top, spit into fascism’s rotten form. What’s more the actors had to learn how to accustom themselves to speak in this manner. With their words on stage, to be able to storm the gates of heaven and cause thunderous reactions in this world. Thus would the participants fly to the highest heights. And the storm with the strong slogans would be screamed out in the loudest voices. These devices would push aside the indifferent, quiet but intelligent Greenspan. Faktorovsky was also not comfortable with Flapan’s approach. He had modernistic theatre aspirations. Flapan’s dreams, however, of high mountains, his loft theatrical ambitions sweetly inebriated the other members of his studio. They encircled him and stuck by him. Finally he remained the one and only teacher in the school term 1933-1934. He was also the one and only theatre director who staged in their studio the first two stage presentations. "The Negro" (Hold the Fort) by Chaver-Paver, in 1933, and the Soviet play "Koilin" (Bullets) by Galitshnikov and Popp in 1934. They also staged many other short performances and one-act plays.

Yakov Flapan's theatre knowledge was very far removed from his poetic fantasies and theatrical undertakings. Even the theatrical ideas that he accumulated through his wanderings all over European towns and cities were, to his comrades in the studio, hard to accept. They used to, however, feel and were permeated with his perpetual novel undertakings to be astonished enough to soar.

(Linkovsky describes what took place during the first performance.) The one and only person who was the calmest, in fact, was the most nervous of them all. He was the one who carried the greatest responsibility for the biggest accomplishments; for the biggest start-ups—the director himself, Yakov Flapan.

The presentation "Koilin" had even more success that the "Negro." … 'Idrams’ was actually much more than a mere studio, since it was a theatre; a worker’s theatre. At that time, they also had to consider who to ask to direct future activities. Yakov Flapan had in his two previous productions achieved through his energy and fantasy, to light the flame which shone with a red glow upon the actors as well as the spectators during his two years. It was, however, difficult to keep the fire burning. It appears that his health had begun to break down. It seems that his final illness had already started to develop. This illness would only a year later end his influential life.

 Flapan was even then tired of non-ending discussions and making impressions with his revolutionary theatre theories. The studio comrades also grew tired. The stylized pointedness that Flapan had created in the movement, in the writing, the acting even from the start enthralled people with its newness, with its otherness, but Flapan was hard to hold onto by those in the studio of the Idrams presented the problem-- A director."

• "Lexicon of the New Yiddish Literature," Vol. 7, N.Y., 1968, pp. 400-401.

• Y. Linkovsky -- Di ershte oyffirung, "Di neger," 30 yor "Ift.," Buenos Aires, 1962.