Jewish Chamber Theatre 1. Genre scene from a play staged by the State Jewish Theatre 200 thousand.

The Moscow State Jewish Theatre was opened in 1921. Its forerunner was the Jewish Theatre Studio supervised by the Theatrical Department at the People’s Commissariat of Education in Petrograd. Having moved to Moscow, the Studio became a theatre. Until 1929 the founder and the artistic director of both the studio and the theatre was A. Granovsky, who was succeeded by S. Mikhoels. The Jewish Theatre was an important social phenomenon not only for the Jews but for the Soviet theatre too. The stage scenery was designed by Marc Chagall, Nathan Altman, Robert Falk and Alexander Tyshler. The plays were staged in Yiddish but not all productions were not only about Jews. One of its best performances was William Shakespeare’s King Lear. The fact that performances were in Yiddish did not stop the Russian intelligentsia and the Communist Party elite.