Edna Cates, niece of Avrom Greenbaum.  Copyright © 2016 [Deborah Butcher]. All Rights Reserved.

‘Acting means living, it’s all I do and all I’m good at.   If I weren’t getting paid well, I would still be acting in a small troupe somewhere’ is how Morgan Freeman voiced his passionate and prideful dedication to his craft.   Cast alongside Freeman and fellow Hollywood great Danny De Vito, the Glasgow-born Michael Cates was once lingering on the shaky precipice of stardom before the wheel of fortune took a calamitous turn when an untimely car accident involving Freeman resulted in the film’s cancellation.   Although his elusive celebrity ambitions were cruelly dashed, Michael’s natural talent has indeed transported him across the Atlantic to tour with the innovative, award-winning Blue Man Group.   That he was destined to tread the boards is however unsurprising, for his mother Edna (maiden name Green) was the niece of the phenomenal playwright and founder of the Jewish Institute Players, Avrom Greenbaum.

Edna initially agreed to an interview to shed some light on the creative legacy of her uncle to theatre national and local, and to reflect also on his personal contribution to the company and wider community.   His one act plays (ranging from the hilarious Watch on the Clyde to the more sombre Bread of Affliction about a Russian Pogrom) and poetry coincide with many of the themes of ‘Jewish Lives, Scottish Spaces’ project: the dramatic performance of a distinctly Scottish-Jewish identity, the artistic expression of diasporic experience, and the transformation of Scottish urban landscapes into real and imagined Jewish cultural spaces.

Her testimony enlivens my understanding of the various memory objects – theatre programmes, photos, postcards and ephemera – lodged at the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre.   She articulates what involvement with the Players meant to those, like herself, happy to devote much of their leisure to learning lines and perfecting performances. She touches upon the group’s role in facilitating and reshaping relations within the Jewish community – revealing that many of the Players met or got to know their future spouses at club rehearsals – as well as the interplay between the Jewish and non-Jewish communities through the collaborative involvement of the troupe in the 1940s Unity Theatre.

A charming and highly self-deprecating, natural raconteur, Edna is effortlessly able to weave details both humorous and touching into an engaging and extraordinarily candid life narrative.   Echoing Freeman’s love of acting, she wistfully recalled her own youthful aspirations:

‘All throughout school there was nothing I ever wanted to do except being on stage. I was the class clown.’

Passing the King’s Theatre in Glasgow as an ambitious schoolgirl, she confidently assured her friends ‘I’ll be there one day!’   Although breaking into the highly competitive professional theatrical world ultimately proved an unattainable dream– hindered by the lack of local Drama College and daunted by the prospect of forsaking family to relocate to London in uncertain pursuit of fame and fortune – Edna nevertheless enjoyed what she recalls as ‘a wonderful experience’ with the amateur yet highly acclaimed Jewish Institute Players.

Unassumingly, she attributes much of her success to invaluable encouragement of her pre-eminent and inspirational uncle – ‘Uncle Abie’ she affectionately calls him – who recognising her talent, secured parts for her in numerous plays. While still a girl she landed a small part in the festival-winning production of The Dybbuk, in which Ida Shuster topped the bill as Leah, and at the tender age of 14 she was cast as the lead in Dear Ruth.   She also played the bride in Blood Wedding and counts Café Crown, Winter’s Journey and The Dream amongst the highlights of her varied theatrical career.   Active also behind the scenes, she tried her hand at directing Morning Star and Brighton Beach Memoirs during the 1980s, and served on the committee of the Greenbaum Players (as they became known following Avrom’s death) when the company relocated to Coplaw Street.

Edna spoke adoringly of the Uncle Abie she remembers as ‘so clever, modest and quiet.’   ‘He had these fantastic eyes’ she mused ‘you just listened to every word, and just a wonderful sense of humour.’     Watching Edna captivatingly holding court, regaling us with a delightful selection of annecdotes of mishap and mayhem – untimely curtain closures, actors appearing late on stage, bungled and improvised lines – it is striking how many of her uncle’s qualities she shares.   The intergenerational legacy of the Greenbaums, happily, lives on!

by Dr Deborah Butcher

A photo of playwright and producer, Avrom Greenbaum, in typical mobster-like pose, ©SJAC

Since the first phase of our project got inconspicuously underway in early September, a large chunk of my weeks has been productively and enjoyably spent perusing a richly-diverse collection of the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre. This is an enormous task, yet also an incredibly exciting one.  Opening a box, I am never quite sure what delights or distractions await me.

The first collection I decide to scope comprises ten boxes containing materials relating to the Jewish Institute (later Avrom Greenbaum) Players. Browsing through a selection of theatre programmes, newspaper reviews, photographs, hand-annotated scripts, posters and other ephemera I am able to piece together a somewhat sketchy history of the company. Formed in 1936 in the Jewish Institute at South Portland Street by aspiring playwright, actor and producer Avrom Greenbaum, the Jewish Institute Players constituted the first all-Jewish drama group in Scotland.   The Players were renowned for their innovative productions grappling with the themes of Jewish identity, such as folk drama The Dybbuk performed as part of the 1951 Festival of Jewish Arts. They also staged various socialist plays (by the likes of Sean O’Casey, Maxim Gorki and Clifford Odets) exploring working-class life in the Clydeside shipyards.   After the death of their founder in 1963, the Jewish Institute Players became known as the Avrom Greenbaum Players and remained strong until the early 1980s.

Cast list for folk drama The Dybbuk, performed at the Glasgow Jewish Arts Festival, 1951, ©SJAC

Contained within the Greenbaum collection is much to excite the dramatic enthusiast, as well as those interested in the history of Scottish-Jewish cultural and artistic output.   For members of the local community, there is also the promise that the collection will reignite fond memories, and reacquaint them with long-lost friends: this I discover to my astonishment, when I present what I consider to be the most stimulating of the Greenbaum sources to a group of volunteers at the Archives Centre, and am rewarded by their animated sharing of delightfully amusing anecdotes.

A programme for Awake and Sing by Clifford Odets performed by the Jewish Institute Players, ©SJAC

For me, one of the collection’s strengths is its eclectic appeal, blending the organisational and official with the personal and sentimental: Avrom and his wife Ray’s marriage certificate, passport and childhood photos are unexpectedly buried amongst promotional materials and official correspondence.   Several of his poems – “Yom Ha-Rabbie Burns” and “Address to the Fress” – testify to the adaptability of his literary talents, and succinctly express his ability to seamlessly fuse the Scottish and Jewish.   In his introductory preface to a performance of Giraudoux’s ‘The Madwoman of Chaillot’, Greenbaum tentatively expresses his conviction that his dramatists “may have, however modestly, added something of our own to Scottish Theatre.”

Lyrics for Hi There Sadie, complete with handwritten annotations, ©SJAC

I think this is something of an understatement: the contribution of this grass-roots theatre group, boldly staging avant garde and sometimes gritty productions dealing with the complex intersections of class, ethnic and cultural identity to national drama was profound.

For me, it’s a shame that the company is not more widely known and better appreciated beyond the local community.   Yet for those with personal recollections of the players and the performances, the Greenbaum Players (and the memorabilia which tells their story) remain justifiably highly esteemed, fondly remembered and much-loved.

We are now almost four months into the project and work is proceeding apace in the SJAC. Dr Deborah Butcher has made excellent progress in scoping materials for the project’s research themes and we have been busy mapping out more detailed plans for our individual and joint research outputs.

With this first phase of scoping well under way now, we are planning to post regular updates about our finds. We will take turns writing these up as blog entries, and it is without further ado that I signal the next blog post by Deborah about the Avrom Greenbaum Collection at the SJAC!

The Scottish Jewish Archives Centre is happy to announce a new series of lecture events to be held over the next 12 months, with guest speakers from Glasgow that have reached the top in their field after they left the city.

These lectures form part of a programme of fundraising events planned by a new team of volunteers working with the Archives Committee to raise additional funds. This will help support the increasing demands and workload of the Archives in recording, storing and cataloguing the history of Scottish Jews and Jewish organisations. In addition extra funds will allow researchers and students and members of the public searching for their family stories to access the Archives.

The first of these lectures events will feature Steve Morrison who will speak about growing up in Glasgow, his career and life after he left home.

The date and venue will be 1st November in the Windsor Suite at Eastwood House Giffnock, Glasgow.

Steve Morrison graduated from Edinburgh University in 1969. His media career began as a radio producer with BBC Scotland. In 1974 he joined Granada Film and subsequently held a number of senior positions, becoming Chief Executive in 2001. Steve is the co-founder, former Chair and Chief Executive of All3Media .

He is the current Rector of Edinburgh University.

Steve may be better known in Glasgow as the middle son of the late Michael and Betty Morrison and brother of Ian who ran Michael Morrison’s Deli in Sinclair Drive for many years.

Please join us to hear Steve at this first event on Sunday 1^st November at Eastwood House. Doors open at 11am for an 11.30am start; tickets can be obtained from Jane Tobias at 07968 581613, email: jane@janetobias.com or from the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre at 0141-332 4911 email: info@sjac.org.uk. Tickets are £17.50 with reduced rate for Friends of the Archives and full time students (£15); this will include a bagel brunch.

The location has limited capacity so the community is requested to purchase their tickets early to reserve their places.

Planned future speakers for the New Year include Lady Hazel Cosgrove and Lord Ian Livingston; more information will be announced at the first event on 1^st November 2015.

Our project started on Tuesday this week and we spent a few hours as a team of researchers and then with our project partners the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre (SJAC) to hash out a plan for the next couple of months.

Our first task is to scope out the SJAC, identify the materials relevant to our project and assess how to digitise these. To assist with this task we are drawing on the expertise of the SJAC’s team of volunteers, staff working in digital humanities at the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, and, most prominently, our newly appointed Research Associate, Dr Deborah Butcher.

Deborah joins the team with a PhD from London Metropolitan University combining oral history with extensive archival research. She also has a professional background in public and academic librarianship, has worked for within local government in a range of roles, most recently as a Cultural Coordinator for South Lanarkshire council. This unique skillset is vital for the success of our project and we are excited to have Deborah on board.

As we begin a project looking into past migration to Scotland, I am mindful of the current situation faced by migrants seeking access to Europe. It is barely 100 years since the large-scale Jewish migration from poverty, oppression and persecution in Eastern Europe and the arrival of refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe that we are witnessing the plight of millions fleeing desperate situations. We are keen to investigate the impact of migration and flight on those who came to Scotland and on Scottish society since the end of the nineteenth century. We are interested in the details of people’s lives, of their culture, their religion, their values and their contributions to humanity. We are grateful that so much material has been collected and archived to allow us insight into their journeys. It is ironic that this project begins amidst a flow of political pronouncements which appear all too often to forget that the current migrants are people, human beings, with lives just as valuable and in need of protection as those of Europe’s citizens whose families came here a century or more ago.

As we go along our work in the SJAC and as the project develops we will share our progress and exciting finds on this blog. So, please tune in and subscribe to email alerts!

Thank you for visiting our project website. We will begin posting about the research project from September 2015, the project’s official start date. Until then, please be patient. You can sign up to receive updates from this blog either via email or RSS feed via the ‘subscribe’ options on the left sidebar.