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Interview: David Schneider

June 6, 2014 11:27
David Schneider enjoying the best seat in the house during rehearsals for Making Stalin Laugh

BySimon Round, Simon Round

4 min read

David Schneider has tried plenty of things in his career, most with success. He has acted in TV comedy, directed, written for film, stage and radio, performed stand-up and appeared in movies. And if there was a World Cup for tweeting he would definitely make the England squad.

Although he acknowledges that he has flitted from one thing to another in his career, there has always been a constant passion. And, perhaps strangely for a completely non-religious Jew, that passion is the Yiddish language.

Schneider studied for a PhD in Yiddish drama at Oxford and once even performed a Yiddish comedy routine for Jewish Book Week. He admits that he sometimes takes this interest to unusual lengths. "Once I was in Ikea and there was a Charedi man there with his son. I actually followed them around the store because I wanted to hear them speaking Yiddish, even though all they were saying were things like 'Did you remember to bring the voucher?' and 'I can't get any phone signal on my mobile'."

It is no surprise then that he rates his latest project, Making Stalin Laugh - a play about the Moscow State Yiddish Theatre which opens at London's JW3 centre this month - as the most important work of his career. His interest in the company dates back to his student days. "When I was researching my PhD this company kept coming up," Schneider recalls. "There were three or four Yiddish companies in Russia back in the 20s and 30s but this one was right up there with the big boys. In particular, there was an actor called Solomon Mikhoels. When Shostakovich wrote his memoirs, he said Mikhoels was the best King Lear he had ever seen, which was quite something for an actor performing in Yiddish."