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Liza Barska-Fisher
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Born in 1888 in Odessa,
Ukraine. Her parents were enlightened
and well-to-do. She learned in a gymnasium.
She trained her voice
through a Ukrainian singing teacher and was recommended
as a chorus singer for a Ukrainian troupe. Soon thereafter
she came to Odessa to act in the Yiddish troupe of
Kaminski, where she performed singing solos with them, and soon she switched over to small
roles. Here she was introduced to prompter and
assistant director Herman Fisher, with whom she married,
and from there she followed the same path to the stage
(as he did).
In the span of her stage
career, she played in all the old and modern repertoires.
She excelled in character roles from Gordin's plays or
in the operettas, where she often, in a little
caricaturist way, portrayed various women types.
Jonas Turkow writes:
"Liza Barska Fisher had
a beautiful voice for singing, and also had a capacity
for the stage. She had been, in her beginnings (soon
after her arrival to the stage) given roles, and over
time she became a useful character actress in the
Yiddish theatre. Liza Barska was very much a lively and
friendly person. Collegial, cheerful and
always with a smile on her face. All who worked with
her had loved her very much." |
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The Fishers had three
children: The eldest -- Luba Fisher, had acted for a
certain time in the Yiddish theatre and in Yiddish
films. After finishing her studies (she was in the
university and in the Polish drama school), she went
away to the Polish theatre. She was the wife
of the prominent Polish artist Jacek Woszczerowicz.
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Fisher's youngest
daughter, Anka, had continued to study and was first in
the Warsaw Ghetto. She began to perform on the
stage. Fisher's only son, Boris, had some years before
the (Second World) War, traveled to America (where
he graduated as an engineer and worked with
airplanes.) "Writing about the acting
in Sackler's "Yizkor" Dr. M. Weichert writes
especially about the acting of B.:
"But one of them is
more. She has this time elevated the performance above the average. Certainly a
large part in this is the role itself. However the
main part in it was the performer. On the
Yiddish stage she is not a new face, Madame Barska-Fisher.
She is always acting big, pithy, with a loud mouth. This
time she was given a role of a frail, often
terrified and blind woman, sparse of movement and
most important of speech. Not once does Madame
Fisher fall out of this difficult character, not
only when she speaks, but also, and this difficult
character, not only when she speaks, but also, and
this is much harder, when she is silent. The entire
time that she is on stage, her face shines with that
inner light with which the blind see all. This is
the kind of performance that elevates a mere
performer to the plateau of a gifted artist."
When the [Second World]
War broke out, the entire family was in Warsaw with
the Nazis, and B. passed away from typhus.
photo:
Barska-Fisher in "The Seven Who Were Hanged" by
Leonid Andreyev.. |
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"Lexicon of
the Yiddish Theatre," New York, 1931, Vol. I, p.
130.
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Michael Weichert --
"Theatre and Drama," Vilna, 1926, Vol. II, p. 119.
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Jonas Turkow -- "Farloshene
shtern," Buenos Aires, 1953, Vol. I., pp. 122-128.
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