Arts & Culture – Page 111

VICO brings artists together

“I am very proud to be its founding artistic director,” said Moshe Denburg of the Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra. “It’s like watching one’s child succeed in the world!”

But success is not something VICO takes for granted and Denburg said the orchestra team “is doing its best to keep the VICO relevant and vibrant.”

“We are a growing cultural force in B.C. and in Canada today and, in some circles, we are gaining recognition worldwide as well,” he said. “We are still one of a very few orchestral entities in the world dedicated to intercultural work. We do see our work as a window on the future, a future where there may be many intercultural orchestras in many cities…. The project is still quite young, and we need to care for it, materially and artistically, but, if we can continue to garner the support of the community in which we reside, there is every expectation that the VICO will do well for the foreseeable future.”

While Denburg “handed over the artistic reins” of VICO to co-director Mark Armanini in 2014, he still contributes compositions for performance. As well, he said, “I have acted in several capacities: artistic advisor, financial manager, diplomat without portfolio and also project manager in several areas, the main one being the Mystics & Lovers recording project.”

Released in 2016, Mystics & Lovers is a recording of two compositions that were performed by VICO and the chamber choir Laudate Singers the previous year – Ani Ma-amin (I Believe) by Denburg and Asheghaneh (Monologues Aglow) by Iranian-born Farshid Samandari.

photo - Moshe Denburg — Moshe Denburg *(photo from Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra)*

“These two works were the main pieces in the concert in May 2015, and it was decided ahead of time that we would be recording these two and making a CD from them,” explained Denburg. “The full concert program included two a capella choir pieces followed by Asheghaneh in the first half, and then two small ensemble Kurdish pieces (featuring guest soloist Jamal Kurdistani) followed by Ani Ma-amin in the second half.”

Armanini suggested that Ani Ma-amin and Asheghaneh be recorded. “The two works complement each other, and utilize vocal forces to include our collaborating choir, Laudate Singers,” said Denburg. Together, they create a recording that is about 48 minutes in length.

The collaboration between VICO and Laudate goes back to 2002, when Denburg was looking for a choir to sing one of his works. “It was suggested to me by several colleagues to get in touch with Laudate Singers and their director, Lars Kaario,” said Denburg. “This is how our first collaboration came about – in February 2003, we actually featured the world première of Ani Ma-amin.”

Since then, he said, “Laudate Singers have really felt a connection to what we are doing. The intercultural element is very striking, and gives the singers an opportunity to see and hear non-Western instruments and musicians up close and personal. For the VICO, working with choir gives us an opportunity to expand the 25-member (approximately) orchestra with 25 voices, creating a very impressive sonic and visual experience. It also helps to combine our audiences, a great synergy in the arts, where fans are often hard to find, and harder to hold onto.

“The present realization of Ani Ma-amin differs a little from the original, not musically but rather in the instrumentation,” he added. “Certain instruments that were available in 2003 were not available in 2015, so some substitutions had to be made. This is part of the intercultural process today – for example, if we want an oud (short-necked Middle Eastern lute) player, we have maybe two to choose from; if someone moves away and another is unavailable, we simply do not have that instrument at hand; this is unlike a violinist, let’s say, where you can have several hundred professional players in Vancouver.

“Also of note is that one year after the première in 2003, Laudate and VICO, with a contingent of players from the VSO [Vancouver Symphony Orchestra], performed Ani Ma-amin at the Orpheum Theatre in a tribute concert of peace for the Dalai Lama, who was visiting (April 2004). In the audience were other dignitaries as well – the late Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Iranian peace laureate Shirin Ebadi and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.”

The press release for Mystics & Lovers highlights the common themes of Ani Ma-amin and Asheghaneh, which Laudate Singers also premièred, in 2006.

“Both draw on the poetic best of many cultures in order to build bridges between them,” says the release. “Both strive for unity in diversity, expressing a longing for peace and understanding, and seeking connection between personal love and spiritual devotion. Both make use of the human voice and instruments from many countries, both ancient and contemporary, to highlight both the commonality and contrasting expressions of these deeply human sentiments, and both draw on centuries-old texts (by the 12th-century rabbi/philosopher Maimonides in Ani Ma-amin and the 11th-century Persian poet/philosopher Baba Tahir in Asheghaneh) that still resonate today.”

photo - Farshid Samandari — Farshid Samandari *(photo from Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra)*

“While Moshe’s approach is more ‘orchestral’ in the sense of blending the colours to create new shades, I tend to focus on individual colours and the transformation of timbre,” says Samandari in the release. “Also, while Moshe, in creating his polyphony, draws upon the accepted Western chordal system, I explore species counterpoint, combining different musical styles and sonorities to create harmonies. Finally, Ani Ma-amin is a statement of belief in an ideal (Messiah); Asheghaneh describes a journey through trials and tribulations, reaching for the ideal (Beloved, by whatever name you call Him/Her).”

“Two aspects of our human expression are directly represented and expressed by the two works on the recording,” Denburg told the Independent. “My work is an expression of devotion to the ‘messiah idea,’ a time of peace and of goodwill, whereas the Samandari work takes as its starting point the yearning of the lover. However, both works cross over into the other’s realm: the messianic time yearned for in Ani Ma-amin will ultimately be crowned by the embrace of lovers; and the beloved who is yearned for in Asheghaneh is readily understood as the divine presence. This is the connection: the realms of the mystic and the lover come together.

“Musically speaking, Farshid and I draw upon different musical experiences – in my view, he is concerned with transformations of his experience with Persian musical ideas and modes, whereas I am coming from a Jewish modal perspective. I am also informed by my experiences in India, and this can be heard in the third movement, with the kind of melismatic singing which emulates Indian vocal technique. I would say that what unifies us is the use of modes in our works, and thus a certain melodic lyricism. To my mind, Farshid also draws upon the spirit of chanting in the Iranian Bahá’í tradition. So really, two strong sacred traditions are represented here.”

Since its founding in 2001 as a society, VICO has commissioned and performed almost 100 pieces (small- and large-scale), said Denburg, noting that there are several ways a piece gets commissioned. One way is to apply to the Canada Council “to raise funds to commission a significant new work from a particular composer.”

As well, he said, VICO holds workshops for established composers wanting to learn about writing for non-Western instruments and workshops and classes for young student composers. The established composers will create pieces using “smaller forces, perhaps one non-Western instrument with a string quartet,” while the students “are encouraged to write for small combinations of instruments, and have their pieces premièred as part of a recital; such was the case recently at our inaugural Summer Academy (June 26-July 1),” said Denburg. “Finally, directors of the VICO, in collaboration with interested composers, decide to commission a new work directly.

“The decision to commission a particular composer, in a particular style, is made once the main theme of a concert or a festival project is established. For example, we recently held a festival called Hands On (June 6-11), a series of concerts featuring percussion and drums from all over the world. It included many melodic instruments as well, and composers were sought out to write for the combinations of instruments at our disposal. When we include both large and small commissions, our recent festival, Hands On, and the Summer Academy brought about the creation of 12 to 15 new works.”

Mystics & Lovers is available for purchase on the VICO website (vi-co.org), at iTunes and at other digital music stores.

Designing with style

Designer Yifat Jovani (photo by Tim Matheson)

Israeli designer Yifat Jovani sewed clothes for her Barbie doll as a child, but didn’t launch her own fashion line for women until she moved to Vancouver 11 years ago.

Love brought the mother of two to the city. She met her Canadian husband, Tim Matheson, in Tel Aviv and the couple lived there for four years before relocating to British Columbia.

photo - Yifat Jovani’s creations are feminine, elegant and pragmatic, with stylish, flowing layers that flatter the figure — Yifat Jovani’s creations are feminine, elegant and pragmatic, with stylish, flowing layers that flatter the figure. *(photo by Tim Matheson)*

“My parents taught me that art should be a hobby, not a living, so, for many years, I never had the idea or the courage to make my clothing designs a professional business,” Jovani told the Jewish Independent. “Once we moved here, I realized it’s what I wanted to do.”

Jovani designs women’s clothes in sizes 2 through 12, all of them made from bamboo fabric. Her garments are feminine, elegant and pragmatic, with stylish, flowing layers that flatter the figure. They include tunics, dresses, coats, skirts and tops that can be dressed up or down depending on the occasion. “I like to call my designs clothing for real women, because that’s who wears my clothes – not skinny girls,” she reflected. “My clients are real women who have bodies in different shapes and sizes, and they need clothes that are practical, easy to care for and to travel with.”

Pragmatism is a key word for Jovani, who believes women shouldn’t have to suffer to look beautiful. “With my designs, you can multitask and still look beautiful,” she said. “Wear it to the office, and add an accessory to use it for dinner out or a cocktail party. I think women should have garments in their closets that aren’t just for special events.”

As part of her “real woman” design strategy, Jovani has asked her friends and clients to be her models at the fashion show events she organizes each year, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. “People are telling me, it’s so nice to see how your clothes look in size 10. It makes it more real. And … when I do my photo shoot for my fall collection, I’ll feature a regular model, but I’ll also have a size 10 model.”

Jovani’s designs are available for sale at her online store, yifatjovani.com, and in Vancouver at the boutique Tenth & Proper (4483 West 10th Ave.) and at Kali (1000 Commercial Dr.). They are also selling at boutiques in Duncan, Courtenay, Terrace and Whitehorse. “I’m trying to get into more stores but I’m doing all this myself, and I have two little ones in the house ages 4 and 7,” she said. “My goal is that my clothing will sell in more stores, both in Canada and internationally.”

When asked how challenging it is to be a fashion designer in Vancouver, Jovani’s succinct response encapsulates her determination and drive to succeed. “It’s not about location, because everywhere in the world there is competition,” she said. “In order to succeed, you need to work hard for what you love, be determined, and believe in yourself. If you don’t take action, you don’t get results.”

Visit Jovani’s studio at Muckabout Gift Gallery, 4759 Hastings St., or make an appointment to see her by emailing [email protected].

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.

An accidental journey

Salvador Litvak was in Vancouver for a Shabbaton at the Kollel last month. (photo from Salvador Litvak)

At a Kollel Shabbaton last month featuring Accidental Talmudist and filmmaker Salvador Litvak, no one was asking that age-old Jewish question, “When do we eat?” In fact, on the night of June 23, during the first of three sessions with Litvak, more than 100 attendees sat spellbound as he shared the love story of his Hungarian grandmother Magda, who survived the Holocaust in the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

Litvak, who was born in Chile and now lives in Los Angeles, recalled his grandparents’ story and how Magda’s death led to an epiphany that jump-started his spiritual journey. According to Litvak, witnessing his grandmother passing to the next world, where she was welcomed by his grandfather Imre (who was murdered in the Holocaust), was one of the seminal experiences of his life and it eventually resulted in his becoming an “accidental Talmudist,” with many detours along the way.

Litvak revealed his story in stages over the next two days at the Kollel, which brought him to Vancouver as part of its “focus on creating and promoting exciting and meaningful, social, cultural and educational programs that invite people to experience Judaism … in an inclusive, comfortable, joyful and nonjudgmental environment,” said Kollel director Rabbi Shmuel Yeshayahu.

Over the course of the weekend, Litvak shared a drash about the Torah portion, led an interactive workshop on Sunday about discovering one’s life’s mission and traced the stages in his life that led him to create the Accidental Talmudist blog, which attracts more than one million readers (Jews and non-Jews). He also spoke about how he came to embrace his Jewish and Hispanic roots.

Litvak’s journey has been an unconventional one. In fact, during the Sunday workshop, he jokingly claimed that “smoking pot got him into Harvard” because, after the incident, his father forced him to become a runner, which led to his becoming a champion cyclist. These extracurricular activities, said Litvak, helped him get into Harvard, where he took pre-med courses but ended up at New York University Law School. When he wasn’t in the classroom, he spent time in Greenwich Village. “I was a law student by day and a poet warrior by night,” he said.

Going back to his childhood, he said, “I was born in Santiago, Chile, that’s how I ended up with such a crazy name as Salvador Litvak, which is very similar to Jesus Goldberg.”

Like most kids, he was concerned about fitting in, despite several disadvantages. “I already had foreign parents, I was too tall, my hair was bright red, unruly, a mop, and there was no way I was going to fit in,” he said. So, while he agreed with his parents’ plan for him to go to Harvard to become a doctor, he made a decision in Grade 3 to use his middle name Alex instead of Salvador because “it made him feel more American.” It wasn’t until attending a Latino Students Association annual black tie gala at NYU that he would reclaim his Latino heritage.

Litvak had not attended any of the organization’s prior events because he had only felt nominally Hispanic. He attended this one with his girlfriend on a lark because he could wear his tux and get a free meal. When he found out, to his horror, that he would have to make a speech at the gala, he thought of leaving, but then realized that “all of the events of my life had actually coalesced into this moment for a reason.”

He seized the moment and shared with the audience how he’d been passing for 17 years as a white-bread American, and vowed to use his Spanish name, Salvador, from that day forward. Even though he wasn’t plugged into Judaism during his NYU days, this reclamation would be the first step for him to also reclaim his Jewish identity. “I let that moment be a key moment in my life,” he said, “because I knew that G-d was speaking to me and was saying to me, be who you are; you can’t do anything in this world if you aren’t who you really are.”

Litvak graduated, and practised corporate law for a short time before abandoning that career (much to the chagrin of his father) to become a filmmaker. This led to another milestone in his Jewish journey – producing and directing what is now a holiday comedy classic, the story of a Passover seder gone awry entitled When Do We Eat?, starring the late Jack Klugman in his final film role, as well as Lesley Ann Warren, Max Greenfield and Ben Feldman.

By his own admission, When Do We Eat? – which was realized with the help of his wife Nina and his Vancouver cousin Horatio – is a “very irreverent and raucous movie.” Even though the movie, which is about the “fastest seder in the West,” had a deep Jewish message based on sparks of kabbalah and Chassidut, it was panned by major media like the New York Times and Roger Ebert as being anti-Jewish. Nonetheless, word-of-mouth led to the film becoming a cult classic and a Passover tradition for many Jews around the world.

While Litvak had a bar mitzvah, he wasn’t particularly connected to his Jewish roots until the day he walked into a bookstore called 613 – The Mitzvah Store in the Pico Robertson district of Los Angeles and picked up a book called Berachos. It led him on the next leg of the spiritual journey that had begun with the passing of his grandmother.

He learned from the clerk at the bookstore that he had picked up the first book of the Talmud on a special day. The Talmud is read by many Jews all over the world as part of a worldwide program called Daf Yomi (literally, “Page of the Day”). It takes seven-and-a-half years to read the whole Talmud and Litvak had bought Book One on Day One of the program. He decided that this was not a coincidence and embarked on a seven-and-a-half-year talmudic journey, which led to one of his most memorable spiritual experiences: participating in a siyum (or concluding ceremony) at MetLife Stadium in New York with 93,000 Jews.

So, picking up that book of Talmud “accidentally” at a bookstore in Los Angeles set Litvak on a journey that inspired him to establish the Accidental Talmudist blog, which features Jewish wisdom and humour, and music from Jewish artists like Matisyahu, Peter Himmelman and the Moshav Band, as well as a live weekly show that is seen in more than 70 countries. Aside from connecting Jewish souls, the blog has introduced new fans to When Do We Eat? and there are plans for an Accidental Talmudist book and movie.

As we continue to ask that vital question, “When do we eat?”, Litvak will continue to connect Jewish souls one matzah ball and one page at a time.

For more information about the Accidental Talmudist, visit accidentaltalmudist.org. For information on the new Daf Yomi class at the Kollel, led by Asaf Cohen daily, at 8 p.m., visit thekollel.com.

David J. Litvak is a prairie refugee from the North End of Winnipeg who is a freelance writer, former Voice of Peace and Co-op Radio broadcaster and an “accidental publicist.” His articles have been published in the Forward, Globe and Mail and Seattle Post Intelligencer. His website is cascadiapublicity.com. He is not related to Salvador Litvak.

Artists’ work complementary

Artists Michael Abelman and Victoria Scudamore share the walls at Zack Gallery in the exhibit Sea to Sky. (photo by Olga Livshin)

In the exhibit Sea to Sky at Zack Gallery, the artists’ works complement each other. Michael Abelman’s seascapes and floral compositions lean towards the pensive and are a little wistful, while Victoria Scudamore’s abstract paintings add splashes of colour and joy to the gallery walls.

“I’ve always liked crafts, since I was a child,” Scudamore said in an interview with the Independent, “but I could never draw. I was a realtor for 30 years. Then, seven years ago, I fell off my bike and broke a wrist. A month later, I decided to take an art class. I thought: I couldn’t draw anyway, I would just have fun.”

image - “Chakra Forest” by Victoria Scudamore — “Chakra Forest” by Victoria Scudamore.

She did have fun. But, also during that class, she discovered the style of intuitive, abstract painting and fell in love with it. “It resonated with me,” she recalled. She started taking more classes. “Art became a real passion of mine,” she said. “Now I have to paint every day. I don’t feel whole if I don’t paint. This is my first show, and I’m very excited about it.”

Her elation is unmistakable as she talks about her creative process.

“I’m an abstract expressionist. I try to capture emotions in my paintings,” she explained. “I want to show movement, colours in motion, to show connections. To paint abstract, I need to be in a dreamy space. I often listen to ’70s rock music and sometimes I dance when I paint. Once, I accidentally knocked off a bottle of ink onto one of my paintings, but I didn’t throw it away. I saw something in the pattern of the ink stains and painted over it, used it.”

Scudamore feels adventurous in her approach to art, ready to respond to any stimulus, be it a forest, a seashore, a flower, a bird, an ink stain or a stray thought. “I often paint two paintings at a time,” she said. “I feel freer to explore this way. Like a scientist, I experiment with colours, shapes and textures. Sometimes, I fall in love with a certain palette and do a series based on those colours. It’s all intuitive. I never know where I’ll end up when I start a painting. The beginning is the most exciting moment for me, a mystery. I’m child-like when I paint. I’m in the realm of fun.”

Her happiness in creating art makes her brave and self-confident. “I don’t compare myself with other artists,” she said. “Sure, Michael [Abelman] has been painting for 20 years; he has much more experience than I do, but I think artists shouldn’t compare with each other. It steals joy. We are all on different paths, our own paths.”

Abelman agrees with that sentiment. “I’ve been painting for 20 years but only showing for five years,” he said. “Like Victoria, I don’t compare myself with other artists, only with myself. My art is changing, evolving.”

Sea to Sky is Abelman’s second show at the Zack. His solo show in 2014 was a rainbow explosion of flowers but, this year, his paintings demonstrate a different level of maturity. Although half of his paintings are still flowers, their colours are more pastel and the ambience more contemplative. “It feels like another stage in my art and in my life,” he said. “Maybe I’m getting older.”

image - “Red Ship Entering Bay” by Michael Abelman — “Red Ship Entering Bay” by Michael Abelman.

Half of his exhibited paintings this year are ships: in winter and in summer, in the morning mist and in the glowing sunset. “I painted ships before but, recently, I find myself drawn to them. My ship paintings are quiet, while the flowers are always louder, exuberant with colours. I still paint flowers, but I wanted more. If you could find beauty in a tulip you could find beauty in a ship, too. I wanted to show it.”

Abelman said ships reflect a sense of exploration but also of loneliness. “A ship is always alone amid the vast ocean, and even near the shore,” he said. “You could see lots of ships in Vancouver. They arrive and depart daily. I take pictures of them when I walk along the waterline, then I take different things from different photos for my paintings.”

He constantly works on improving his skills and widening his range of expression. “Professionally,” he said, “I’m an accountant, but I never tried so hard in accounting as I do in art; never enjoyed accounting so much either. In art, I’m driven. I want to succeed, to be better. I don’t care if I sell, but I want to paint better. I’ve been taking art classes for years, and the more I learn, the more I realize how much I still need to learn.”

Like Scudamore, he paints every day but, unlike his partner in the show, his deep immersion in art doesn’t come easily. “Painting is hard for me,” he admitted. “You go into your own world for hours at a time. It’s a form of meditation. I have to focus, so no music for me when I paint. Sometimes, I listen to the news, but mostly I concentrate on my art.”

The exhibit Sea to Sky continues until July 30. For more information, check out the artists’ websites: victoriascudamore.com and michaelabelmanpaints.blogspot.ca.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].

Bittergirl is seriously funny

In Bittergirl, Cailin Stadnyk, Katrina Reynolds and Lauren Bowler play women who have just been dumped by their boyfriends – maybe they can get back their men if they lose some weight? (photo by Emily Cooper)

Have you ever taken part in an aerobics class and wondered how many of the women in it were trying to lose weight to get a boyfriend back? The sad truth is, there are probably many, eagerly trying anything to return to the way things were, even if the way things were wasn’t all that great.

Bittergirl: The Musical takes aim at countless breakup truisms from the perspectives of three different women, reminiscent of the sharp wit in Mom’s the Word and the relationship charades of Sex in the City. Their varied responses to being dumped are hilariously insightful.

The progress of the play loosely follows the five stages of death: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The stages of the breakups are denial (he made a mistake), second-guessing (I could have done something differently), manipulation (I’m going to make him love me), reflection (I should have seen the warning signs) and acceptance (I’m over him, I’ve moved on).

The three women – played by Lauren Bowler, Katrina Reynolds and Cailin Stadnyk – are known only as A, B and C, as though these trials and tribulations are those that belong to every woman, not a specific person. Jewish community member Josh Epstein plays D, all three of the dumpers – the husband who wants to join the RCMP, the live-in partner who just “has to go” and the boyfriend who’s lost his “magic.”

Epstein delivers the stereotypical reasons why he needs to get out of each relationship: “I feel trapped,” “I can’t give you what you want” and the ridiculous “We’ve got to be birds flying higher.”

The lame rationales elicit howls of laughter at the familiarity, especially when one of the women initially thinks that the “talk” her boyfriend wants to have will lead to a proposal.

Not surprisingly, the women stand there, stunned into silence, not demanding further explanation, but meekly mumbling things like, “I understand,” even though they don’t – another conventional reaction it is sadly not surprising to see depicted.

After their men leave, the women think about what they might have done differently to save their relationships – “Maybe if I wore plum eyeshadow,” “Maybe if I didn’t talk to my mother so much” and “Maybe if I worked out more.” This last statement segues into an hysterical scene of the three women working out with various gizmos and in different types of classes in a desperate bid to get in shape and win back their men.

photo - Katrina Reynolds and Josh Epstein in Bittergirl, at the Arts Club Granville Island Stage until July 29 — Katrina Reynolds and Josh Epstein in Bittergirl, at the Arts Club Granville Island Stage until July 29. *(photo by Emily Cooper)*

The women also reflect on the warnings signs they missed. He wears socks with sandals. He cries at Celine Dion songs. He growls during sex.

Especially comical is a scene where the women run into friends and they are forced to admit they were dumped. The standard, “You’re better off without him” or “If you guys couldn’t make it work, what chance do the rest of us have?” hit the mark on how insensitive people can be, much to the enjoyment of the audience. The rapid-fire delivery of the lines, the women playing off each other brilliantly, is a sight to see and hear.

As the musical progresses, classic girl-group songs of the 1960s and ’70s complement the dialogue. Thinking about their first dates leads into “And Then He Kissed Me.” The initial breakups prompt a rendition of “Mama Said There’d Be Days Like This.” When the women hope they’ll have a chance to renew the relationship, they sing “When Will I See You Again?” And who hasn’t felt the difficulty of moving on because there’s “Always Something There to Remind Me”?

The strength of the play is in how the writing spotlights those moments we all know so well and that sound so absurd when depicted one after the other. Being reminded of one’s own failed relationships, watching the play is like watching a good comedian – often funny and, despite being cringeworthy at times, you want to stay to the finale.

As with the different stages of death, the women finally accept their situations and move on with their lives, singing such lyrics as “you don’t really love me; you just keep me hanging on,” there are “too many fish in the sea” and “I will survive.”

Bittergirl is actually an autobiographical play written by three Toronto actresses who had, indeed, just gotten dumped by a husband, live-in boyfriend and short-term partner. The positive reaction to the play led to the 2005 book Bittergirl: Getting Over Getting Dumped. After that, the writers added the songs, accompanied by an all-female band onstage, and the musical was born.

Besides the sharp, insightful writing, these women (and Epstein) can all belt out a tune, making the performance a hit from the beginning to the (not so) bitter end.

Bittergirl runs at the Arts Club Granville Island Stage until July 29. For tickets and more information, visit artsclub.com.

Baila Lazarus is Vancouver-based writer and principal media strategist at phase2coaching.com.

An out-of-hand hobby

Si Kahn plays at the folk festival, which runs July 13-16. (photo from sikahn.com)

While Charlotte, N.C.-based folk musician Si Kahn – who’s coming to play at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival next week – may have called the United States home for most of his 73 years, he spent about 12 of his first 16 months of life in Canada. His father, Rabbi Benjamin Kahn, was sent to Montreal by B’nai B’rith in 1944 to help set up the Hillel Foundation at McGill University, which he did for just over a year before being called back to Pennsylvania State University.

“I like to say that I don’t have a single negative memory of my time in Montreal,” said Kahn, whose father eventually became the international director of B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation (1959-1971).

And Kahn’s Canada cred goes back further.

“After my paternal grandfather, Gabriel Kahn, deserted the czar’s army and walked across Europe, he was a pick-and-shovel labourer for the Canadian Pacific Railway, helping build the ‘northern spur’ through the [Canadian] Shield towards Timmins,” Kahn told the Independent. “He was also a hod carrier in Winnipeg, helping build the Royal Alexandra Hotel, carrying 100 pounds of bricks or mortar up 10 or more storeys on his shoulders.”

Kahn tells his grandfather’s story – and that of many other members of his family – in the musical Hope. The song “Crossing the Border” highlights the border-crossings of his grandfather’s journey from Russia: “He got passage to Nova Scotia / Got married in Manitoba … Then he moved down south of the border / By the mills on the Merrimack River / He pumped gas and kept store for a living / Raised up his daughter and sons.”

Gabriel and his wife, Celia, settled in Lowell, Mass., said Kahn, who wrote about his Jewish roots and their influence on his music in an article called “The Chords that Bind.”

“When I was growing up … our family sang together,” he writes. “On the Sabbath and on holidays, we would stay at the dinner table long after the food and dishes had been cleared, and we would sing. Because musical instruments were not allowed on the Sabbath, we sang without instrumentation – but not without accompaniment.”

From his paternal grandfather, he learned “the fine points of creating a rhythm section, using only two basic variations (closed fist and open palm) of the basic hand-on-table technique.” From his parents, he and his sister, Jenette – whose career in the comic book industry included being president of DC Comics for more than 20 years – learned “the rudiments of high and low harmony, made up as you go along.”

The songs they sang were mostly prayers. “We sang a little bit in Yiddish, too, folk and story songs from the Old Country, which in this case meant almost any place in Europe,” he notes. And, despite his not understanding most of what he was singing, he did understand “what the songs really meant to us as Jews, as a family, as people in the world. They were our bond, our unity, our affirmation, our courage. They were our way of claiming our rhythmic and harmonic relation with each other and with our community. Our songs reinforced our solidarity, our sense that we could overcome the obstacles in our path.”

As for when his musical career began, Kahn told the Independent, “You might say I ‘turned professional’ in 1974. I had just turned 30 years old a few months before I recorded my first album, an LP titled New Wood, which was released in 1975 on June Appal Records.

“One of my first paid public performances was in 1979 … at the second-ever Vancouver Folk Music Festival. I’d led traditional labour and civil rights songs at rallies and demonstrations and on picket lines, but Vancouver was one of the first times I played my own original songs in public.

“While I do consider myself a professional musician, and while I’m a longtime member of the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), music has always been a very part-time vocation for me. My lifetime identity and work since I was 21 years old has been as a civil rights, labour and community organizer.

“I once told a reporter that my music is ‘a hobby that got out of hand.’ That’s really an accurate description. I typically do no more than three festivals and a dozen concerts each year at most. Most of my appearances are benefits for progressive nonprofits,” he said, adding that he’d be performing at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival house-party fundraiser on July 12.

Kahn heads to Orillia, Ont., for a July 7 performance at the Mariposa Folk Festival. From there, he’ll come to Vancouver for the folk festival, but also “to do some organizing work for Musicians United to Protect Bristol Bay.” It’s a cause he’s been helping on a volunteer basis since 2010 – the campaign’s goal is “to stop the Pebble Mine, and to protect permanently Alaska’s Bristol Bay, a cultural and environmental treasure, and one of the world’s last remaining great wild salmon fisheries.” He has donated all of the income from his 18th CD, called Bristol Bay, to the musicians’ group.

About combining music with activism, Kahn said, “The defining moment for me came when I was working with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) on the Arkansas side of the Mississippi River Delta in the summer of 1965, when I was 21 years old, during the Southern Civil Rights Movement, which was very much a singing movement. That was when I first began to understand the usefulness of music in movements for social justice.”

Among Kahn’s many achievements in the social justice arena was being, in the early 1980s, an initial organizer and the founding national board chair for the Jewish Fund for Justice, the predecessor to Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice. He has written three books on community organizing.

“I see myself as an organizer, which I consider a specific type of activism, rather than as an activist,” he explained. “Organizers work to bring people together so that they can use the power of numbers to counter the power of money, authority and/or force.

“In any organizing campaign, in any campaign for justice, there will be competing sets of ‘facts.’ Whether our facts are more accurate/truthful than their facts isn’t nearly as important as whether, through organizing, we can build enough collective power to persuade those who have the ability to make the change, or changes, we’re asking for to meet our demands.”

On the topic of truth, Kahn said, “For me, there’s a difference between accuracy and truthfulness. Take, for example, the story of Moses receiving the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. Is that story accurate in the literal sense? But it should be told and retold truthfully, meaning that it’s our responsibility to transmit the story as it was told to us, whether verbally or in written form.

“My question is whether, in the real world, it’s even possible to differentiate,” he said. “If someone believes something passionately, it’s more than likely that no amount of either ‘facts’ or ‘alternative facts’ is going to persuade them to change their mind.

“Minds are more likely to be changed by experience. One of an organizer’s roles is to help the people she/he is working with have experiences through which they achieve a sense of possibility, that the world might be different for them and for others like them.

“This is also one of the places where storytelling can be useful. Years ago, I was in an audience listening to former U.S. senator Paul Simon. I don’t recall the specifics but, at one point, he was challenged on his support for legislation concerned with disability rights. He could have answered with facts/statistics (or, for that matter, with ‘alternative facts’). Instead, he said, ‘Let me tell you about a young man I know,’ and proceeded from there.”

In the musical Hope, there is a song called “Dreamers,” the chorus of which calls for us to “honour the dreamers.”

“I consider myself a ‘practical radical,’ someone who helps people work towards what at least appear – based on careful analysis and strategic thinking – to be achievable goals,” said Kahn. “If that’s being a dreamer, dayenu.

“There are many things I’d like to see in this world we share that I just don’t see as possible. I may be wrong in that judgment. But, if I’m going to help people organize themselves in order to achieve a goal they share, I need to believe there’s at least one and hopefully several practical paths to achieving that goal.

“The ‘dreamers’ I honour are those who not only have a dream, but who do everything they can to make it real.”

For the Vancouver Folk Music Festival’s 25th anniversary, Kahn wrote the song “For Canada,” which recalls the Underground Railway, the slaves making their dangerous way here: “When all hope was failing, think what strength it gave / To dream about a country that no longer held a slave….” A country to which, “… my own father’s father came with willing hands / To bend his back and lay the track across this wild land….”

And it was on his way home (by car) from his 1979 festival appearance that Kahn wrote “Plains of Canada,” the lyrics of which show his affection for the country – an affection that endures.

And so, too, does his love of singing and performing.

“Vancouver resident Josh Dunson, who was my agent for over 30 years until his retirement from the music business, once told me that what I bring to my musical performances is my many years’ experience as an organizer. That’s a very perceptive observation and a good description of what I try to do in the musical part of my life and work,” said Kahn. “When I’m planning a concert, when I’m on stage, I’m doing my best to help those who are listening feel that they’re not so much a passive audience but active participants. Sometimes this means singing along, sometimes it means thinking about what they’re hearing and applying it to their own lives and their own work. It’s that possibility that still excites me even after all these years.”

This year’s folk festival, once again at Jericho Beach, starts with a free concert the night of July 13, and then there are day and weekend passes that can be purchased for the performances July 14-16. For tickets and the full schedule, visit thefestival.bc.ca.

DOTE dances across the street

LINK Dance Foundation will perform Why did the Chicken Cross the Road? at a few intersections in Vancouver during Dancing on the Edge. (photo from DOTE)

As part of this year’s Dancing on the Edge festival, which takes place July 6-15, LINK Dance Foundation will explore the age-old question, “Why did the chicken cross the road?”

“The idea for Why did the Chicken Cross the Road? came about through various stages, like all things do,” said Gail Lotenberg, founding artistic director of LINK. “The germination to the actual realization was a process and it is still in development for the future.”

DOTE producer Donna Spencer invited Lotenberg to be involved in this year’s festival with a specific piece, but the timing wasn’t right. “So, I told her I had another idea for this year if she was open to it. We had a meeting and together we cooked up this piece,” said Lotenberg.

Leading up to the 2013 provincial election, she said, “I wanted to help attract young people to exercise their right to vote, so I spearheaded a dance performance at the intersection of Davie Street and Granville Street with signage from Rock the Vote BC.

“The dance did not deliver overt messages about voting (though there were subtle motifs in the choreography), rather it aimed to stop people in their daily lives to enjoy viewing a quick dance by an ensemble of dancers as they crossed a busy intersection. We had people stationed at the corners to hand out pamphlets with more specific information about voting day.”

The concept was introduced to Lotenberg in 2005 by a “close friend and colleague, Cara Siu, who came to Whitehorse, Yukon, when I used to live there. At that time, I was producing an annual festival called Dancing in the Streets. She came from Vancouver to make a dance at the intersection of two main streets in Whitehorse as part of the week of outdoor dance performances. I loved the idea and always knew I would use it again.”

For the 2017 incarnation, Lotenberg said she wanted to “include a large pool of less-well-known dancers in the community in a site-based work at intersections” and Spencer was all for it.

“In fact,” said Lotenberg, “it was her idea to involve young dancers from pre-professional training programs in the project. She also saw the benefit of having DOTE volunteers on the corners to provide more information to people about other shows they could see during the annual summer festival. Donna really helped to make the idea crystallize into what it is now, a work for eight dancers – mostly young dancers in the final stages of their training with the exception of two professionals. The two dancers who would normally be considered out of their training stage … will perform my core idea of a duet between pieces of white cloth to complete the show.”

Lotenberg, however, won’t be performing. “I will not be dancing in this work,” she said, “unless I’m wearing a chicken costume.”

She hopes “Intersection Interventions” will become “an annual part of DOTE, in the way Dusk Dances were a signature aspect of the festival for almost a decade.”

She said, “I believe in public art. I see myself as someone who evolved from the same fabric as the public frivolity movement of the 1990s – Unsilent Night, flashmobs, etc. These are acts of art that enhance our civic arena.

“I like art that engages people in community and invites people briefly into the humanizing experience of co-creating art. I don’t like art that does this by ignoring the principles of composition and virtuosity and esthetics, meaning they are inclusive but not very entertaining. So, I strive to find the duality that makes work provocative and pleasing to view, while at the same time offering some type of invitation to be an active rather than a passive participant.”

From 2008 to 2012, Lotenberg was an associated artist with Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue. The academic director of the centre then, Mark Winston, supported many of her endeavours, she said, “because he saw my work as a model for how to employ art as part of public engagement and how to construe social engagement as fertile soil for making art. I am grateful to Mark for that period of cross-pollination of ideas and expertise. He, too, is a Jewish person and together we mined the depths of what it meant to be Jewish and engaged in our mutual professions, he as a scientist and director of the CFD, me as a dance artist and director of a dance company.”

She said, “When I was a younger artist, there was a hierarchy in my mind that put work onstage above public-engaged art practice. Then I met Liz Lerman, a famous populist choreographer from the U.S., and I shifted my perspective to a less hierarchical model.

“I love seeing how dance can enter the public domain and engage people in something that lives between the opposing ends of a spectrum. On the one hand, you have pure social dancing that is non-performative but fully inclusive and, on the other end, you have very formal dance performance, which occurs on a stage with no apparent involvement from the audience except as witness. I love the in-between.”

Over the course of her dance performance and choreography career, Lotenberg has created many works that combine dance and activism.

“I’m a political person,” she said. “I grew up that way. As a Jewish person, I was taught to think in terms of how I could contribute to making the world a better place. I use my attributes as a choreographer to bring people together in a way that feels beautiful or powerful or profound or just fun.

“Take the Occupy Movement, for instance. I see something like that and I think, ‘Oh, imagine how easy it would be to occupy more space by getting people to not just stand around and chant but rather to do a square dance, which inherently takes up a lot more space.’ In occupying space with a square dance, people are using dance politically and the results are varied. People are having more fun. Authorities may not feel so threatened because the impulse is to relish life, not to be destructive, which is true of most political movements that are not hate-based. So, dance for me is an interface between the institutions we hope to shift and the people who are trying to have sway in shifting those institutions.”

Being Jewish has informed Lotenberg’s way of engaging with the world in various ways.

She said, “Being Jewish made me a political person and that feeds an aspect of my choreographic interests…. Being Jewish also surrounded me with people who embrace ritual and ritual is an important aspect of art. Being Jewish led to many opportunities to be in community through song and dance, and there is nothing more uplifting than that. In fact, I would say that these acts of sharing voice and song are what do connect me to my spirituality.

“And finally, I grew up as a New York Jew and my parents were very involved in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. We moved to a town that was emerging as a leader in desegregation of schools, so I went to a school right from Grade 1 that was racially mixed.”

Lotenberg earned her bachelor’s degree at University of Michigan, was a dance teacher and skier in Crested Butte, Colo., for about five years and then did her master’s degree in history at University of Washington. In Seattle, she said, “I met a Vancouver boy, graduated, sold everything, moved here and then, within a year, we left for the Yukon.”

While Yukon was home from 1993, Lotenberg returned to Vancouver often for dancing. In 2007, she and her family moved to Bowen Island – “bad for my dancing career but otherwise wonderful,” she said.

Lotenberg took an approximately three-year break from dancing to be more present for her daughter, who has a learning disability, she said. “She’s good now. She’s strong and knows how to self-advocate for learning support that allows her to perform well in school. And, she basically is my happy place. But, I missed dance and being with other dancers – people who see and sense the world through a different lens.

“I feel gratitude at the opportunity to re-enter the dance milieu from the place I am today. I am grounded; I have a good job as a pilates instructor; I want to have my work seen and appreciated but that desire does not define me anymore. I am eager to share my work, but I feel strong and I feel confident and I trust that my work is valuable because it is honest and well-crafted and unique.”

Lotenberg is in the midst of developing a new stage work for next year’s DOTE in which she will be dancing.

“It is a piece I am challenging myself to take on because it feels important for me to step back into the dancing body to tell my story in a real and vulnerable way,” she said. “In fact, the application to show this work I’m describing is what actually led to having Why did the Chicken Cross the Road? happen at this year’s festival. Life is a beautiful journey that way. You sow seeds but you don’t always know how they will bear fruit.”

The promotional material for Why did the Chicken Cross the Road? asks the question, “Rather than walk, why not dance to get to the other side?” What can be gained from dancing, even if only across the street?

“Dancing is liberating,” said Lotenberg. “Dancing is frivolity and elemental connection (at the same time). Dancing is one of the first forms of art and, in some cultures, it is the glue that defines who they are, how they touch the earth with their feet and what is the rhythm of their heartbeat.

“I tried to leave dance and choreography to become a better mother. I did become a better mother but I also realized in that period that dance is essential to who I am.

“Dancing across the street,” she said, “is a way of celebrating life, is a way of being part of making the world a more beautiful place, is an invitation to be part of a happening that makes today just a bit more rich than yesterday or tomorrow.”

For the times and locations of Why did the Chicken Cross the Road?, visit dancingontheedge.org/program/chicken-cross-road. For the full DOTE schedule, visit dancingontheedge.org.

Join Bob Bossin at folk fest

Bob Bossin as Davy in Davy and the Punk. (photo by Derek Kilbourn)

For legendary Canadian folksinger Bob Bossin, who has called Gabriola Island home since 1991, it all started with “The King.”

“It was Elvis,” he told the Independent about his start in music. Bossin is among the performers featured at this July’s Vancouver Folk Music Festival. “I loved the early rock ’n’ rollers, and asked my parents for a guitar when I was 9. They bought the cheapest one – ‘he’ll never stick with it’ – and I only stuck with it because they said I wouldn’t.

“That would have been 1955,” he said. “It only took a few years for the music industry to take over rock ’n’ roll and turn it mushy. Then, one night in 1958, I was listening to the radio and they played a spare, strange song about a man who was about to be hanged for murdering a woman, a particular woman named Laura Foster. His name was Tom Dooley. It was the damndest song I’d ever heard. I was hooked by folk music and have stayed hooked for 60-plus years.”

For Bossin, “Folk music is just the musical expression of what you might otherwise talk about or write about or argue about or read about.

“I suppose I like performing because I like the attention. I also like that you can get ideas across, sometimes profoundly, once you’ve learned the skills to do that. When I was performing Davy the Punk, my show about my dad’s life in the 1930s gambling business, I loved to show an audience that you could spark their interest and pull them into a world they knew little about, and do it with just a bare stage, a beat-up acoustic guitar and 50-odd years of learning how to tell a story.

“At this late date in my performing career,” he said, “I also realize there is a part of the history of folk music that we old fogies can share, those of us who saw or hung out with Rev. Gary Davis, Jean Carignan, Dave Van Ronk, the Seegers and so on.”

It was in 1971 that Bossin and Marie-Lynn Hammond formed Stringband. Their first album was Canadian Sunset and, with various other band members, they toured for some 15 years and recorded seven albums. They went from one end of the country to other, and back again, more than once.

Writes Bossin on his website, “We played, over the years, in the U.S., U.K., U.S.S.R., Europe, Japan, Mexico and Newfoundland. The list of musicians who sat in or recorded with us is too long to recite, though it includes Nancy Ahern, Daniel Lanois, Stan Rogers, Kieran Overs and Jane Fair. The songs we made (sort of) famous include ‘Dief Will be the Chief Again,’ ‘The Maple Leaf Dog,’ ‘I Don’t Sleep with Strangers Anymore,’ ‘La jeune mariee,’ ‘Tugboats,’ ‘Daddy was a Ballplayer,’ ‘All the Horses Running,’ ‘Lunenburg Concerto’ and ‘Show Us the Length.’”

The music industry has changed in so many ways since he began his career, said Bossin. “When we started Stringband in 1971, there was no indie music scene, virtually no indie recording. Some credit us with starting that whole movement in Canada, and there is some truth to that.

“They say it is harder to earn a living as a musician now, but it is also easier to get your music out there. There are so many more ways to reach specialized audiences like folkies. So, while it probably is harder to be a professional musician, that has never been what folk music is about at its core. I think the internet, the social networks and all that high-tech stuff have been a great boon to folk music, to people making and sharing music about what they and their communities care about.”

Bossin has certainly used technology to inform, educate and influence people on environmental issues. As examples, the video Sulphur Passage was an integral part of the campaign that saved Clayoquot Sound from clear-cut logging, and his 10-minute video laying out the potential consequences of Kinder Morgan’s Burnaby plans has more than 12,000 views since it was posted at the end of April.

“I remember thinking, when I decided to join the fight against turning Vancouver into an oil port, that I probably had one more good fight in me. And it has been a great experience, I’ve met lovely people, been learning a lot,” said Bossin. “On the other side of the ledger, my YouTube video Only One Bear in a Hundred Bites but They Don’t Come in Order, has gone positively viral. It may have even changed a few votes in the provincial election. If it helped get rid of those heartless bastards that have been in power here for far too long, hooray!”

Bossin is quite comfortable mixing music and politics. About the role of art in a society, he said it should be “to make people’s lives better, by the beauty of the sound or the freshness of the vision. Or by contributing to the struggle for a better and more just world. Or, these days, just to there being a habitable world at all.”

Born and raised in Toronto, Bossin lived in Vancouver from 1980 until he moved to Gabriola. His mother, Marcia, was an artist and his dad was “Davy the Punk” – Bossin wrote both the book Davy the Punk: A Story of Bookies, Toronto the Good, the Mob and My Dad (The Porcupine’s Quill, 2014) and the musical version. His music credits also include the records The Roses on Annie’s Table (2005) and Gabriola V0R1X0 (1994); in the late 1980s, he created the musical play Bossin’s Home Remedy for Nuclear War, which he performed some 200 times. He has written essays, articles and poetry that have been published by various outlets over the years, and his book Settling Clayoquot (1981) was part of the Province of British Columbia’s Sound Heritage Series. In 2007, he published the short story Latkes, which was illustrated by fabric artist and fellow Jewish community member Sima Elizabeth Shefrin – the two met in 2005 and were married in 2012.

When asked by the JI if he’d like to add anything else, he said, “I’m the oldest softball player on Gabriola Island. Possibly ever.”

For more on Bossin, visit bossin.com. For the full Vancouver Folk Music Festival schedule, visit thefestival.bc.ca – the festival starts with a Thursday night concert this year, running July 13-16 at Jericho Beach.

Kimmel plays Shylock

Bard on the Beach’s The Merchant of Venice is set in modern times, where the character of Shylock, played by Warren Kimmel, is a high-powered businessman. (photo by David Cooper)

Among the Shakespearean works being presented by Bard on the Beach this season is The Merchant of Venice, which is being complemented with a short run of local playwright and Jewish community member Mark Leiren-Young’s one-man show Shylock. Fellow Jewish community member Warren Kimmel has taken on the daunting task of playing Shylock in both the main production and its eponymous companion piece.

There is continuing controversy over whether or not theatrical companies should produce Merchant. There are those who say the play should be relegated to the dustbin of history while others champion it as an opportunity for meaningful dialogue about outsiders and otherness.

In Merchant, Bassanio, an eligible Venetian bachelor, wishes to “wed wealthily” and woo the beautiful heiress Portia. To do so, he needs money. Enter his friend, Antonio, a successful merchant of Venice, who can guarantee a loan. Jewish moneylender Shylock is approached. Shylock, who has been ridiculed and despised by the citizens of Venice, especially Antonio, sees an opportunity for revenge and agrees to make the loan in return for Antonio’s bond, which, if forfeit, would give Shylock a “pound of Antonio’s flesh.”

Meanwhile, Portia’s father has devised a test for eligible suitors to win his daughter’s hand. The antics of the three suitors vying for the prize provide some comic relief for the tragedy that follows. Bassanio wins his lady but learns that Antonio’s ships have all been wrecked at sea and that the merchant cannot pay back the loan. Shylock is insisting upon his “pound of flesh” so Bassanio makes haste back to Venice.

This leads to a powerful courtroom scene where Portia, disguised as a young lawyer, makes an emotional plea in her “quality of mercy” speech. However, Shylock insists upon his legal rights and wins the suit. Just as he is about to take his “prize,” Portia points out to him that he is restricted to exactly one pound of flesh and not one drop of Christian blood is to be shed, or else Shylock will forfeit his own life. Shylock agrees to walk away but is nonetheless systematically stripped of all his possessions and forced to convert to Christianity.

“I was very flattered when Christopher Gaze, the artistic director, asked me to play Shylock in both plays,” Kimmel told the Independent. “This will be my Bard debut and the first time that I have played a really serious dramatic role in Canada, as my background has mostly been in musicals.”

Kimmel, born in South Africa, was trained in classical theatre at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, England. He compared Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter verses to the rhythm in songs, so there is no problem there, but he has been grappling with how to present this iconic character to audiences.

“The problem I have with the play is the portrayal of Shylock,” he said. “It is very complicated because it is antisemitic. But, at the same time, it is not just black and white. Shylock is not a nice guy, he is a piece of work – but a complicated one. On one side, he is an aggressive businessman but, on the other, he lost his wife, had a hell of a life and loves his daughter more than anything, perhaps too much … to the point that she wants to escape and does so by taking his money and running off with a gentile. So, I have an inner conflict to resolve to get into the character so that it makes sense to me.”

“That really is the central question, isn’t it – is this play sympathetic or not? This is the first time a Jew on stage has been portrayed as anything close to human and we can say Shakespeare is amazing for doing this. Or, let’s be honest, it is an antisemitic piece and the guy is basically cast as the villain for whom you have absolutely no sympathy.”

Some productions portray Shylock in a sympathetic light, while others paint him as the quintessential villain. “That really is the central question, isn’t it – is this play sympathetic or not? This is the first time a Jew on stage has been portrayed as anything close to human and we can say Shakespeare is amazing for doing this. Or, let’s be honest, it is an antisemitic piece and the guy is basically cast as the villain for whom you have absolutely no sympathy.”

This is the fourth time Bard will have produced Merchant and Kimmel is the third Jewish actor to take on the role. “You don’t have to be Jewish to play Shylock, just like you don’t have to be black to play Othello. However, I do believe there is a cultural sensitivity that a Jewish actor brings to the role,” said Kimmel.

Many with even only a passing knowledge of literature know who Shylock is, and the iconic “Hath not a Jew eyes” soliloquy is as well known as Hamlet’s “To be or not to be.”

“Funnily enough,” said Kimmel, “doing that soliloquy is not what worries me about the piece…. You can do it as a plea for justice or you can do it with more of an aggressive tone,” he said, paraphrasing the speech’s main point, “But what about us? We are the same as you, so we don’t need to take this from you anymore.”

“I have decided that I am not going to play it as a victim,” said Kimmel.

As to the courtroom scene where Shylock demands his “pound of flesh,” he said, “I think I have to play him there as a vengeful kind of guy, I just don’t see any other way to do it. Some productions try to show the struggle between the good soul and the bad soul, but I see him as unrelenting in his quest for the forfeit, even though he has been offered up to three times the original amount of the loan and even though he is aware that what he is doing is wrong, fully aware, but he can’t stop himself.

“That is what happens with big emotions like revenge – one gets tunnel vision. I sing a piece of the [Maurice] Ravel Kaddish, which is very ornate, just before the courtroom scene. The point of that is to show Shylock’s mindset, ‘Look, my wife is dead, my daughter is dead [to me], I have nothing left to live for, I am going to take this man’s pound of flesh.’ I think that I would like to play the character as sinister but understandable – that this is a steely, powerful guy who is saying, just because people are prejudiced against you, does not mean you have to be a victim.”

Bard on the Beach’s Merchant is being set in modern-day Venice.

“It is a pretend world, it has to be,” said Kimmel. “It is a corporate banking world of suits that centres around a group of high-powered businessmen. Shylock is one of them. He is savvy and a very powerful guy by virtue of the fact that he has a lot of money. There is a tension there in the play itself as, despite his money, he is treated as a second-class citizen. We are not playing up the religious aspect in terms of costuming so that the only outwardly visible sign of his Judaism will be the yarmulke that I will be wearing – he is a modern Jew.”

On the issue of whether or not the play is too offensive for contemporary sensitivities, Kimmel is thoughtful.

“I don’t think you should look at it with post-Holocaust eyes,” he said. “The fact that this version is set in modern times makes it even more difficult to digest. In the actual period, 1500, Jews were essentially reviled wherever they lived, and Shakespeare was just reflecting the animus of the time.”

Despite the antisemitism, Kimmel feels that the play is one of the great works of literature and that it is important to see it.

“I feel that, as actors, if we are not doing something that is offending someone, why are we doing it? We are supposed to provoke dialogue and conversation.”

Noting that “there is way too much political correctness in the world right now,” he said, “I feel that, as actors, if we are not doing something that is offending someone, why are we doing it? We are supposed to provoke dialogue and conversation. For example, when people are spitting on Shylock and calling him a dirty Jew, that has to be part of the story so you get what is going on. You can’t ask, does it offend you because people are spitting on you? That’s the story and that is part of why he goes and tries to cut someone’s heart out. You have to be driven to that, so what would drive you to do that? Once you get the back story, then you see the context of his actions.”

Kimmel believes audiences will get something different out of this version of the play than from the three previous productions. One of the reasons for this belief, he said, is that the director, Nigel Shawn Williams, is playing on the theme that we are all outsiders at one point or another. Kimmel wants people to leave the theatre challenged to sort out their feelings about what they have just seen.

Shylock will run for one week in September. In this work, the actor who plays Shylock comes out after the final performance of Merchant – the play has been shut down due to public pressure and, as part of a talk-back, the actor defends his participation in it as a Jew and explains why it is important to stage Shakespeare’s play.

“I am more excited about that piece because, with it, I know exactly where I am at and I get the arguments from both sides,” said Kimmel. “It was written specifically for Bard and Vancouver to run alongside its 1996 Merchant production with local community member David Berner playing the Jewish actor.”

Kimmel said, “The play seems to say that you can’t censor something just because it offends you. Why can’t you have a Jewish villain? Why don’t we just stop doing anyone who is in any way compromised?”

Audiences will be exposed to a range of perspectives on history, censorship, identity and the meaning of art in this intensive 90-minute offering, which is being directed by first-time Bard director Sherry Yoon, who will be fleshing (pun intended) out the play with projections and sound effects.

“Shylock is a character that has endured for over 400 years. He is the best-known Jewish character in literature. There are people the world over who know what a shylock is. That is because he is so fascinating. Jews are fascinating people.”

“This is the first great Shakespearean character,” said Kimmel of Merchant’s Shylock. “After this comes Othello, Hamlet and Lear. It is really the first time Shakespeare goes from silly comedies with twins with mistaken identities to serious roles that fascinate humanity through time. Shylock is a character that has endured for over 400 years. He is the best-known Jewish character in literature. There are people the world over who know what a shylock is. That is because he is so fascinating. Jews are fascinating people.”

The play had been used to incite hatred against Jews – the Nazis in particular promoted it because it fit in with their worldview.

“That is exactly why it is important for everyone to see Merchant for themselves,” said Kimmel, “so you don’t get the story secondhand – you should be exposed to it, not told about it.”

Bard on the Beach runs until Sept. 24. Its other productions this season are Much Ado About Nothing, Winter’s Tale and Two Gentleman of Verona. For the full schedule and tickets, visit bardonthebeach.org.

Tova Kornfeld is a Vancouver freelance writer and lawyer.

Weinberg art floors Delbrook

Artist Mia Weinberg works on “Close to Nature’s Heart” at Delbrook Community Centre, which will see its official opening June 24. (photo © Mia Weinberg)

In spring 2014, an open call was circulated inviting artists to submit proposals for artworks to be included in the new Delbrook Community Centre in North Vancouver. In response, 64 artists from across Canada and the United States submitted expressions of interest. Among the few chosen was Mia Weinberg’s “Close to Nature’s Heart.” The official opening takes place at the community centre June 24, but visitors can see it at the centre anytime.

Weinberg’s “Close to Nature’s Heart” transforms the floor surface of the centre’s main lobby level and adjoining exterior plaza into a giant canvas. A unique cement skimming process was used to embed the image of a magnified leaf skeleton, complete with stem and veins, across the polished cement floors. The artwork invites visitors to “come in and play,” as many of the leaf veins display the names of local streets. For newcomers to the facility, the street names provide a visual prompt to navigate through the space.

photo - The artwork invites visitors to “come in and play,” as many of the leaf veins display the names of local streets — The artwork invites visitors to “come in and play,” as many of the leaf veins display the names of local streets. *(photo © Mia Weinberg)*

As an artist specializing in site-specific public art projects, Weinberg is driven by the belief that art has the potential to make us more present and engaged in our world. Born in London, England, she moved to Vancouver in 1987 and graduated from Emily Carr University in 1994. Since that time, her work has been exhibited across Canada and internationally. Her art practice explores the interplay between the natural environment and the places where we live, our personal memories and our collective civic and cultural stories.

“In my public art projects,” writes Weinberg in her artist’s statement, “I often juxtapose imagery of local plants and maps of the surrounding area to celebrate connections between them, and to uniquely ground each piece in the place where it will be installed.”

About “Close to Nature’s Heart,” she explains, “The big leaf on the floor is a fanciful approximation of reality, not a realistic street map – a visual invitation to engage the imagination. Children, their parents and visitors of all ages will see the individual components of their neighbourhood – the streets where they live – reimagined as vitally connected to each other and part of a living, thriving organism that draws its strength from each individual part and in turn nourishes the whole. It is my hope that the artwork will spark an ongoing sense of play among kids as they seek out their own streets and their friends’ streets. On a more practical level, the veins will provide visitors with a subtle and beautiful visual wayfinding that will guide them into and out of the building and to the reception desk from the elevators.”

For more about Weinberg’s public artwork, visit miaweinberg.com/engraving. For information on the other two works selected by Delbrook Community Centre, visit nvrc.ca.