off Jews with antisemitic ‘Passover special’
-
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.