Leon Kobrin [SEP] date of death
Leon Kobrin
Leon Kobrin (1873–1946) was a playwright in Yiddish theater, writer of short stories and novels, and a translator. As a playwright he is generally seen as a disciple of Jacob Gordin, but his mature work was more character-driven, more open and realistic in its presentation of human sexual desire, and less polemical than Gordin's. Many of his plays were "ghetto dramas" dealing with issues of tradition and assimilation and with generational issues between Jewish immigrants to America and the first generation of American
forth between the Yiddish theatre and Broadway, including Bertha Kalich and Jacob Adler. Some of the major composers included Abraham Goldfaden, Joseph Rumshinsky and Sholom Secunda, while playwrights included David Pinski, Solomon Libin, Jacob Michailovitch Gordin and Leon Kobrin.
Concurrently with Yiddish theatre was the development of Vaudeville (a term thought to be a corruption of the old French word "vaudevire", meaning an occasional or topical light popular song), a style of multi-act theatre which flourished from the 1880s through to the 1920s.