May Arno Schwatt Theater Company, 1914

May Arno Schwatt and her traveling theater company. May Arno Schatt was the sister-in-law of Dr. Charles Spivak, a founder and executive director of the Jewish Consumptives' Relief Society (JCRS). Schwatt and her theater company performed at the JCRS. She was born in Pitava, Russia to Saul and Chaya Shamus Charsky. Her mother died when she was young and she immigrated to America with a sister in the early 1880s to join her father and older sister Jennie Charsky at the Rosenheym Jewish agricultural colony in New Jersey. She then developed an interest in singing and acting. Under the stage name May Arno, she traveled as an actress and singer with a theater company in the early years of the twentieth century. May's older sister Jennie married Dr. Charles Spivak and the couple moved to Denver in 1896 for Jennie's health. May Arno married Dr. Herman Schwatt in New York, who served as the Medical Superintendent of the JCRS from 1910 to 1915 and a few years after Dr. Spivak's death in 1927. While in Denver, May Arno Schwatt opened a dramatic school for children, wrote articles and performed at many functions in the Denver community. This photograph was found in a scrapbook created by Schwatt.