THE DIGGER On taking up theater at Brooklyn College, the ...

/b>On taking up theater at Brooklyn College, the young Mark Altman, a former yeshiva boy, still wore the yarmulke and beard of his past. Yarmulkes were not a common sight in the department. One day in class, as part of some exercise, Altman took the yarmulke from his head and tossed it, or used it as some sort of sensory object-he no longer remembers precisely what he did with it. But his casual treatment of a religious article horrified his hopelessly secular classmates.

Now in his forties and comfortably hatless, Altman, while telling this story the other day at a kosher pizza and falafel joint in Midtown, chuckled at the memory of his classmates' reaction. "They thought, like, a bolt of lightning was going to come down and strike everybody dead," he said.

Altman never went far with the acting, but in 1998, in need of money, he took a group sales job with the dogged Folksbiene, the last link with the bygone world of Yiddish stage companies. Equally at home in Yiddish and English, Altman has since become the Folksbiene's dramaturg, the person in charge of finding plays to put on.

"Finding" here has a particular meaning. As virtually no new plays are being written in Yiddish, Altman's job is best described as archaeological. His latest big find-Di Kaprizne Kale (literally, in English, "the capricious bride")-is an early Abraham Goldfaden comedy last staged in New York in 1882. The revival premieres later this month at the new Jewish Community Center on the Upper West Side.

Goldfaden is the undisputed father of Yiddish theater. According to his obit in the New York Times of January 11, 1908, 75,000 mourners turned out for his funeral procession on the Lower East Side.

Altman recounted his lone excavation of a microfilm copy of the Goldfaden play. "It was some time in 2003," he said. "I was at the main Research Library on 5th Avenue. They have a special section called the Dorot Jewish Division. Goldfaden wrote 60 plays in his time, but only around 15 exist in print."

In truth, there wasn't that moment of eureka when Altman first clapped eyes on Kaprizne Kale, which struck his modern-day self as vaudevillian. On the other hand, this being early Goldfaden, he loved the manageable cast of just five-as compared, say, to a certain late-period Goldfaden that boasted a line-up of 75.

And vaudeville or not, the play had its moments. As Altman read on in the quiet little room, he found himself actually laughing out loud. Recalling that day of discovery in the library, he warmed to the subject of the dramaturg's life: "At times it's like an Indiana Jones sort of thing. There's no real physical danger involved. No lions, no crocodiles, but still, it's exciting. You get your lead, you search, you find. Then you uncover and show the world."