specific ethnic communities were not aware or interested in that community's theater. Ethnic theater was undermined by immigrants themselves. First generation immigrants preferred plays in their homeland language while second generation immigrants favored mainstream theater in the English-language. Despite this division, ethnic theater prospered in the face of continuous mass immigration, lasting several decades or a century. Immigrants and their descendants never completely lost interest in ethnic theater but with the advent of film, immigrants, like their American counterparts attended American Motion Pictures, providing them insight into their new home and assimilating them. The vaudeville was also another competing form of entertainment eager to lure in immigrants as audience members. The vaudeville and the ethnic theater played different social functions. Ethnic stages such as Yiddish and Italian theater sought to preserve cherished aspects of old-world culture. Through the celebration of shared values, ethnic theaters gave immigrants a sense of community and solidarity in the face of increasingly chaotic and diverse every day life in the city. Vaudevilles, on the other hand, served to interpret ethnic communities via ethnic caricatures through comedy. At times, ethnic communities protested their caricatures in the vaudeville but nonetheless were among the audience members of the vaudeville. Just like ethnic theater, the vaudeville offered a glimpse of immigrant life though, the vaudeville heavily stressed ethnic caricatures. Immigrants were drawn to the vaudeville primarily because these ethnic caricatures though unfavorable, bore a realistic resemblance to the immigrants and they would encounter on the streets and neighborhoods. As a German theater In 1893, Polish immigrant, Heinrich Conried changed the theater's name to Irving Place Theater. He worked as a director and manager, establishing the theater's success and financial stability until 1903. Though Conried aimed to primarily attract New York's German-speaking population, not all were regular theatre-goers, so he devised a program with a frequent change of bill to expand his audience. Each week he presented three or more different plays ranging from classics to comedies, and his theater was acclaimed for having a varied repertory. Musical plays were also presented, especially those popular on German stages such as Kumarker und Picarde and Das Versprechen hinter’m Herd (The Promise Behind the Hearth). Conried sought to expand and educate his audience through the institution of an outreach program in eastern universities, providing performances of the German classics and comedies to students from Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, and Columbia. Through this