Bialik and by students from an acting conservatory in Odessa, founded the theater company that became known as the Hirshbein Troupe. It was the first Yiddish company to devote itself exclusively to "better" Yiddish theater. The troupe toured through Imperial Russia for two years, staging his own plays, as well as works by Sholem Asch, David Pinski, Sholem Aleichem, and Jacob Gordin, as well as translations of plays by Semen Iushkevich and Herman Heijermans. The troupe's high literary standards and high standards of ensemble acting strongly influenced the later Vilna Troupe and Maurice Schwartz's New York-based Yiddish Art Theater. The troupe disbanded in 1910 for financial reasons, at which point Hirschbein published what Jacob Glatshteyn (In tokh genumen [Sum and Substance], 1976, p. 77) has called "the four greatest plays in the Yiddish repertoire": A farvorfn vinkl (A Forsaken Corner; 1912), Di puste kretshme (The Empty [Deserted] Inn; 1913, written in America), Dem shmids tekhter (The Blacksmith's Daughters; 1918) and Grine felder (Green Fields; 1916). In these and other dramas, Hirshbein abandoned symbolism and returned to his rural roots, dramatizing the lives and loves of rural Jews. The understated quality of these works appealed to directors including Maurice Schwartz and Jacob Ben-Ami, and they became regular productions in the repertoire of artistically ambitious Yiddish theaters. His popularity extended to other cultures and genres, and his plays were performed in Russian, Hebrew, English, German, Spanish, and French. Indeed, the 1937 American film Grine felder (Green Fields), based on Hirshbein's play, is among the most beloved of all Yiddish films, and the play continues to be often anthologized and staged. Hirshbein traveled extensively; in 1911 alone, he visited Vienna, Paris, London, and New York City. For a while in 1912, he tried farming in New York's Catskills (later, home to the Borscht Belt); he then returned briefly to Russia, and went from there to Argentina for another attempt at farming, this time in a Jewish agricultural colony. At the start of World War I he was en route to New York on a British ship, which was sunk by a German cruiser. He was briefly taken captive, then let off in Brazil, from where he eventually reached New York. He spent the succeeding decades traveling, accompanied by his wife, Yiddish poet Esther Shumiatcher-Hirschbein, and publishing both fiction and nonfiction based on his trips. Hirschbein's son, Omus Hirschbein, a classical music administrator, was