This Guide features helpful resources for the teaching and learning of the musical "Green Violin". Though by no means exhaustive, the guide orients teachers and students to books and DVDs, useful online learning tools (such as online databases), and other resources that can help users to learn more about the music, art and theatre that resulted from the friendship and artistic collaboration between Marc Chagall and Solomon Mikhoels, the extraordinary leading actor of the first Soviet Yiddish Theater (GOSET).
Danielle Loftus
Burning Lights by 
Chagall by
During the years (1914-22) that Marc Chagall spent in Russia, he developed his distinct blend of cubism and expressionism. This book focuses on the decorations he created for the Yiddish State Theatre in those years.
Chagall and the Artists of the Russian Jewish Theater by
"Chagall and the Artists of the Russian Jewish Theater illuminates the Jewish mythical and folkloric plays produced at Habima to the daring, expressionistic Yiddish dramas presented at the Moscow State Yiddish Theater (goset), this illustrated book chronicles the flourishing of Soviet Jewish theater in the 1920s and 1930s. The productions, which combined Russian folk art with elements of Cubo-Futurism and Constructivism, attracted large, diverse audiences and garnered international critical praise. Spanning Jewish culture and history in the Soviet Union from 1919 to 1949, the volume includes stunning reproductions of Chagall’s celebrated theater murals; fascinating archival materials such as posters, prints, and playbills; designs for costumes and sets; and many other breathtaking works."--BOOK JACKET.
Jewish luck by
Actors from the Moscow Yiddish State Art Theatre star in this adaptation of Sholem Aleichem’s stories about Menachem Mendel. Mendel leaves his home to find his ’luck’, and on the way he tries many different jobs, including matchmaking. A story of life in a small Jewish shtetl at the turn of the century.
The king and the fool by
Jewish rituals, traditions, and memories were kept alive in the Soviet Union by Yiddish theater and literature. Two important figures in this movement were Solomon Mikhoels and Benjamin Zuskin, who helped establish the Yiddish Theater in Moscow. This video shows scenes from several of their productions, including the title film. Includes interviews with the actors’ daughters, who discuss their memories of the theater and its development.
The Letters of Menakhem-Mendl and Sheyne-Sheyndl by
This volume presents an outstanding new translation of two favorite comic novels by the preeminent Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem (1859-1916).
Marc Chagall by
Marc Chagall (1887-1985) traversed a long route from a boy in the Jewish Pale of Settlement to a commissar of art in revolutionary Russia, to the position of a world-famous French artist. This book presents for the first time a comprehensive collection of Chagall’s public statements on art and culture. The documents and interviews shed light on his rich, versatile, and enigmatic art from within his own mental world.
Marc Chagall and the Jewish Theater by
Exhibition held at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, September 23, 1992-January 17, 1993; and the Art Institute of Chicago, January 30-May 7, 1993--T.p. verso.
The Moscow State Yiddish Theater by
This is the first book in English to trace the history of the Moscow State Yiddish Theater, founded in 1919 and liquidated by the Soviet government in 1949.
The Moscow Yiddish Theater by
Selected writings that reflect the aesthetics and politics of the Yiddish revolutionary theater between 1919 and 1948. The book also incorporates salvaged images and stage sets created by the best artists of the time.
My Life, 2010 by
My Life was written in Moscow in 1921–1922, when Chagall was thirty-five years old. It remains one of the most extraordinarily inventive and beautifully told of all autobiographies. The text is accompanied by twenty plates which Chagall prepared especially to illustrate his life story. Together, the words and pictures paint an incomparable portrait of one of the greatest painters of this century, and of the now vanished milieu which inspired him.
Stalin's Secret Pogrom by
In the spring and summer of 1952, fifteen Soviet Jews, including five prominent Yiddish writers and poets, were secretly tried and convicted; multiple executions soon followed in the basement of Moscow's Lubyanka prison. The defendants were falsely charged with treason and espionage because of their involvement in the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, and because of their heartfelt response as Jews to Nazi atrocities on occupied Soviet territory.
Tales of Mendele the Book Peddler by
Two novellas from the founder of modern Yiddish fiction, depicting smalltown Jewish life in 19th Century Russia. One novella, The Brief Travels of Benjamin the Third, describes the comical misadventures of a Quixote-Panza pair who set off to see the world outside their town.
Wandering Stars by
Spanning ten years and two continents, and set in the colorful world of the Yiddish theater at the close of the nineteenth century, Wandering Stars is an epic love story by the creator of Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof.