[Broadsheet] Theatre de Marionnettes Hakl-Bakl

Paris: Imprimerie AbeCe, 1950. Very Good. Paris: Imprimerie AbeCe, n.d., ca. 1950. Pictorial broadsheet flyer (32.5x24.5cm); printed offset on newsprint, halftone photographic illus. to both recto and verso. Previous folds, stock unevenly browned due to poor paper quality, else a Very Good example. Bilingual text in French on one side, Yiddish on the other.

Remarkable survival of the post-World War II Parisian Yiddish puppet theatre Hakl-Bakl, founded by the sculptor Simche Schwarz (1900-1974) and his wife Ruth Schwarz. Simche assembled the puppets out of paper mache while his wife wrote and composed the performances. The theater began operating in 1945 immediately after the liberation in the neighborhood of Rue Guy, the center for Jewish refugees in the city. This broadsheet announces puppet shows held every Saturday and Sunday evening at 9:15, including the story of David and Goliath and humorous songs and satires. Morning shows for children would be announced at a later date.

The theater operated until the Schwarz couple emigrated to Argentina in 1952. Hakl Bakl's most famous collaborator was arguably Marc Chagall, who stumbled upon one of the evening performances in 1949. When he asked how he could help the theater, the Schwarzes replied that he could paint a backdrop for them.

We locate no separately catalogued examples of this broadsheet in OCLC as of June, 2026, though there may be an example in the Harvard Collection of Hakl Bakl material.