Theatre

The Glasgow Jewish Institute Players were formed in 1936 under the leadership of playwright and director Avrom Greenbaum (1903-1963). Other founder members included the actors Ida Schuster and Samm Hankin, and the group's first performance, at South Portland Street's Jewish Institute, was a triple bill that included Greenbaum's own The Bread of Affliction, a drama about anti-Jewish pogroms in the Ukraine. In 1937, the Players came runner-up in the Scottish Community Drama Association festival ' a competition they would win in 1952 ' and in 1938 the company opened the Bloch Little Theatre in the Jewish Institute. The JIP were notable for their high production standards, adventurous staging and set design, and also their championing of work with a strong social conscience, such as that of New York Jewish playwright Sylvia Regan. When Glasgow's Unity Theatre was formed in 1940, Greenbaum was chosen as one of the company's three producers. The Bloch Little Theatre closed in 1970, and, following Greenbaum's death, the company was renamed the Avrom Greenbaum Players.