The Goethe-Institut Washington, in partnership with JxJ Arts Festival and Theater J’s Yiddish Theater Lab, presents a staged reading of Yankl the Blacksmith (Yankl der shmid)by David Pinski, translated by Nahma Sandrow and directed by Adam Immerwahr.
A psychological domestic drama that "feels" modern, not only in its language and construction, but also in its concerns with class, marriage, and the status of women. Yankl, a handsome, womanizing, inarticulate blacksmith, with depths he is dimly aware of but cannot develop, falls in love with the sensitive and well-bred Tamara, and marries her. He resolves to transform himself into a faithful husband and upstanding citizen, but the couple rent a room to Rivke, a passionate woman who has left her husband. This endangers their own marriage, as their honest, affectionate conversation becomes constricted into oblique fencing and denial.
Originally written and performed in 1906, Yankl the Blacksmith was translated by Nahma Sandrow (from whose website this summary was sourced).