“He was a brilliant man who lived a fascinating life, survived major world events, and left some mystery behind. He was also very, very funny,” said award-winning Toronto playwright and storyteller Ronit Rubinstein about her late father. “I so hope readers will come to my show and hear all about him – it’s hard not to fall in love with him when you hear his stories.”
Rubinstein brings Things My Dad Kept to the Rothstein Theatre on Nov. 4, 7:30 p.m., in a performance presented by the Chutzpah! Festival in partnership with the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. It is a unique show for its creator.
“Most of my plays are for big casts, and I like to play with things like shadow puppetry. In my other plays, I have fictional characters performing a made-up story. A lot of my plays are quite political, too,” Rubinstein said. “Things My Dad Kept is much more intimate in scope, much simpler to stage, and it’s the true story of my family, on my father’s side. Rather than dialogue, it’s just me speaking directly to the audience. And this show is about things nearly everyone can relate to: loss, grief, memory, seeking to understand who and where we come from.
“That said, one thing my plays and this show have in common is that I’m very interested in ways of incorporating audience participation that make the audience feel totally safe and taken care of,” she continued. “Nobody is picked on, participation is completely optional and, really, it’s about having a shared experience that we create together – something that exists only for that particular audience.
“Another commonality across all my writing is that I think big feelings and big ideas are best communicated with some humour mixed in,” she added. “If we don’t laugh about the hard stuff, well, that wouldn’t be very Jewish, would it?”
Rubinstein’s Jewishness is an inseparable part of who she is.
“My Jewishness is a central feature of my storytelling – there is a long, proud lineage of Jews making comedy from pain, and I think my life’s work is to try and be a small part of that lineage,” she said. “My cadences are Jewish, my references are often Jewish, my sense of humour is Jewish. It’s the only way I know how to exist in the world, so when I tell my true stories onstage, they kinda always come out Jewish – even when I don’t intend it, even when the content isn’t explicitly related.”
Storytelling is an ancient and deeply human art form, said Rubinstein. “In an age when more and more art is mediated through (or generated by) technology, what connects us to our core humanity more than just hearing another person tell us a story? And good storytelling creates empathy, connection, imagination, surprise, humour and deep feeling,” she said. “You can see it on the faces of people attending their first show, it can spark a little bit of magic within.”
She started storytelling as a hobby, but “fell in love with the art form.” She now performs regularly, and is the artistic director and co-host of a monthly storytelling show in Toronto called the Yarn. “Getting to work with storytellers to help them get their stories ready, and then hearing the finished versions onstage, is such a treat,” she said.
Rubinstein is not only a playwright and performer, but a teacher – she went to Princeton University, where she studied English and theatre.
“I think the best teachers are good performers, and good storytellers,” she said. “Every audience – whether at a show or in a classroom– appreciates brevity, a punchy bit of writing and a good joke. Plus, teaching helps you get used to public speaking and to rolling with the punches when unexpected things come up.”
As part of Chutzpah!, Rubinstein will also give a storytelling workshop on Nov. 6, at 9:30 a.m.
“In the workshop, I hope to cover fundamentals of good storytelling: what draws an audience in, which clichés to avoid, and some basics of structure and performance,” she said. “And this doesn’t have to mean performance on stage! If you struggle to tell stories to family members in a way that engages them, to hold attention at a dinner party or in a boardroom – I think good storytelling skills can help in a lot of contexts. My goal is for participants to leave the workshop with a first draft of a true, personal story, and a solid sense of what to do to make it as engaging as possible.”
Rubinstein’s own storytelling has evolved over the years.
“I think my earliest storytelling performances were all light, comedic stories, the kind that would be a big hit at a party. The more I went to storytelling shows, the more I saw people telling really personal and vulnerable stories on stage, and saw how the audience loved and supported them through it. And that made me realize I could do the same,” she said. “It was still nerve-wracking though; my father died in 2012, and I don’t think I told a story about him onstage until about a decade later, because I didn’t think I could get through a story about him without crying. But, eventually, when I told about him, I did tear up, but it was totally fine (nobody egged me). So, I guess my courage comes from the lovely, warm audiences that storytelling shows tend to attract.”
For tickets to Things My Dad Kept and the full Chutzpah! schedule, go to chutzpahfestival.com.
