Moshe Yassur [ne Marcel Simon Sturmer] is an actor, director and teacher.  Born in 1934 in Iasi, Romania, he and his mother survived the June 1941 pogrom in Iasi and the war.  After the end of the war (August 23, 1944 in Romania), he qualified for the Iasi Conservatory for Youth becoming one of the first Jews to attend.  He performed as a child actor on the stage of the National Theatre in Iasi. During the summers of 1948/49 he also performed at the Gradina Pomul Verde, a wine garden with a stage, where Avrom Goldfaden had founded the original. Yiddish theater in 1876.

In 1950, Moshe and his mother were able to immigrate to Israel. He became a teacher and served in the Israeli army during the 1954 and the 1967 wars. In Israel, Marcel Sturmer hebraicized his name to Moshe Yassur, a name created by the poet Avraham Shlonski, from his original last name’s meaning (Sturmer/Stormbird or Albatross) and his birthplace Iasi.  Moshe came back to theatre in the late 50s and worked as assistant director at the progressive Haifa Municipal Theatre. He also taught at the Institute for Theater Arts-Haifa and the newly established Nissan Nativ Theatre Studio in Tel Aviv where he taught acting and directing and directed student productions. Moshe also ran as Producer/Director his own theatre, The Miniatron, from 1967 to 1970.  Some of the plays done include: MISS JULIE [August Strindberg], A STAR WITHOUT A NAME [Mihail Sebastian], JONAH [Marin Sorescu], JACK OR THE SUBMISSION and THE FUTURE IS IN THE EGGS [Eugene Ionesco], THREE ISRAELI SHORT PLAYS [Shmuel Kerpel], KIBBUTZ[Ben Chayim], FAR FROM THE SUMMER FAR FROM THE SEA [Israel Eliraz], ESCURIAL [Michel de Ghelderode].Moshe Yassur won First Prize at the 1968 Berlin Interdrama Festival for his direction of Efraim Kishon’s play, SIGI AND HABUBA with a youth group.

 In 1962 Abba Eban facilitated a scholarship for Yassur to attend the Universite du Theatre des Nations in Paris where he would be the assistant to legendary producer/director Jean-Marie Serreau for his production of Samuel Beckett’s COMEDIE [Play], performed in a space at the Louvre. (Serreau had produced the premiere of Samuel Beckett’s play WAITING FOR GODOT in 1952 at his Theatre du Babylon. Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil, Samuel Beckett’s wife, had brought the play to Serreau.)  While in Paris, Yassur also met the Romanian playwright Eugene Ionesco whose plays he later directed in Israel, Romania, and New York in Hebrew, English, Romanian and Yiddish.  Work with Serreau includes also Ionesco’s AMEDEE OR HOW TO GET RID OF IT.  

In New York in 1972, Yassur was hired by Woodie King Jr., director of the New Federal Theatre [NFT], to set up a Jewish theater wing within NFT that was already producing plays for the Hispanic and African American population on the lower East Side. While there Yassur directed such plays as: ANDORRA (Max Frisch), TheBIRTHDAY PARTY (Harold Pinter), THE FIRST SIN (Aharon Megged).  Yassur went on to direct at Soho Repertory Theatre Company, Jersey City State College, The Open Space Theatre, and Third Step Theatre Company.  In the late 90s and 2000s, he went to direct plays in Romania at Teatrul Mic (Bucharest), Teatrul National Vasile Alecsandri (Iasi), Teatrul Maria Filotti (Braila), Teatrul Eugene Ionesco (Kishinev),Teatrul Dramatic (Galati), and plays in Yiddish at Teatrul Evreiesc de Stat (Bucharest), and a Yiddish musical for the Rock Theater in Dresden, Germany.  

At the Great Neck Community Theatre (1975-1985) plays produced and directed by Yassur include: THE SHOEMAKER’S WIFE (Lorca), WHAT THE BUTLER SAW (Orton), REVUE SKETCHES (Pinter), THE LESSON (Ionesco), PLAZA SUITE (Simon), THE PUBLIC EYE  (Shaefer), THE BEAR/THE MARRIAGE PROPOSAL (Chekhov), and LOVERS AND OTHER STRANGERS (J. Bologna/R.Taylor). For Joseph Papp’s Yiddish Theatre Workshop, he taught about acting in the Yiddish theatre.  In New York City Moshe Yassur directed shows in Yiddish for New Yiddish Rep, such as the DEATH OF A SALESMAN (nominated for a 2015 Drama Desk Award: Best Revival), Ionesco’s RHINOCEROS (2017), and WAITING FOR GODOT(2013,Yiddish translation by Shane Baker) which toured at the Happy Days Beckett Festival in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland (2014), played in Paris at the Commencez! Festival (2016), and at the Royal Theatre in Stockholm (2021). He continues to work with Shane Baker on new concepts in narrative theatre based on stories by Avrom Sutzkever and Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Beate Hein Bennett, Ph.D. was born and raised in Germany. She has worked as a teacher, director, dramaturg, and translator. She has done all stage jobs, from dancing, acting to backstage as well: sets, costumes, lights.  She taught in the Theatre Department at Virginia Commonwealth University (1978-1985) where she also instituted the M.F.A.dramaturgy program. She moved to New York in 1985 where she had first met Moshe Yassur in 1981 through their common friend, Israel Eliraz. Both Yassur and Bennett’s lives had changed by 1985, and they were free to partner in life and theater. They were partners in the off-off Third Step Theatre Company, where they did CRIME ON GOAT ISLAND (Ugo Betti), THE KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE (Christoph Hein, transl. by Beate Hein Bennett, no relation) and CLOWN WANTED (Matei Visniec).  Both were also teaching full-time in NYC public high schools in the Bronx at the time, actually until retirement after 15 years for Moshe (1985-1999) and 22 years for Beate (1986-2008).  They both taught English and sometimes theater, he with a Romanian accent and she with a German accent.  While they both taught in public high schools, they maintained full theatrical careers running Third Step Theatre Company and working freelance.  Bennett collaborated with Moshe as the dramaturg for the New Yiddish Rep/Castillo Theatre’s Yiddish productions of WAITING FOR GODOT (2013), DEATH OF A SALESMAN with Avi Hoffman (2015), and RHINOCEROS (2017). She was the translator and dramaturg for The Living Theatre’s production of Else Lasker-Schüler’s play, IANDI (1989).  She has translated into German Judith Malina’s book The Piscator Notebook and Julian Beck’s The Life of the Theatre, both published by the German publisher, Theater der Zeit.