Former Secretary of State, Gerard Pelletier presents framed Jewish People's and Peretz Schools Award to Dora Wasserman for her contributions to Yiddish theatre, 1976.
Photo Credit : Jewish Public Library - Archives
Children doing acting exercises, Dora Wasserman's Youth Theatre Group, 1970s.
Photo Credit : Jewish Public Library - Archives
Dora Wasserman, Children's Room, Jewish Public Library (4499 Esplanade).
Photo Credit : Jewish Public Library - Archives
Dora Wasserman stands in front of the Sages of Chelm backdrop, 1971.
Photo Credit : Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives
Dora Wasserman's Youth Theatre Group performers, 1960s.
Photo Credit : Jewish Public Library - Archives
Dora Wasserman's Youth Theatre Group performers, 1960s.
Photo Credit : Jewish Public Library - Archives
1919 - 2013
Dora Wasserman
Born in a small Ukrainian shtetl, Dora Wasserman went on to become a beloved Montreal actress, playwright and theatre director, who founded Canada’s only surviving Yiddish Theatre.
Wasserman, the youngest of five daughters, was born to a humble Jewish family. Her father was a locksmith and her mother was a homemaker. She was first introduced to professional theatre in 1934, through Moscow’s Rimsky Korsakov Conservatory. Wasserman then auditioned and was accepted at the Jewish Theatre of Moscow, from which she graduated in 1939.
By 1940, though, Stalin had shut down most of the country’s Yiddish theatres, and conflict was intensifying all across Europe. Wasserman and several of her colleagues fled to Kazahkstan. There, she joined the Kazakh Theatre and met her husband, a Polish refugee named Shura (Sam) Wasserman. The couple spent several years moving between Displaced Persons camps before finally settling in Montreal in 1950. They had two daughters, Ella and Bryna.
In Canada, just as she had in the refugee camps, Wasserman turned to entertaining for survival. She sang, performed and acted in local Yiddish productions, and created a children’s theatre workshop at the Jewish Public Library. This led to the formation of her company for adults, the Yiddish Drama Group, in 1956. Wasserman’s Yiddish theatre company was a big success, helping to reinvigorate Yiddish language and culture after it was nearly destroyed during the Holocaust. The company frequently toured in Canada, the US, Israel and Russia. In 1973, The Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre moved into the Saidye Bronfman Centre – now known as the Segal Centre for Performing Arts – where it is still in operation today.
For her dedication to the development of Yiddish and Canadian theatre, and to multiculturalism within the arts, Wasserman was recognized with the Order of Canada, inducted as a Knight of the National Order of Quebec, and given a lifetime achievement award by the Quebec Academy of Theatre.
