kuperman/samuel

Lives in the Yiddish Theatre
SHORT BIOGRAPHIES OF THOSE INVOLVED IN THE Yiddish THEATRE
aS DESCRIBED IN zALMEN zYLBERCWEIG'S "lEKSIKON FUN YIDISHN TEATER"
1931-1969

Samuel Kuperman

Born at the end of the eightieth year of the nineteen century in the shtetl Vloshtshave (Włoszczowa), Poland. Parents -- land owners, who became homeless, due to the fact that his father passed away from a heart attack, and K. was raised by an uncle who brought him to Lodz. Here K. completed a trade school and began to at under the name of Kuprinov, as an amateur. On the Russian stage he demonstrated organizational abilities, and K. quickly became the manager of the itinerant Russian troupes under the auspices of Mamont Dalsky, the brothers Adelheit and Chernov.

K. broke from the theatre for a little time, and returned to Lodz, and was a bookkeeper for the large Yiddish manufacturers Zilbershteyn, Moshe Aaron Viner, but soon again returned to the theatre, first as the manager of the Yiddish "Skala Theatre" (directors Julius Adler and Herman Serotsky), for whom he also translated into Yiddish the drama "Trilby" and the operetta "Alma vu voynstu", which was performed with great success, later also by other troupes. K. also had translated "Toyt-shtrof" by Ge.

K. also translated for Adler's itinerant troupe the play "Di dray farlibte" ["Kokhankovye" by Vladslav Grubinsky].

About it, Julius Adler recounts in his memoirs:

"We had put together two troupes. The two troupes together were composed of seven people. I am aroysgeforn with a play "Di dray farlibte", translated from the Polish by S. Kuperman. In the play, three actors participated: the mother, the son and the father. ...the father was performed by our business manager Samuel Kuperman. After a melh, the play had: Kuperman as the father, used to appear first in the middle of the second act. Thus Kuperman used to have enough time to stand with us, settling with the cashier, paying every expenditure, etc.".

During the First World War K., through his umdermidlekhe energy, toured with the troupe across the occupied regions, and until several years (later), to the outbreak of the Second World War, together with his wife Pola Patroni, staged with the director of Lodz's "Skala" Theatre, Vilna's "Palace" Theatre, and other Yiddish theatres in Poland, and also managed with the large concerts, from Shaliapin to Cantor Yosele Rosenblatt.

K. retired from the theatre, settled in Warsaw where he was a representative of an elastic/soft rubber factory. Here he was captured by the Nazis who killed him.

M. E. from Pola Patroni.

Julius Adler -- 60 yor oyf der idisher bine, "Morgn-frayhayt", N. Y., 1 January 1948.

Adapted from the original Yiddish text found within the "Lexicon of the Yiddish Theatre" by Zalmen Zylbercweig, Volume 4, page 3112.