The Yiddish Texan
An Evening of Schmoozing + Songs with Steven Skybell and Zalmen Mlotek
Yiddish with a Texas accent?
In retrospect, it seems quite a stretch, importing a guy from the decidedly un-Yiddishkeit shtetl that is Lubbock, Texas, to Anatevka. But Steven Skybell, who’d played Tevye at Yale College, was so set on playing the ever-questioning milkman on a professional stage that when he heard about a new production being mounted by the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene (NYTF) he stretched the truth and told his agent he spoke Yiddish.
Now, he’s hooked on Yiddish music and will join us in the tradition of minnesängers, Jewish troubadours, and in conversation with Zalmen Mlotek.
As the Artistic Director of the NYTF, the longest continuously running Yiddish theater in the world, Zalmen Mlotek is an internationally recognized authority on Yiddish folk and theater music.
Steven Skybell has had a long stage career including in Wicked, The Full Monty, Pal Joey, Compassion, Fiddler on the Roof (2015 revival) and numerous Shakespeare plays. He received an Obie Award for his Off-Broadway role in Antigone in New York and was nominated for a Drama Desk Award and won the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his portrayal of Tevye in the 2019 production of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish.
Presented in association with National Yiddish Theater-Folksbiene at the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust.