The history of New York theater is not always entertaining. To modern audiences, some 19th-century acts seem in very bad taste, like the Jim Crow, or minstrel, shows. They featured white men, covered in coal dust, pretending to be singing, dancing, and joke-telling black men. Offensive and racist, they were also New York and America's first form of popular entertainment. Many of the best-loved minstrels were immigrant Irish. The Bryant Brothers, for example, introduced the popular song "Dixie" to New York. The Irish performers also made fun of their own people. Playing on stereotypes, they portrayed fellow Irish immigrants as big-mouthed drunkards. Another important ethnic theater emerged in the Jewish neighborhoods of the Lower East Side around 1900. Performed in Yiddish -- the language spoken by Eastern European Jews -- it focused on glossy spectaculars and incredible plot twists. It gave poor, hard-working immigrants a chance to escape their problems, if only for a few hours. The theater was incredibly popular. At the turn of the century, there were more than 1,000 shows annually, with an audience of two million or more. But as Jews assimilated and forgot their language, the Yiddish theater began to fade, although a few productions continue to this day. Meantime, many of the Yiddish theater's actors and playwrights went on to Broadway and Hollywood. Some Yiddish songwriters -- like Irving Berlin and the Gershwin brothers -- moved to Tin Pan Alley, the name for New York's popular music business of the early 1900s.
	Home Early New York Coming to America Building the Big Apple Arts & Entertainment Business & Politics New York Living Activities Parents and Teachers PBS Kids Privacy Policy
	BIG APPLE HISTORY is a production of Thirteen/WNET New York. © 2005 Educational Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved.