Stephanie Bass Abrams in A Bissel Borscht Belt Credit: courtesy of Mai Sato

Over three decades of making vaudeville shows, Stephanie Bass Abrams has always snuck Jewish comedy into her work. “As a Jewish artist, I feel like there’s not a separation for me, like this is my cultural heritage,” she said. But she routinely downplayed the fact that the bits were Jewish; acknowledging that, she said, would have amounted to identifying as Jewish in a sometimes hostile world.

Her latest work, however, celebrates the fact that it’s Jewish. A Bissel Borscht Belt — a tribute to the variety shows that played at Catskill Mountains resorts in the 1950s — promises “A Yiddish Vaudeville Extravaganza!” What this means, according to the promo: “schtick, spiel, kvetching, and cursing will have you kibbitzing, kvelling, and getting verklempt from all the meshuggaas!” The show plays Saturday, June 27, at Vermont Jazz Center in Brattleboro.

Fast-paced and lowbrow, Yiddish vaudeville featured live music, a host, a variety of acts and audience participation. Abrams has incorporated the same elements. A three-member klezmer band from western Massachusetts will open and close the show, with acrobatics, dancing, juggling and comedy sandwiched in between. Abrams encourages audience members to arrive in ’50s resort wear for their trip back in time.

The Catskills region, 100 miles north of New York City, became known as the Borscht Belt because its resorts attracted primarily Jews, who were excluded from other vacation spots. From the turn of the 20th century through the 1970s, bungalow colonies, hotels and sprawling resorts dotted the area, peaking in the ’50s and ’60s.

Some historians call the Borscht Belt the birthplace of modern standup. Comedians who played to the resorts’ notoriously tough audiences included Sid Caesar, Danny Kaye, Mel Brooks, Henny Youngman, Lenny Bruce, Carl Reiner, Joan Rivers, Phyllis Diller, Jerry Stiller and Jerry Seinfeld.

Laugh lines were of the “Take my wife — please” variety. A 2013 segment on CBS News’ “Sunday Morning” included a clip from Milton Berle — “I just got back from a pleasure trip. I took my mother-in-law to the airport” — and recollections from comedian Stewie Stone. “When we started, everybody did the same jokes,” Stone said. “You would do a joke; a guy would yell, ‘I heard it yesterday!’”

Jewish comedy was so influential that it simply became known as American comedy, Abrams said, and it trickled into film and television. “Saturday Night Live” and other late-night TV shows mimic a Yiddish vaudeville format: The band plays, followed by an opening monologue and a variety of acts.

Abrams, 48, of Brattleboro, is artistic director at Redfern Arts Center at Keene State College in New Hampshire. A Houston native, she has performed as a mime and contortionist. She founded Kinetic Theory Experimental Theatre in San Francisco in 2000 and, eight years later, a now-defunct circus school called Kinetic Theory Circus Arts in Los Angeles.

Two of Abrams’ circus students — siblings Fosse and Teo Lin-Bianco — are among the five variety artists in A Bissel Borscht Belt. (Bissel means “a little bit” in Yiddish.) Fosse is a Las Vegas dancer and aerial rope artist; Teo is a dancer and cofounder and artistic director of Tether Dance Project in San Francisco. Joining them are Fleeky Flanco, a Greensboro hand-balancing artist and front-bending contortionist; Abrams; and Abrams’ husband, Patrick Branstetter, a piano technician, former circus artist and former member of Blue Man Group.

The klezmer band features Rachel Leader on violin, Ariel Shapiro on accordion, and Ozzy Gold-Shapiro on vocals and ukulele.

Nothing about the show is religious or political, Abrams said: “This is purely entertainment.” Heckling is allowed, she added — as long as it’s in Yiddish. ➆

A Bissel Borscht Belt, Saturday, June 27, 7:30 p.m., at Vermont Jazz Center in Brattleboro. $5-10 suggested donation.

The original print version of this article was headlined “A Bissel Borscht Belt Brings a Catskills-Style Variety Show to Brattleboro”

This article appears in June 24 • 2026.

Mary Ann Lickteig is a feature writer at Seven Days. She has worked as a reporter for the Burlington Free Press, the Des Moines Register and the Associated Press’ San Francisco bureau. Reporting has taken her to Broadway; to the Vermont Sheep &...