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Librettist and theater historian; translator and lifelong fan of Yiddish theater; professor and teacher – Nahma Sandrow has a varied professional life.
The opera Enemies, A Love Story (based on I.B. Singer’s novel), for which she wrote the libretto with composer Ben Moore, won praise at its world premiere at the Palm Beach Opera and again at the Kentucky Opera. The musical Kuni-Leml won several Outer Critics Circle Awards, toured, and has been revived several times. Artemisia, Light and Shadow, the one-woman musical evocation of the life of sixteenth-century painter Artemisia Gentileschi, has been performed in theaters, art galleries, and college campuses. Other theater credits include the award-winning revue Vagabond Stars, as well as several translations that have been professionally produced, including Mirele Efros and Bronx Express.
Her Vagabond Stars: A World History of Yiddish Theater is now in its third edition. Other books include the play anthologies God, Man, and Devil: Yiddish Plays in Translation and Yiddish Plays for Reading and Performance, as well as Surrealism: Theater, Arts, Ideas. In addition, she has written feature articles for the New York Times, the New York Sun, ARTnews, and other newspapers, magazines and journals.
Dr. Sandrow has lectured at universities such as Harvard and Oxford, as well as at the Smithsonian Institution and many other academic and cultural organizations. A graduate of Bryn Mawr College and the Yale University School of Drama, she has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Research Foundations of both the State University of New York and the City University of New York, and a PEN-nominated grant from the New York State Council on the Arts.