Theodore Bikel

Website: http://www.bikel.com
Residence : Connecticut and California

Biographical information
Theodore Bikel has appeared in several West End plays along with his roster of memorable U.S. stage performances including Tonight in Samarkand, The Rope Dancers, The Lark, The Sound of Music (in which he created the role of Baron von Trapp), I Do I Do, The Sunshine Boys, My Fair Lady, Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well, Etc., Zorba, and Fiddler on the Roof in which he has played the role of Tevye over 2000 times over the past 35 years. Bikel has made some 35 films, amongst which are The African Queen, My Fair Lady, The Enemy Below, The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, I Want to Live, and The Defiant Ones for which he received an Academy Award nomination.

An Emmy Award winner, Bikel is also an accomplished concert artist and raconteur and has recorded 20 albums. Bikel has been active for many years in Actors' Equity Association, serving from 1973 to 1982 as President. He also held the post of Vice President of the International Federation of Actors (FIA) from 1981 until 1991. He is currently President of the Associated Actors and Artistes of America (4A's), a board member of the Americans for the Arts (formerly ACA) and was appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 to serve a 5-year term on the National Council for the Arts.

Throughout his career, Theo Bikel has felt a particular responsibility to Jewish life and to the Jewish community. His numerous albums of Jewish folk music, his concerts, and theater performances, his co-founding of Israel's Cameri Theater, his leadership in the Soviet Jewry movement and in the American Jewish Congress have distinguished him as a Jewish activist. Theo's profound impact on Jewish culture is also evidenced by his chairmanship of the NFJC's Artistic Advisory Committee.

Discussion topics

• The Art of Acting: Method or Madness - Based on Bikel's theatre experiences, he talks about the Stanislavsky Method, as understood and misunderstood, by its practitioners and adherents.
• Government and the Arts - Was the Brouhaha Worth It? - Having been involved in the establishment of the National Council on the Arts (and later the National Endowment), Theodore Bikel gives an overview of the involvement of the US government with the arts. The arts as the new whipping boy for the fundamentalists and the politicians on the right.
• Folk music - Fading Flower or Perennial? - Folk music-what it is and what it is not. The argument between authenticity and show biz in folk music is discussed in terms of personal observations.
• Show Business - How Much is Business and How Much is Show? - Theatre, film and TV as seen from the working artist's perspective. Is the artist as an employed person subject to the same woes and fears as all other workers? Do artists consider themselves workers in the traditional sense at all?
• Jews in Films - About Pride and about Prejudice - A look at an industry which was primarily founded-and funded-by Jews. Theodore Bikel discusses the curious absence of Jewish themes and characters in motion pictures before the Fifties and the nature of their appearance afterwards.
• Jewish Culture and Music - Then and Now - Jewish song throughout the ages, its texture and development in Europe and America. A look at acceptance and alienation; the disappearance of Yiddish speakers and the accompanying diminution of Yiddish literature and theatre.
• Im Tirtzu-Theodore Herzl's Legacy - Theodore Bikel recalls the memory of his namesake Theodore Herzl through speeches made before, during and after the First Zionist Congress in Basel 100 years ago.

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