In Wrestling Jerusalem, which is at Chutzpah! March 1 and 2, Aaron Davidman tries to understand the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (photo by Ken Friedman)
Most of us have an opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But how many of us have listened to others’ perspectives, really considered them and tried to understand them? Aaron Davidman has. And he will share his emotional and thought-provoking journey with Chutzpah! Festival audiences March 1 and 2.
Written and performed by Davidman, Wrestling Jerusalem, directed by Michael John Garcés, is Davidman’s personal journey, as an American Jew, to understand a situation that is often polarizing and over-simplified. The play gives voice to 17 different characters – all performed by Davidman – who represent the breadth, depth and complexity of the conflict; its political, religious and cultural aspects.
As personal as it is, however, Davidman was commissioned to write the play by Ari Roth, who, in 2007, was the artistic director of Theatre J, which is based in Washington, D.C. After 18 years with Theatre J, Roth founded Mosaic Theatre Company, also in Washington, in 2014, and is still its artistic director.
“He asked me to write a solo performance piece investigating the deaths of Rachel Corrie and Daniel Pearl and reflect on the public conversation in America about the Israel-Palestine issue,” Davidman told the Independent about the commission. “The play started there and, as I developed it, it became much more personal and those two subjects no longer relevant to my investigation, which became about the multiple perspectives and competing narratives at the heart of the conflict.”
Davidman is not only a playwright and actor, but also a director and producer. He received a master of fine arts in creative writing and playwriting from San Francisco State University and is a graduate of the University of Michigan; he received his theatrical training at Carnegie Mellon University.
Davidman was raised in Berkeley, Calif., he said, “by Jewish-identified but not religious parents, with a social justice context.”
In an interview with CJN, when Wrestling Jerusalem had its Canadian première in Toronto in November, Davidman said he “fell in love with Israel as a Jewish homeland” when he first visited the country, in 1993, at age 25. “I spent six months living there and had a really incredible spiritual and Jewish identity-forming experience. That story is in the play,” he told CJN.
In the process of researching, writing and performing Wrestling Jerusalem, Davidman told the Independent, “My views about the importance of engagement have deepened, as has my conviction that understanding the ‘other’ is a vital part of the process of reconciliation.”
The play, which premièred in 2014, has also been made into a feature film, directed by Dylan Kussman, which was released in 2016.
“The transcendent themes of the piece remain front and centre now more than ever in a world that is growing only more polarized,” said Davidman. “This piece stands for understanding multiplicity and complexity as humanity’s best chance to live together.”
To facilitate understanding, talk-backs often take place after performances.
“We try to have community conversation – I prefer that term to ‘talk-back’ – after performances and screenings because the piece opens people up,” Davidman said. “They’ve just had a fairly unique experience concerning this topic and there is hunger to process it. It’s a densely written piece and unpacking it and allowing people to hear where they each are coming from in response has proven to be very useful and moving.”
As for advice for people wanting to try and move the public – or even personal – discussion to a more nuanced or empathetic space, Davidman said, “Listen deeply. Don’t know so much. Try to connect.”
Wrestling Jerusalem is at Rothstein Theatre March 1-2, 8 p.m., with audience conversations after both performances, featuring Rabbi Dan Moskovitz of Temple Sholom and Aaron Davidman. For tickets ($29.47-$36.46), call 604-257-5145 or visit chutzpahfestival.com. The festival’s other theatre offering combines Cree storytelling, Chekhovian character drama and comedy, performed by Edmonton-based, award-winning improv troupe Folk Lordz – Todd Houseman and Ben Gorodetsky of Rapid Fire Theatre – on Feb. 22, 8 p.m., at Rothstein Theatre. The festival also features dance, music and comedy.
The cast of Crossing Delancey, left to right: Jonathan MacDonald (Sam), Nina Tischhauser (Izzy), Joan Koebel (Bubbie), Helen Volkow (Hannah) and Jon MacIntyre (Tyler). (photo by Tracy-Lynn Chernaske)
Many of us are still looking for our bashert, our soul mate, that one person with whom we want to spend the rest of our lives. Sometimes, our family and friends try and guide us in our quest, sometimes we go it alone, double-clicking away in cyberspace, hoping to make the perfect connection and, sometimes, we hire a professional, a matchmaker. While that last approach may seem old-fashioned and outdated, it can work – as the latest offering at Metro Theatre, Crossing Delancey, charmingly illustrates.
Set in New York in the 1980s, playwright Susan Sandler’s romantic comedy has five characters. We meet 30ish yuppie bookseller Isabelle (Izzy) Grossman, who lives and works Uptown and is enamoured of Tyler, a non-Jewish local author who often drops by the shop to check on his book sales. Meanwhile, back on the Lower East Side, on the main thoroughfare, Delancey Street, Izzy’s grandmother, Ida Kantor, has retained matchmaker Hannah Mandelbaum to find the perfect match for Izzy. What follows is a smorgasbord of Jewish humour peppered with witty Yiddish sayings – the evening’s program contains a glossary of the Yiddish words and phrases used in the play and it is a good idea to read it over before the show begins – as we follow the action to what we expect to be a predictable ending. Or is it?
On stage, the action alternates from Bubbie’s kitchen to the New Day Bookstore to a park bench. The curtain rises on the warm glow of the kitchen with Izzy (Nina Tischhauser) visiting Bubbie Ida (Joan Koebel) for their regular Sunday night tête-à-tête. Ida is the quintessential Jewish grandmother, doting on her granddaughter, making sure there is lots of food on the table (her claim to fame is her kugel), regaling anyone who will listen with tales of her youth, and being an all-around busybody. The night’s conversation leads to a discussion about loneliness and finding a mate. Izzy is adamant that she is a modern woman and does not need a man to feel whole. Bubbie, who continually reminds the audience in a number of melodramatic asides of what a beauty she was in her prime and how she had three marriage proposals, begs to differ. Bubbie makes it clear that her goal, in whatever life she has left, is to find her granddaughter a husband, so that Izzy will have true happiness. Enter Mrs. Mandelbaum (Helen Volkow) with her collection of photographs of eligible men. What a catch she has lined up for Izzy – Sam Posner (Jonathan MacDonald), the pickle man who runs the local deli – “a real mensch, a college graduate, a nice boy, goes to shul every day and, you could do worse.”
Unfortunately, Izzy is a bit of an intellectual snob and finds Sam bland and unromantic, so she shuns his attentions while focusing on Tyler Moss (Jon MacIntyre). Despite Izzy’s frosty attitude, Sam is smitten after their initial meeting and persists, using gastronomical courtship – an assortment of the “best pickles in New York” and chocolate cake – to woo her. He tells Izzy the story of a man whose life took a dramatic turn when he changed the type of hat he wore and that, although her Uptown life was “sociologically a million miles away” from Delancey Street, she, too, could change her style. The next day, a hat box arrives at Bubbie’s and Izzy has a new accessory – but will she wear it?
Each of the five cast members is strong but Volkow really shines. She is the stereotypical yenta with her cat eyeglasses, capri pants and oversized bosom (safely ensconced in a floral polyester top). She nails the New York accent and mannerisms.
Tischhauser adroitly handles Izzy’s metamorphosis from fantasist to realist in her choice of suitors, while MacDonald is an understated but effective beau, playing his role with calm and self-assurance. Koebel puts her heart and soul into Bubbie’s character and does a nice job with the Yiddish-heavy dialogue and the song and dance numbers. MacIntyre comes across as the stiff, self-absorbed man his character is.
One thing that Metro does particularly well is sets and this one does not disappoint. Divided into two, one side of the stage houses the bookshop; the other, Bubbie’s intimate apartment kitchen. The mood lighting and music, a mix of 1980s hits and klezmer tunes, bring it all together.
Kudos to director Alison Schamberger, with technical advice from decades-long JI contributor Alex Kliner, for bringing this light-hearted fare to Vancouver audiences.
A quintessential Jewish play with Yiddish humour, free parking, an upstairs bar and lounge, what’s not to like? Just go and enjoy – a nice pick-me-up for the January blues.
Crossing Delancey runs Thursdays through Saturdays, at 8 p.m., with two Sunday matinées, at 2 p.m., on Jan. 29 and Feb. 5. For tickets and more information, go to metrotheatre.com or call 604-266-7191.
Tova Kornfeldis a Vancouver freelance writer and lawyer.
Meghan Gardiner as Marian and Jay Hindle as Harold Hill in The Music Man. (photo by David Cooper)
Few children know what they want to do as a career. Even fewer start on their career goals before they are 10 years old. Yet, having celebrated his bar mitzvah in May, Julian Lokash, 13, has already set a firm foundation for his future. He dreams of running a school for the arts when he is an adult, and he seems to be doing everything right so far to reach that goal.
An irrepressible talent, Julian has focused his life around performing. He has used his summer vacations for the past three years to be a cast member in various productions at Theatre Under the Stars (TUTS) in Stanley Park. Rehearsals take two months and then performances are every other night for the remaining two months of the summer. In TUTS, he has performed in Oliver, Shrek and Beauty and the Beast.
TUTS is interesting because it is performed on a stage that is only two-thirds covered, leaving the front part of the stage, the apron, exposed to the elements. “It’s really fun but when it rains, we get wet and the stage can be really slippery,” said Julian about the challenges of being in an outdoor show in Vancouver. He admitted that some nights he came home covered in mosquito bites. This doesn’t dampen his enthusiasm, however. He plans to try out again for whatever show TUTS decides to present this summer.
Although he had a big smile on his face when describing his role in Beauty and the Beast, where he played Mustard in the ensemble, Julian has played a leading role in a professional production. Last December, he starred as James in James and the Giant Peach at Carousel Theatre.
This year, Julian is once again appearing on stage in a December production, this time at Gateway Theatre in Richmond in the classic musical The Music Man.
Being part of a professional production while going to school is a significant accomplishment and shows the level of dedication Julian has to his craft. Rehearsals for The Music Man began on Nov. 6 and carried on until the show opened on Dec. 8.
“We practise six nights a week and, once we start shows, we only have Mondays off,” said Julian. There are even days in the schedule where there are both a 2 p.m. matinée and an 8 p.m. show. He is pretty much giving up his winter break for the production.
When he was in elementary school, Julian was the only one in his French immersion class who was heavily involved in theatre.
“I had friends but no one else was into what I was. Now that I’m in high school in the [Lord Byng Secondary School] arts program, it’s so much better. Everyone thinks the same way as me, has the same interests,” he said. “Half of my classes now are with kids from the arts program. Social studies, English and science are taught from an arts perspective.”
Julian’s peers are now other singers, dancers and actors, who understand the commitment he has to acting, and his teachers are sympathetic to absences he may have due to his rehearsal or performance schedule.
His dance teacher is also used to him taking off long periods from classes. “I take tap, jazz and ballet at Westside Dance. It’s just a few blocks from my house. When I’m in rehearsal, I just have to miss dance,” said Julian.
Julian occasionally has voice lessons and was recently a guest soloist for the Cantata Choir, a semi-professional choir based in Vancouver. His acting training is from Arts Umbrella and Carousel Theatre for Young People.
With such a busy schedule, Julian acknowledges he could not do it without the support of his parents. He is looking forward to his upcoming performance in The Music Man, and continuing on with the Arts Mini program at Lord Byng.
When asked what he thinks of The Music Man, Julian was enthusiastic.
“It’s a very lively musical. It’s infused with humor and the characters are well developed. They really have their own personalities. I think kids can definitely enjoy it as much as adults do.” He said that anyone who likes music and dancing will love The Music Man.
The Music Man runs until Dec. 31. For tickets, visit gatewaytheatre.com.
Michelle Dodekis a freelance writer living in Vancouver.
David Broza, left, and Ali Paris will perform in concert. (photo from Chutzpah! Festival)
Tickets are now on sale for the 17th annual Chutzpah! Lisa Nemetz International Jewish Performing Arts Festival, which will run from Feb. 16 to March 13, at venues including Rothstein Theatre, York Theatre, Scotiabank Dance Centre and the Biltmore Cabaret.
“We are all excited for another year of presenting an electrifying array of internationally acclaimed dancers, musicians, comedians and theatrical artists to our audiences in Canadian, Western Canadian and world premières. We’re headed for an energizing and thrilling journey from stand-up comedy to theatrical drama to rich global music to explosive and elegant dance!” said Mary-Louise Albert, Chutzpah!’s artistic and managing director.
As it does every year, the 2017 Chutzpah! Festival dance series presents some of the most sought-after contemporary choreographers in the world. This year’s performances include the return of Italy’s Spellbound Contemporary Ballet with their full-length Carmina Burana; Israel’s Yossi Berg and Oded Graf Dance Theatre with their acclaimed 4Men, Alice, Bach and the Deer; and Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion (United States) brings a mixed repertoire of some of Kyle Abraham’s most popular works in their Western Canadian première. Vancouver’s Shay Kuebler/Radical System Art première their completed and full-length version of Telemetry, while local choreographer and performer Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg and Italy’s award-winning Silvia Gribaudi navigate the role of comedy as a catalyst to questions of gender, culture and language and understanding – this is world première presented with the Dance Centre. As well, in Chutzpah! Plus (May 13-14), there is Birds Sing a Pretty Song (Canada/United States/Israel/Argentina), an exploration through dance, film, interactive media and live music created by Rebecca Margolick and Maxx Berkowitz during a yearlong fellowship in New York City with LABA: A Laboratory for New Jewish Culture.
Among the Chutzpah! Festival 2017 musical highlights is Grammy-winners the Klezmatics 30th Anniversary Tour (United States). In concert together will be David Broza, whose music reflects the three different countries in which he was raised (Israel, Spain and England), and Ali Paris, who fuses Middle Eastern and Western music styles, and plays the qanun, a rare 76-string zither that dates back to the 14th century. Also in concert together will be Shalom Hanoch – touted as “the King of Israeli Rock” and compared to musicians such as Neil Young and Mick Jagger – who will be joined on stage by his longtime music producer, partner and keyboard player Moshe Levi.
Now based out of Chicago, Marbin, founded by Israeli guitarist Dani Rabin and Israeli saxophonist Danny Markovitch, is a progressive jazz-rock band, and MNGWA [ming-wah] opens their performance, mixing elements of psychedelic rock, dub, African rhythms, and vocals in four languages. Israeli singer Maya Avraham, who is known by Chutzpah! audiences from her performances with the Idan Raichel Project, comes to Vancouver with her band of Israeli and American musicians, and Lyla Canté (United States/Israel/Japan/Argentina) also joins the festival – exploring the intersection of Sephardi, flamenco and Ashkenazi music. For Chutzpah! Plus (April 2), composer Landon Braverman and Friends put on an evening of musical theatre – while currently based in New York, Braverman is originally from Vancouver.
With respect to theatre, one of this year’s Chutzpah! highlights is Wrestling Jerusalem, created and performed by Aaron Davidman. Set in America, Israel and Palestine, the play follows one man’s journey to help understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Davidman’s solo performance is a personal story that grapples with the complexities of identity, history and social justice.
Another theatre draw is Folk Lordz, high-speed and multicultural improv featuring two members of Edmonton-based Rapid Fire Theatre, which was co-created by Todd Houseman and Ben Gorodetsky and brings together the unlikely combination of Cree storytelling, Chekhovian character drama and spontaneous comedy.
Comedy highlights include Mark Schiff (United States), who has headlined major casinos and clubs and has appeared many times on both The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Night with David Letterman. He has had HBO and Showtime specials, was a featured act at the Montreal Comedy Festival and regularly opens for Jerry Seinfeld.
Also on the comedy front, there is a double bill: Ali Hassan and Judy Gold. Canada’s Hassan appears in his one-man show Muslim Interrupted; Hassan is a stand-up comedian, actor, chef and radio and television celebrity, and is the host of Laugh Out Loud on CBC Radio and SIRIUSXM. Gold’s (United States) most recent TV appearances include guest-starring roles on Louie, Broad City, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Inside Amy Schumer, and she has a recurring role on the upcoming series on TBS Search Party. Gold has had stand-up specials on HBO (Cable Ace Award), Comedy Central and LOGO and was twice nominated for the American Comedy Award for funniest female comedian.
After the success of Chutzpah’s first literary event in 2016, this year’s Chutzpah! features author Christopher Noxon in Hollywood Stories, a special pre-festival event. Noxon is an author, journalist and illustrator and his humorous and unflinching Plus One is a novel about an interfaith family set in contemporary Los Angeles. Noxon is married to television writer and producer Jenji Kohan, creator of Orange is the New Black. This event is presented with the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival and will take place on Feb. 5.
Single tickets for Chutzpah! range from $23 to $50 and are on sale now from chutzpahfestival.com, the festival box office, 604-257-5145, or Tickets Tonight, 604-684-2787. Chutzi Packs are also available – see four different shows for $94 – and new this year is a special five-show dance pack for $115.
Tickets will be available in-person starting Jan. 30 at the on-site festival box office at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver. For hours and other information, visit chutzpahfestival.com.
Taylor Pardell as Gretel and Pascale Spinney as Hansel in Vancouver Opera’s adaptation of the classic fairy tale. (photo by Emily Cooper)
While Vancouver Opera is presenting the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel Nov. 24-Dec. 11, cast member Leah Giselle Field is living one of her dreams.
Field first moved to Vancouver from Calgary – where her parents had moved from Montreal the year before she was born – for an undergraduate degree in opera at the University of British Columbia. “I left for a two-year master’s program in Ontario and then came back for my doctorate,” she told the Independent. “I came back to Vancouver several times during those years away, so I feel like I’ve been a Vancouver resident for the last 14 years.”
In fact, her connection to Vancouver goes back even further.
“Vancouver has always felt a little bit like home,” she said. “After the war, surviving members of my maternal grandfather’s family moved to Canada. My grandparents settled in Montreal, and my grandfather’s sisters settled in Toronto and Vancouver…. Growing up in Calgary, my family would take road trips to Vancouver over spring break and in the summers, and the time we spent with my great-aunt and my mother’s cousins’ families was formative. Friends of theirs have been part of family events and celebrations for decades, and it’s always fun to catch up during holidays. I’ve been part of the Congregation Beth Israel High Holiday Choir for the past few years and enjoy catching up with my BI family each fall.”
Her professional experience includes appearing “in the title roles of Carmen and Julius Caesar, and as Marcellina in The Marriage of Figaro, Suzuki in Madama Butterfly, the Principessa in Suor Angelica, and Jennie in Maurice Sendak and Oliver Knussen’s Higglety Pigglety Pop!” notes her bio. “She is a past winner in the Western Canada District of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and a 2015 semi-finalist in the Marcello Giordani Foundation International Vocal Competition.”
In Hansel and Gretel, Field, who is a mezzo-soprano, plays Gertrude, the mother. All of the principal singers in the show, including Field, are 2016-2017 participants in Vancouver Opera’s Yulanda M. Faris Young Artists Program.
“My experience with Vancouver Opera so far has really been a dream come true,” Field said. “I still have moments of disbelief that I get to do this every day, that I have the opportunity to work and learn with such wonderful colleagues within an organization that treats its singers with so much respect. The eight of us in the Yulanda M. Faris Young Artists Program [YAP] have become really dear friends – we had ‘YAPsgiving’ together last month (because Thanksgiving fell between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, I brought matzah ball soup, round challah with raisins, apples and honey, and honey cake) – and our bass-baritone always says, ‘Goodnight, family,’ on his way out the door.
“Being part of this production of Hansel and Gretel has been amazing…. We have exciting, fresh perspectives from the director, conductor and designers to work with, the stage management team has been incredible, and the performers are so caring and supportive. It has been exciting every day – seeing the show come together is such a thrilling experience.”
Vancouver Opera is billing their Hansel and Gretel as a “family-friendly production” for ages 6-plus.
“There are all sorts of factors that make this production more family-friendly than our standard conception of ‘opera,’” explained Field. “First, the subject matter is familiar: anyone who has heard the Grimm story – about the brother and sister lost in the forest who find a house made of sweets and outsmart the witch who lives there – already knows the foundation of our story.
“We’re also performing an updated translation of the original libretto, so audiences will be hearing our story in English. [And] Hansel and Gretel is … an opera that involves child performers – we have a chorus of 14 children,” she said.
“Beyond the traditionally family-friendly elements of the opera, we have the most incredible design concept enhancing our production. This is a larger-than-life, technicolor world that brings to mind the dream world Maurice Sendak’s protagonist Max imagines in Where the Wild Things Are. This show is a co-production with the Old Trout Puppet Workshop, so costume pieces, the set, hand-held puppets and multi-operator puppet costumes help create this realm of ‘everyday spectacular.’ It’s such a visually rich presentation that audiences of any age will be engaged by the complete realm of story they see and hear.”
In addition, the new production has been shortened – it will run approximately two hours and 20 minutes, with one intermission – and the “youthful cast of emerging opera stars” will be conducted by 24-year-old Scottish-born conductor Alexander Prior. The original score by German composer Engelbert Humperdinck (1854-1921) has been adapted to suit the relatively small size of the venue – Vancouver Playhouse – and will be performed by “a 14-member ensemble of the Vancouver Opera Orchestra, which includes strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion, a saxophone and an electric guitar.”
While Field’s focus is classical music, she said she also has some musical theatre, folk, jazz and pop music in her repertoire.
“Some of the music I’ve performed most includes Yiddish songs I learned in elementary school,” she said. “Whenever I can fit it into a program, I try to include ‘Oyfn Pripetchik.’ That’s always been a special song to me. When we learned new songs in Yiddish class, I would sing them over the phone to my grandfather in Montreal. He’d always say, ‘That’s very nice, Ketzeleh,’ but when I sang ‘Oyfn Pripetchik’ to him, he sang along. We had a party for his 90th birthday in 2010, and he got up to sing ‘Oyfn Pripetchik’ again with me then. I’m sorry to say he’s declined significantly in the past few years, but we still manage a sing-along every now and then.”
“Oyfn Pripetchik” is a song about a rabbi teaching his students the alef-bet, and it was written by Mark Warshawsky (1848-1907). In addition to folk songs, Field said that, since elementary school, she has “been interested in music and art suppressed under Nazism.”
“My maternal grandparents are Holocaust survivors and interwar European culture provides a fascinating snapshot of life and art amidst tragedy,” she explained. “Mary Castello, our pianist in the Yulanda M. Faris Young Artists Program, and I are beginning to plan a recital of suppressed music for the new year and hope to present it across the country.
“Jewish-Canadian composer Srul Irving Glick was commissioned by the CBC to write a song cycle for the great Canadian singer, Maureen Forrester,” she continued. “He used the translated text of children’s poems salvaged from Terezin for his cycle ‘I Never Saw Another Butterfly,’ and I had the honor of performing ‘Narrative’ from this cycle with pianist Richard Epp for UBC’s honorary degree conferral ceremony for Elie Wiesel.”
In addition to the recital planned for next year, Field said, “I’m looking forward to Vancouver Opera’s festival in the spring, and getting to play the bad guy in a production of Puccini’s Suor Angelica in Ottawa in February.”
For tickets to Hansel and Gretel, call 604-683-0222 or visit vancouveropera.ca.
Left to right, Aaron Roderick, Paul Beckett and Adam Grant Warren in Creeps, which is being mounted at the Cultch by Realwheels Theatre, Dec. 1-10. (photo by Tim Matheson)
David E. Freeman’s Creeps premièred in Toronto in 1971. Forty-five years later, it could still be considered radical, and most certainly remains relevant.
The 75-minute one-act play takes place in the washroom of a sheltered workshop, where the main characters – four men with disabilities – take refuge. Freeman, “who lived with cerebral palsy, was one of the first writers to put his own voice – a Canadian voice – on the stage in the early ’70s,” reads the description by Realwheels Theatre, which is mounting the production at the Cultch Dec. 1-10. “Tired of the way they’ve been treated, [the men] rebel and barricade themselves in the washroom. The brutality and hilarity of Freeman’s uncompromising and sardonic dialogue drives the show and expresses the tension of the oppressed with a raw ferocity and clarity.”
Realwheels’ mandate includes providing “respectful and accurate representation of disability, with a vision for full integration of people with disabilities in the performing arts.”
“We’ve cast three fabulous actors who live with disability in Creeps,” producer/dramaturg Rena Cohen told the Independent in an email interview. “They’re working alongside four of Vancouver’s top professional, able-bodied actors. To accommodate the stamina of the PwD [people with disabilities] cast members, we’re extending the rehearsal period to six weeks of part-time (four-hour) days – rehearsal duration for a professional show typically runs three weeks, full-time.
“As happens virtually anytime accommodations are made for accessibility, everyone in the company is loving and benefiting from this accommodation. The creative, interpretive process is given more time to germinate, allowing ideas to be explored and tested, and busy actors appreciate being able to take other gigs or auditions that come up during their free hours.”
The local production includes Jewish community members David A. Kaye and David Bloom.
Kaye plays four characters: Michael, Puffo the Clown, a chef and a carnival barker.
“Michael is a young man with cerebral palsy, which presents in him as both a physical and cognitive disability,” Kaye explained. “Michael works at a sheltered workshop, what the characters refer to as the ‘Spastic Club,’ a place where people with disabilities used to go to perform mundane tasks for pennies a day. For Michael, I’m doing a lot of textual sleuthing, because there’s more information about Michael between the lines than in the lines themselves.
“My preparation for Michael has taught me about the many ways that CP can present,” he continued. “Each case is unique, like a fingerprint. To prepare for Michael, I’ve interviewed and observed people who live with CP, watched documentaries and then, in rehearsal, I’m responsive to the other actors who are also making their way through the interpretive process. We’re also all learning about the history of sheltered workshops for people with disabilities.”
As for the characters of the clown and the chef, Kaye said they “live in a heightened reality that engages with the perceptions of people with disabilities through an ableist perspective,” whereas the barker “provides an ironic commentary, almost an infomercial or sales pitch for the worst-case scenario option for people with disabilities.”
Bloom plays what could be called the bad guy.
“I play Carson, the guy responsible for the facility,” said Bloom. “He doesn’t appear until the end, but he is talked about a lot before he arrives, mostly with disdain.
Carson is a representation of the patronizing, suffocating ‘support’ these guys receive at the hands of the institution they’re stuck in. During rehearsals, I’m learning a lot about my own lazy thinking about people with disabilities.”
Bloom has known of Realwheels’ work for many years and of Cohen’s involvement in the company, but only met her on the first day of rehearsals. Kaye became connected to Realwheels through Creeps’ director Brian Cochrane, with whom he has worked before.
”When Brian told me he was working with Rena and Realwheels, I was excited to come on board,” said Kaye. “It’s a unique experience! I can’t wait for audiences to witness the late, great David Freeman’s exposé on the lives of this fascinating group of guys.”
For her part, Cohen joined Realwheels in 2009, she said, after meeting its founder, James Sanders.
“James – along with two other Vancouver-based theatre artists, Bob Frazer and Kevin Kerr – had created and produced Skydive, one of the most successful productions to ever come out of Vancouver,” she said. “You couldn’t help but be struck by its technical innovation (in which a person with quadriplegia flies!), plus it had considerable impact on perceptions of disability. I’d been working in arts management and as a speech/presentations coach when James invited me to discuss the company’s next steps.
“Skydive’s remarkable triumph had been supported by a fairly rudimentary start-up company infrastructure. James needed help, and I saw an opportunity to bridge Realwheels’ early success to a more stable future.
“I was also drawn to the opportunities that come through greater insight into the lived experience of disability. Through James – who lives with quadriplegia – and his considerable network, I was exposed to the vitality and dynamism of the disability demographics. It didn’t take long for me to become passionate about Realwheels’ mandate: ‘to create and produce performances that deepen understanding of disability.’
“We’ve since mounted three more amazing professional shows, and built up our community practice – under the Wheel Voices banner. Our most recent community project was SexyVoices, an exploration of sexuality from a disability perspective. SexyVoices was created with and by the community participants, working with acclaimed director Rachel Peake. It offered incredibly funny, daring and moving performances, received national attention, and sold out its three-evening run!”
Last year, noted Cohen, Realwheels received the City of Vancouver Award of Excellence.
Though technically a part-time position, as with many who work in the nonprofit sector, the professional and volunteer lines blur and Cohen’s “efforts in any week are often significantly greater than a full-time job.”
“Embedded into my professional capacity at Realwheels is the need to authentically reflect the values of disability culture, and to serve as a liaison between the disability community and the theatre community,” she explained. “After James took leave of Realwheels due to medical reasons, I assumed responsibility for both management and artistic direction. I challenge myself to understand and to internalize the diverse voices of the disability community, and to convey those voices through the decisions and choices that we make with regard to projects, casting, mentorships, etc.
“My pure volunteer life in Vancouver has almost completely been centred upon Temple Sholom. I served as board president during the leadership transition planning years (2010-12), and before that I oversaw Temple’s strategic planning process. I’d co-chaired the religious school committee and, earlier, I served on Temple’s security committee, which was formed after 9/11. These days, I’m chairing the communications committee for the Syrian Refugee Resettlement Project, and otherwise just enjoying our Temple community.”
Of what she has learned from her years at Realwheels, Cohen said, “The PwD experience is the human experience. By that I mean that the state of ‘disability’ is not binary with a simple on/off. There is a scale or a ‘continuum’ of sorts. We are all challenged on some level and the human experience is defined by how we manage those challenges and how we optimize as a broader community to ensure everyone has the opportunity to self-actualize. I’ve learned that attitudinal barriers are far more challenging for PwD than physical barriers.
We need to challenge both, but attitudes and preconceptions about disability are the hardest to modify. I’m certainly continuing to work on challenging my own ableist privilege.
“I’ve learned that whenever accommodations are made to serve PwD, everyone benefits. One of my proudest achievements as board president at Temple Sholom was the Accessibility and Inclusion Project, which resulted in the installation of an interior ramp to the bimah. Overall, I think Temple has become safer, more inclusive and more accommodating to the diverse range of ages and abilities of all people who participate in Temple life. As I’ve said, I believe that disability exists across the broad spectrum of society, and that most of us are actually TAB (temporarily able-bodied).
“I’m continually learning about the tremendous diversity in the disability sector,” she added. “I attended the Cripping the Arts Symposium in Toronto a few months ago. One PwD artist there insisted, ‘I can’t possibly explain what [having a disability is] like, but I can show you through my artwork, and maybe you’ll get a better understanding of the struggle for survival.’ Yet another expressed: ‘How we experience the world is all based on who you are as a human being, not about being a PwD.’ Those are two nearly opposing positions.
“I’ve learned that, in Canada, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms recognized equality for those who live with disability in 1982, but there is still a great deal of work needed. The U.S., through the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990), is far more advanced than we are. The U.K. by far leads the way in terms of disability arts practices and inclusion.”
In addition to her involvement with the Temple Sholom community, Judaism and Jewish culture have influenced Cohen’s outlook on life and the work she pursues in other ways as well.
“My Jewish upbringing exposed me to critical thinking, to appreciation for the individual and for community, and provided me with exposure to the arts and theatre,” she said. “We have a rich storytelling tradition in Judaism, and a particular way of using humor to cope with life’s challenges. Exposure to that, combined with having a large, extended Jewish family when I was growing up in Montreal, definitely informed my worldview.
“The aching stories of the Holocaust, and the enormous victory of the establishment of Israel, also feel very personal to me. My parents (z”l) would tell you that, from the time I was little, I was a champion of the underdog, always ready to speak truth to power. I’m not so brave today, but I do feel very strong moral imperatives, whether about equality for PwD, or standing up to BDS [boycott, divestment and sanction] bullies, who are either misinformed about Israel or covertly antisemitic.
“My Jewish education also involved a lot of text analysis, including as a student at parochial school in Montreal. The shift to analyzing scripts was a natural segue for me.”
Cohen encourages people to join Realwheels “for an evening of savage wit and uncompromising truth-telling as we present Creeps, the award-winning dark comedy by David E. Freeman that changed Canadian theatre forever!”
And Bloom echoed her sentiments, “I feel very lucky to be part of this show,” he said. “Not only is it a seminal Canadian classic, but I’m working with a great company and an ensemble with real integrity.”
Tickets for Creeps, which previews Nov. 30 before its 10-day run, are $18-$40 from 604-251-1363 or thecultch.com/tickets. Tickets are only two for $20 on Dec. 3, which includes a post-show reception in recognition of International Day of People with Disabilities. There are also post-show discussions Dec. 4 and 6, and ASL and audio description on Dec. 4. Warning: mature content and offensive language.
Left to right: Ariel Martz-Oberlander (Dolly), Damon Jang (Walt Dreary), Katie Purych (Polly Peachum), Kevin Armstrong (Macheath), zi paris (Bob the Saw) and Adam Olgui (Street Singer). (photo by Colin Beiers)
The Threepenny Opera “has a grassroots design to it and deals with action and issues that are often seen in the streets and politics of major cities throughout the world,” Theatre in the Raw artistic director Jay Hamburger told the Independent. “The play for sure is original and it takes a lot of risks that, if given thought, speak profoundly to today.”
Indeed, violence, poverty, oppression and inequality are not things of the past. And Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s 1928 musical – itself very closely adapted from The Beggar’s Opera, written 200 years earlier, by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch – remains both entertaining and thought-provoking. The Theatre in the Raw production of it Nov. 16-27 at the Russian Hall is to be highly anticipated.
“Theatre in the Raw has always strived to provide high-quality performance work,” said Hamburger. “Though the productions can seem minimalist, a theatrical experience is aimed for and often with a message. The Threepenny Opera play, and the Beggar’s Opera that it was based on, inverted the notion of theatre experiences as gaudy, excessive and out of reach of the common person, and instead focused on the underbelly of society. Brecht’s approach to theatre championed breaking down walls between audience and actor, turning the notion of passive viewer of entertainment on its head. These ideas are much in line with Theatre in the Raw’s ambitions and desire to reach out to audiences in profound and innovative ways. Plus, providing a play of this scale with a relatively large cast and crew allows Theatre in the Raw to not only put on the show for the community … but also to have many talented artists perform their craft on stage.”
Among those artists are a few from the Jewish community. Stephen Aberle plays the central figure of Mr. Peachum.
“I play Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum, owner and proprietor of the Beggar’s Big Brother, an outfitting and licensing company for all the beggars in the city,” Aberle explained. “Peachum has a monopoly, strictly enforced: anyone caught begging in his territory without a licence gets beaten up; second offenders get ‘the saw.’ His ‘clients’ must pay for their licences with hefty initiation fees, and by turning over half (or more) of their take.
“He’s a crucial plot engine: his daughter Polly marries the hero/antihero Macheath, leaving Peachum outraged. His obsessive struggle for revenge drives much of the action of the play.”
Set in London’s Soho just before Queen Victoria’s coronation, Peachum tries to have Macheath – also a brutal criminal, aka “Mack the Knife” – arrested and hanged, but the police chief happens to be an old army buddy of Macheath’s. Peachum, however, uses his influence and Macheath becomes a wanted man. Polly warns her lover, but, before fleeing, he stops in at the brothel he frequents.
“My character is Dolly, one of the whores who live with Jenny Diver in Wapping,” said Ariel Martz-Oberlander. “Macheath visits them every week and it’s them he goes to see instead of escaping from the police when he gets a chance.”
Adam Olgui plays the Street Singer, who is, in a way, “the narrator of the story,” said Olgui. “Although he’s an observer, he slips in at times to assume different roles to help move the plot along. The Street Singer himself is a smooth, playful, light-hearted being.”
As Brecht adapted Gay’s work, changing the setting, for example, to Victorian England, and highwaymen into gangsters of a sort, Theatre in the Raw will also add its touch.
“We are introducing elements modernizing the style of the characters, their wardrobes, etc., and are not doing the play using English accents,” said Hamburger. “Though the play technically still occurs in an alternate version of 19th-century Soho, we feel our stylistic choices help the piece reflect more universally about the 1920s Germany where it was written and possibly on our pressing modern situations as well. We’ll admit we’re putting a bit of Commercial Drive flavor into it, too, as the play involves a diverse group of characters that are both fun and standout.”
And the characters still speak to us.
“To my mind, the character of Peachum remains bitingly, bitterly relevant today,” said Aberle. “He is Brecht’s critique of capitalism par excellence, a ‘businessman’ whose business, like so many winning enterprises, thrives on human misery. As he observes, ‘The powerful of the earth can create poverty, but they can’t bear to look at it.’ He has learned to profit by this discovery, and has no scruples about doing so – by whatever means necessary.
“Peachum is cynically fond of religious references. He loves to preach, usually (like his middle namesake) to gloomily pessimistic effect (‘the world is mean, and man uncouth!’), and offers verses of scripture to persuade suckers to part with their money. This leaves me as an actor surmising that he may have had a religious education, perhaps even an earlier career as a clergyman, before stumbling into the vocation of extracting value from poverty instead of working to alleviate it. Some might find parallels with today’s professional evangelists.”
As for her character, Martz-Oberlander said, “Dolly represents the way a woman can make a living taking advantage of a very misogynistic and cut-throat society in the play. She has no misconceptions about Macheath falling in love with her and is content to use her body to make a living. She is reasonable, if very naïve. Dolly plays a small part in the story, but she stands the test of time by being a strong woman who makes her way in a system in many ways rigged against her.”
Olgui spoke more generally. “I think that the timelessness of Brecht’s themes and his view of human nature are why his works are still relevant today,” he said.
Hamburger highlighted the play’s “wild sense of humor” and its “rollercoaster” of a story. He noted that both Brecht and Weill “were extremely interested in U.S. entertainment during the early part of the 20th century. Though the play didn’t really make it in the U.S. until the 1950s, both creators looked to the U.S. for some form of success. Weill actually escaped Germany before the Holocaust, knowing he had to get out to save his life. Brecht, on the other hand, before and during the Second World War, fled to 10 different countries in order for him and his family to survive. The play speaks in an extremely original and relevant way to a lot of concerns that face us economically, socially, and the gap between the rich, the middle-class and the poor, and how certain people are often at a disadvantage and seeking ways to survive.”
Not to mention it has some pretty catchy and enduring tunes: “Ballad of Mack the Knife” and “Jenny the Pirate,” to name but two.
Tickets for The Threepenny Opera are $25 and $20 (students) and available at the door or from theatreintheraw.ca/tickets.
Kerry Sandomirsky as Alice, centre. In Long Division, the way in which Alice’s son reacts to bullying “connects all the characters in the play, and it makes my character deeply question herself,” explains Sandomirsky. (photo by David Cooper)
Math, movement, images, text, music and more combine in Peter Dickinson’s Long Division, which will see its première at Gateway Theatre Nov. 17-26.
Dickinson is a professor at Simon Fraser University and the director of SFU’s Institute for Performance Studies. Long Division is his third play, and it features seven characters. Jewish community member Kerry Sandomirsky plays Alice.
“Alice is the single mother of a brilliant math student who is bullied,” Sandomirsky told the Independent. “He responds by making a shocking choice. This event connects all the characters in the play, and it makes my character deeply question herself. What could she have possibly done differently?”
Directed by Richard Wolfe and produced by Pi Theatre, Long Division is “about the mathematics of human connection.” The characters, explains the synopsis, “are linked by a sequence of ultimately tragic events, but there is more to the pattern than first appears. The three male and four female characters use number theory, geometry and logic to trace their connection to each other and to the moment that changed their lives.”
When asked about what challenges the script posed for her, Sandomirsky, said, “Well, have you ever tried to explain Pascal’s Wager using contemporary dance? Or Fibonacci numbers? Or Schrödinger’s cat? We’re dealing with mathematical concepts as metaphors for human stories. So, the first task is to learn the math!”
And to how much of the math could she relate?
“Zero,” she said. “Thank God my son has a math tutor.”
Not only is there the math to master, but the movement. For that, the cast also had help.
“Earlier today,” wrote Dickinson in his Oct. 20 blog, “the choreographer of Long Division, Lesley Telford, invited me to drop by the studio at Arts Umbrella on Granville Island, where she was working … with seven amazingly talented dancers … and they have each taken on a character in the play, drawing from the text … to improvise and develop individual gesture phrases that may or may not eventually get set in some related form on our corresponding actors when we begin rehearsals next week…. I was amazed at how bang-on their instincts were in terms of energy and tempo and line, as well as things like muscularity vs. flow, repetition, different levels and directional facings, and so on. I was also pleased to note that I could also read each character in the movement without reading the movement itself as telegraphing too obviously this or that character’s psychology or profession.”
Projection art also helps “reveal aspects of the characters’ inner lives,” according to the play description. On Oct. 29, Dickinson blogged that it was “useful to have Jamie [Nesbitt] at the table yesterday for our final beat-by-beat read-through of the text, as he asked a lot of tough dramaturgical questions about what exactly was going on in different sections, and how video might support them in some instances, or conceivably work against them in others. Combined with the cast’s similarly probing questions from the rest of the week, the rigorous text analysis has really forced me to justify my choices, and to explain their relevance to the overall structure of the play and the respective inner worlds of each of the characters.”
Playing Alice motivated Sandomirsky to read Sue Klebold’s book A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy. “Her son was one of the Columbine shooters,” explained Sandomirsky. “She experienced a firestorm of hatred. For example, when her family was sent food by her neighbors, her lawyer insisted she throw it out in case it was poisoned.
“This is the third play in a row where I play the mother of a tormented teenage boy. And this is definitely the first one that prescribes algebra as the way to get through life.”
But, Sandomirsky was quick to note, “Long Division is a workout for the mind – without sacrificing heart.”
Langara College Foundation’s Langara Studio 58 Legacy Fund campaign reached and exceeded its original $250,000 goal, raising more than $273,000 in support of theatre arts at Langara. Most than 538 individual donors contributed to the success of the campaign, among them 219 Studio 58 alumni and 55 present and former faculty, directors and designers.
“The response from our Studio 58 community was amazing,” said Moira Gookstetter, executive director, Langara College Foundation. “We are humbled by their generosity. With their support, we raised over $136,729, which, when matched by the college, will create an endowment of $273,458.
“We are especially thankful for our volunteer campaign chairs Jane Heyman and Joey Lespérance. They are the real heroes of this campaign. Their enthusiasm, dedication and tireless support have helped to create a foundation that will launch Studio 58 into the future.”
Established to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Langara’s Theatre Arts at Studio 58 program, the Legacy Fund’s mandate is to support the expansion and scope of the program’s productions, training and learning opportunities.
“The remarkable success of the Studio 58 Legacy Fund campaign will mean future generations of students will have access to working on productions beyond the normal scope of Studio 58, will be offered special workshops, and will have the possibility to mentor with professionals,” said Kathryn Shaw, Studio 58 artistic director. “The Legacy Fund will allow Theatre Arts at Studio 58 to remain a leading force in theatre training in Canada. All of this could not have been possible without our caring and generous donors and supporters.”
Langara College’s Studio 58 provides practical, hands-on training for students looking for careers in professional theatre. It offers two streams – acting and production.
Heart of the City festival participants. (photo by David Cooper)
Community is at the heart of what Ruth Howard, Maggie Winston and Sharon Kravitz do, so it is no wonder they are participating in the Heart of the City Festival, which features more than 100 events at more than 40 locations throughout the Downtown Eastside Oct. 26-Nov. 6.
One of the projects is Realms of Refuge, which Howard (of Toronto’s Jumblies Theatre) describes as “an episode of Jumblies’ Four Lands national tour, which itself grew out of our 2015 west-to-east-coast tour, Train of Thought, for which Vancouver Moving Theatre was a key partner.” VMT is the main presenter of Heart of the City, and Howard has known VMT’s co-founder and artistic director Savannah Walling since 2003.
Realms of Refuge’s “four lands” concern senses, memory, history and dreams, explained Howard. “Over the course of the [two-week] residency, artists and community members create and bring to life these lands, through drawing, miniature models, words, music, movement and conversation. There will be drop-in art-making sessions at the Interurban Gallery (the project’s home-base), as well as some workshops in other locations with community groups and partners…. An open-ended number of people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities can take part in the activities and come to enjoy the evolving artwork.”
The intent of the project, said Howard, is “to spark thought and conversation and promote curiosity and understanding about the lives and experiences of people living on the same land.
“The ‘evolving gallery’ form, which I first invented and started to play with at Jumblies in 2009, involves setting up the framework for artistic creation in a gallery, studio or other suitable public venue, launching the starting point and facilitating its growth over a period of time. Generally, it starts with visual arts activities and then moves on to include words and simple performance. The idea is, rather than opening a gallery exhibition to be viewed in its finished state … we set the context for something that can’t happen unless diverse people come and take part; the nature and specifics are determined by those participating people, and we celebrate its closing state.”
Howard founded Jumblies in 2001. “I was always seeking ways to combine esthetic and social values and impact, and to blur distinctions between process and product; audience and participant; story and history; ritual and theatre; art and life,” she said.
“In 1990, I encountered the British ‘community play’ form, brought to Canada by writer Dale Hamilton, in a production in the Guelph area called The Spirit of Shivaree. This was for me a life-changing experience: I found a form of art-making that combined epic-scale theatre with wholehearted social inclusion and an astonishing capacity for social change.”
Howard wants to make art in ways “that don’t fit into standard disciplinary delineations,” to collaborate with others who have skills and perspectives she doesn’t, to learn “from people, places and stories that have tended to be left out of our cultural mainstream” and to “bring people together across real and perceived differences and remove restrictive delineations,” such as “youth” or “marginalized people.” She wants to “create an exciting, accepting and nourishing home and creative/social worlds in which my children – and also my friends, family, neighbors, colleagues and co-inhabitors of the land – can grow up and live,” as well as “have quirky ideas large and small and have the freedom to explore, develop and realize them.” She would like for art to be “at the heart of life.”
When asked if Judaism or Jewish culture has influenced her, Howard said, “My mother was a German Jewish refugee, whose immediate family escaped to England in 1938, just after Kristallnacht. Her father was a businessman and excellent amateur violinist, and her mother was a painter, well established in the Hamburg avant-garde arts scene before the war. I was brought up with a strong non-religious Jewish identity. As an adult, I joined a Toronto secular leftist Jewish organization (the United Jewish People’s Order and their summer community, Camp Naivelt), in which community I brought up my three children.
“Altogether my Jewish sensibility is hugely relevant to my life and work,” she said. “I was brought up with art as an essential part of life – both doing it … and witnessing it…. I was also brought up absorbing that it is important never to leave anyone out; not to support, tolerate or ignore separation of people into exclusive groups; always to have space at the table for unexpected guests; to welcome everyone; that ‘never again’ means ‘never for anyone.’”
Through her association with UJPO, Howard “learned to interpret and celebrate Jewish holidays for their social and cultural relevance to struggles of all humanity for survival, freedom and dignity.” She has created an oral history/theatre project with Camp Naivelt and, more recently, adapted a series of Passover seders to include the telling of other vital stories, such as Toronto’s indigenous history.
“When I first heard the word genocide used in relation to the treatment by European settlers of Canada’s indigenous people, I was stopped in my tracks; it was something that I couldn’t put aside…. Since then, I have made it a priority to learn and form relationships so that the work of Jumblies could support First Nations recovery, justice, equity, and new awareness for all of us who live here…. My ongoing artistic preoccupations include inherited memories of and present relationships with eradicated places, and the interplay and relative merits of remembering and forgetting. These themes are woven into the Four Lands/Realms of Refuge project. It isn’t particularly a Jewish project, but it springs from my particular Jewish mind … and the Vancouver iteration, with its focus on places of refuge, happens aptly to take place during Sukkot.”
Jewish culture has also influenced Winston, who grew up in a secular family.
“My upbringing in a family that is very engaged in politics, culture and the arts has definitely influenced who I am and how I approach the world,” said Winston. “I do believe that being culturally Jewish has contributed to my sense of being an advocate for others, of being confident in my ability to ask questions and explore ideas, and in feeling as though I am part of a greater community. Growing up in the United States in a suburb of Baltimore that was pretty white and Christian, I did feel different from my peers even though Baltimore has a huge Jewish population. Enjoying that feeling of differentness has led me to being a creative professional.
“Jewish folklore is a great source of inspiration and I would love to learn more,” she added. “My solo puppet and clown show Just Enough is based on the Yiddish folktale Joseph’s Overcoat, in which something is made from nothing and then passed down through family. In my version, it features a grandmother (a puppet) and her granddaughter (me, as a clown). The grandmother makes a quilt out of her old clothes for her baby granddaughter and, as she grows up, the grandmother cuts and sews it into other things for her until all that is left is a button.
“As a theatre artist,” she said, “I am drawn to ritual and tradition in many forms. I have always found support for my work in the Jewish community, not only in Vancouver (through the JCC and the Chutzpah! Festival), but in other places around the world. I have started to make a few connections in the Jewish community in Montreal and am excited to see what evolves there.”
Winston only recently moved to Montreal, where her mother and grandparents grew up there. “Every summer of my life has been spent at our family cottage in Morin Heights, Que., just one hour from Montreal,” said Winston.
When she graduated in 2005 with a BA in puppetry performance from Sarah Lawrence College in New York, she wanted to move to Canada and, in the end, chose Vancouver “because I knew I could get to know people in the arts community easily through my relatives. Actually, it was through my aunt that I was originally connected to Terry [Hunter] and Savannah [Walling] of VMT back in 2008 when I got to be involved in We’re All in This Together, a shadow project in the DTES.”
However, “the pang of Montreal called me more and more,” so, this past January, she made the move. “The reason why I’m back in Vancouver right now is because of some other projects I had already planned last year…. Right now, in addition to working for Heart of the City, I’m collaborating on a music and puppetry project with Laura Barron (Instruments of Change), facilitating students in a Vancouver elementary school and then repeating the same project with students at a school in India. We did a similar program two years ago, and had already decided it would happen again this year.”
With Heart of the City, Winston is both an artist liaison, as well as a performer. She’ll be in It’s a Joke! – which has the theme “‘Stand-up for mental health” – with the Assembly, a group she’s been with about four years. “We are a playful and lofty collective of process-oriented, performance-driven, self-identifying women clowns, producing shows two to three times a year,” she said.
“Our performances at Gallery Gachet [on Oct. 28] will feature a few of the regular members of the Assembly doing short solo or duo acts from some of our previous shows,” she said. “In terms of the theme of the event … I can’t speak for stand-up comedy, as I’ve never done that before, but I can say that my mental health has been significantly affected for the better by my experience with clown. I know many other people who are similarly influenced. I hope the audience who attends this evening will get a taste of the deep psychological and spiritual power this art form has.”
Winston was in the festival last year with her solo show Just Enough and she has participated for several years – and will again this year – with Healthy Aging for the Arts, a program at Strathcona Community Centre. The group started in 2005, and it “consists of Cantonese-speaking women between the ages of 70 and 95. Every year, we explore a different style of puppetry with a theme that resonates with the members of the group. Sharon Bayly and myself have been the lead facilitators for the last five years.”
Winston noted that most of the seniors have been together since the beginning. “We all have aged together,” she said, “and I’ve been able to see the direct positive effect that art-making has on the well-being of these women.”
Despite the obvious importance of community in her work, Winston said, “I didn’t know that I was a community-engaged artist until other people started to identify me as such and until I started understanding the language of and paradigms of the art form.”
She said, “I always just did the kind of work that interested me and I got involved in whatever projects I could. I came to Vancouver with the intention of being a professional puppeteer and quickly discovered that, if I wanted to make puppet shows, I had to educate everyone around me, collaborate with artists of other disciplines and be as inclusive as possible…. Community engagement to me is simply sharing what I love to do with others. It’s about creating something together from scratch – from the ideas of those involved in the project…. I was never interested in being a traditional theatre artist, going to auditions, headshots, taking directions without having a say in them; I just wanted to tell stories and perform them creatively. Community engagement became an avenue for doing that.”
Community, in particular the DTES, is a focal point for Kravitz.
“I felt a connection to the Downtown Eastside and particularly the Carnegie Centre almost immediately upon moving to Vancouver. I volunteered at Carnegie and then, the following year, I proposed a community public art project on the corner of Main and Hastings. My first night in the Carnegie in the winter of 1993 and my first summer on the corner are moments I will never forget. Coming there helped me become more of the person I wanted to be and so it will always have a very special place in my heart.”
Kravitz will come to Heart of the City with We Can’t Afford Poverty, “a participatory project that highlights the widening gap between rich and poor through community-driven art.”
“We will be making several appearances throughout the festival,” she said. “We’ll be co-hosting a print-making workshop with WePress, we’ll be taking part in the documentary night, we’re having an exhibit of kids’ art in the third floor gallery and we’ll be popping up throughout the festival with our mobile video soapbox.”
The arts play countless roles in individual and community health, she said. “The act of making art together and the bonding that happens through that process, the ability individually to respond to external and internal issues creatively helps us feel less powerless. It changes how we think, and it can change how others think.”
For Kravitz, in Judaism, “like all faiths, there is the common belief in how we treat others, and the knowledge that there is something in the world greater than all of us, who and whatever that is to someone. I grew up knowing that we needed to help each other, and it’s why were all here – to make things better for each other.”