Arts & Culture – Page 113

Celebrate 150 with laughter

Canadian-born, U.K.-based Tanyalee Davis will make a special appearance in Comedy on Wheels, which features many contributors. (photo from Comedy on Wheels)

Realwheels celebrates Canada’s 150th birthday with laughter. Their new show, Comedy on Wheels, will play for only three days but, hopefully, the levity will stay with audiences much longer. The show will present members of the Vancouver disability community in performances that capitalize on people’s greatest common asset: the ability to use humour to cope with life’s trials and tribulations.

“What better way to celebrate Canada’s 150th than with laughter?” said Jewish community member Rena Cohen, the director of the show, in a press release. “A shared laugh strengthens our bonds and dissolves barriers. Whether you self-identify as able-bodied or as having a disability, come giggle and be entertained. And be prepared for a challenge to any and all preconceptions.”

Cohen joined Realwheels as managing artistic director in 2009. Before her, the company, which was founded in the late 1990s, had produced one show, Skydive, in 2007. Featuring Realwheels founder James Sanders, a professionally trained actor with quadriplegia, the play was regarded as an important and innovative contribution to changing perceptions of disability.

“I joined Realwheels after meeting its brilliant founder, James Sanders,” Cohen told the Independent. “I transitioned into arts management six years earlier and, when James invited me to discuss the company’s next steps, I was curious to learn about the lived experience of disability. I was also well aware of the company’s enormous success with their Skydive project. I saw an opportunity to bridge Realwheels’ early success into a more stable future. The mandate of the company – to create and produce performances that deepen people’s understanding of disability – quickly internalized and became a passion of mine.”

Since Cohen became part of the company, Realwheels has been producing new shows steadily every year, sometimes more than once a year. “We produced Creeps this past winter at the Cultch and we’re currently creating Comedy on Wheels. That’s two productions this season, plus another show in development, and two side projects that are centred on increasing people with disabilities’ inclusion in the arts…. In total, we’ve mounted five professional productions and six community shows to date,” she said. (For more on Creeps and Realwheels, see jewishindependent.ca/creeps-is-a-canadian-classic.)

Realwheels’ ultimate goal is to fully integrate creative people with disabilities into the performing arts.

“A trained actor with a disability can play many roles,” said Cohen. “Absolutely, an actor with a disability can perform in classical plays. Why not?… Every actor brings their own range of experience; every actor accesses their emotional life a little differently.”

About directing, she said, “Our professional shows are typically integrated, a combination of professional actors with and without disabilities. I’m always trying to bring out the truth, looking to the script for what’s called for in the role. Working with different casts and talents is one of the joys of this work.”

In addition to professional shows, Realwheels also produces community shows. “For our community shows,” said Cohen, “we invite anyone who self-identifies as having a disability to participate. We offer training, coaching, a meaningful and considerable theatre experience.”

Comedy on Wheels falls into the community show category.

“We have great stand-up acts, and these are augmented with scenes, live music and projections, making it far more theatrical than an average nightclub or comedy club,” said Cohen. “We touch on the theme of Canada’s 150th birthday, but, more than anything, that’s an excuse to get together, talk about what we think is hilarious, learn about the structure of comedy and celebrate the amazing talents of the people who live with disabilities.”

According to Cohen, the idea for this show – like the ideas for many Realwheels shows – came out of an ongoing dialogue with the community.

“Last season, we explored sexuality from a disability perspective in a large burlesque show. That was in response to the demand to break down the stigmas surrounding sexuality and disability in playful and dazzlingly unexpected ways,” she said. “There was tremendous humour in that show and there appeared to be a growing desire to further explore comedy. One of our regular community cast members is an emerging comic star. I threw the idea over to him, and we came up with Comedy on Wheels.”

To make the show punchier, Cohen invited Canadian-born comic star Tanyalee Davis, who is now based in the United Kingdom, to appear.

“Tanyalee will be integrating her comedy with our show and emceeing it. Very exciting!” said Cohen.

As is customary for stand-up comedy, the cast members have written their own jokes. “Our only ground rule was nothing sexist, racist or homophobic,” Cohen explained. “The only filter being applied is whether it’s funny or not. Of course, comedy is subjective, but we have a pretty good idea when something works or not.”

Another person has been instrumental in bringing Comedy on Wheels to life – fellow Jewish community member David Granirer.

Granirer is a counselor, stand-up comic, writer and speaker on mental-health issues. He teaches comedy classes at Langara College and founded Stand Up for Mental Health, which, according to his website, is “a program that teaches stand-up comedy to people with mental illness or mental-health issues, as a way of building confidence and fighting public stigma.”

“The cast members have created this work with the support and guidance of David Granirer,” said Cohen. “David has an elegant system for creating comedy, the system he’s honed over the years. He breaks the process into very clear and workable steps.”

“Rena Cohen brought me in – she’d heard about me from one of the participants who had taken my Langara Stand-Up Comedy Clinic course,” said Granirer.

For him, it was a small step from his students to the actors. “All of the performers in Comedy on Wheels are disabled in some way,” he said. “Their ages range from 20 to 60. Some have theatrical training and others don’t, but my job was similar. It’s about helping everyone find their comic voices. Most, but not all, of their jokes concern disability. Some of the jokes are also about Canada, but all of the jokes stand on their own (pardon the pun) as good comedy. Everyone will appreciate them.”

Comedy on Wheels is at Performance Works May 18-20. Audio description is provided by VocalEye and all performances are also accessible through American Sign Language. For more information, visit realwheels.ca. For tickets, go to comedy-on-wheels.bpt.me.

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

A little music … a few trysts

Katey Wright and Warren Kimmel co-star in A Little Night Music, which opens at Anvil Centre Theatre on May 13. (photo by David Cooper)

“The end of Act One may just be the most brilliant piece of musical theatre writing ever,” actor Warren Kimmel told the Independent when asked about Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music, which will have a limited run at the Anvil Centre Theatre, starting next week.

And Jewish community member Kimmel knows of what he speaks when it comes to musical theatre. To name only some of the super-well-known musicals he’s been in – Billy Elliot, Fiddler on the Roof, Les Misérables, My Fair Lady, Mary Poppins, Sound of Music, Beauty and the Beast.

In A Little Night Music, which takes place around the turn of the last century, Kimmel plays Fredrik Egerman, who has just married 18-year-old Anne, many years his junior. One problem is that Fredrik’s son also loves Anne. Two other problems are that Anne is reluctant to give herself to Fredrik and Fredrik hasn’t quite doused the fire that exists between him and Desiree, a former girlfriend. Then there’s Desiree’s jealous (and married) lover. “All of these trysts and twists come to a head,” reads the promotional material, “when Desiree convinces her mother to host Fredrik and his family for a weekend on her lavish estate – where the count [Desiree’s lover], with his wife … crash the party.”

“Apart from its sheer entertainment value – the incredible music and genius lyrics of Stephen Sondheim – A Little Night Music is based on a film by Ingmar Bergman – Smiles of a Summer Night – so the themes are eternal,” said Kimmel. “How do you find love? How do you find the right person to love? How do you love the person you are with? How do you get the person you are with to love you? How do you remain faithful? Should you remain faithful? Like all great works of art, it doesn’t so much speak to a modern audience as whisper and shout!”

“I don’t know if I can adequately state the importance of Stephen Sondheim and his work,” director Peter Jorgensen told the Independent. “No other single artist has thought more deeply about composition as a tool for telling stories. No other lyricist gives characters such distinctive, rich language. As a musical dramatist, he has set the gold standard for artistry and craftsmanship.”

“Sondheim has a special place in the heart of all singer/actors,” agreed Kimmel. “His material is, without doubt, the most challenging and also the most satisfying to perform of anyone in the musical theatre canon. It’s really hard to get right but thrilling every time you do. Fredrik has some particularly complicated and expressive songs, and that’s the best and worst thing about this role.”

The Broadway musical – with music and lyrics by Sondheim and book by Hugh Wheeler – won six Tony Awards, a Golden Globe and a Grammy. In the local Patrick Street Productions mounting of the show, Kimmel co-stars with Katey Wright, who plays Desiree.

Real-life husband-wife team Wright and Jorgensen founded Patrick Street Productions in 2007. Their mandate: “to offer great productions of great plays and musicals for Metro Vancouver, with an emphasis on contemporary musicals that have not yet been professionally produced in the region.”

“For Patrick Street Productions,” said Jorgensen, “it is important for us to program musicals that challenge conceptions of what a musical is and what a musical can do. That aspiration is never better matched than with a Sondheim musical.

“As to why A Little Night Music,” he continued, “in many ways it is similar to why Hal Prince (the show’s original director) and Sondheim chose to create the show: we wanted to program something romantic and light that had a broad appeal, but that was still sharp and biting. Hal Prince described the show as ‘whipped cream and knives.’ There is no better statement that sums up the show’s appeal than that.”

Kimmel added, “Apart from ‘Send in the Clowns,’ which is perhaps Sondheim’s best known song, A Little Night Music is not as well-known as some of his other stuff, and certainly not as well known as Phantom of the Opera or something like that, but this piece is a real gem. The end of Act One may just be the most brilliant piece of musical theatre writing ever. The brilliance of the material forces you to really step up – and everyone has. From the costumes to the lighting, from the orchestrations to the casting, the level of work and attention to detail in this production are quite wonderful. It’s just worth seeing on every level.”

A Little Night Music opens at Anvil Centre Theatre in New Westminster on May 13, 8 p.m., with previews on the nights of May 11 and 12. Show times are Wednesday through Saturday, 8 p.m., with 2 p.m. matinées May 14, 20-21. Tickets are $25.50 for the previews and range from $25.50 to $39.50 for the run; they can be purchased at ticketsnw.ca or 604-521-5050.

Our sense of reality and self

Chuck Wilt and Rebecca Margolick in birds sing a pretty song. (photo by Maxx Berkowitz)

Social media has changed the way in which we work, play and shop. It has changed how we communicate, access information, and even how we define ourselves.

A new work by Rebecca Margolick and Maxx Berkowitz, called birds sing a pretty song, “explores how surveillance and confinement through our digital and physical surroundings affect one’s sense of reality and self.” The full-length piece will have its world premiére in New York City next week. It will then arrive in Vancouver for its Canadian première at Chutzpah!Plus May 13-14.

Birds sing a pretty song was created during a year-long fellowship at New York’s 14th Street Y Theatre’s LABA: A Laboratory for Jewish Culture and two Chutzpah! Festival creation residencies.

LABA describes itself as a program “that uses classic Jewish texts to inspire the creation of art, dialogue and study.”

“After learning about LABA in 2015, we decided to take our shared vision and esthetic to create a piece together that would leverage our differing backgrounds and skill sets of dance and music, design and tech,” said Margolick and Berkowitz in an email interview. “Through the year of study and support from the LABA fellowship, our original concept, revolving around the loss of physical self in a hyper-social world, evolved through the varied conversations about beauty and imagery seeded by the provocative ideas in the ancient texts we studied.

“We had two work-in-progress showings at the 14th Street Y in April 2016 and, this past year, we were fortunate to be able to continue to develop the full-length piece through the support of two creation residencies from the Chutzpah! Festival, in Vancouver and Sointula, B.C., where we refined the choreography and brought in live music. The roots of last year’s showing are still present; however, the movement, sound and film have all changed.”

“Some of the most memorable moments in the development of the piece were when Maxx and I would have moments of clarity between us,” said Margolick. “After coming up with complex ideas, we would realize that staying true to our core goal for this piece, being that simple and raw, can be the most impactful, and that technology should be used as a means to enhance the narrative of the work, rather than a means of distraction or excess.”

As for Berkowitz, he said, “One of the most memorable conversations Rebecca and I had during the development of this piece was walking home after a LABA study session where we had read the story of a rabbi who was known as one of the most beautiful people of the time. His beauty led a princess who loved him without reciprocation … to the point of losing touch with what his beauty meant to her, coveting his beauty to the point of taking the skin off of his face to make a mask for herself. This horrifying story led us to discuss the parallels with how one can lose themselves in their online personas, seeking fame, beauty and recognition to the point of losing their sense of self.”

Birds sing a pretty song involves two dancers, whose wanderings the audience follows “through a world manipulated and influenced by the ‘curators’ … and projected light structures that move and direct the world onstage. Throughout the piece, they encounter an attempt at a relationship, fleeting glimpses of memory, and a fight for connection.”

Dancers Margolick and Chuck Wilt are joined by guitarist/media/composer Berkowitz, guitarist/composer Jake Klar and percussionist Bruno Esrubilsky (the curators) and Israeli author and scholar Ruby Namdar.

“The idea of ‘curators’ came from our exploration of how, in our social media platforms, it is easy to forget that everything you see is carefully selected for you based on the computer-crafted picture of you, that you can get trapped in a sounding room where the news, information and even advertising is targeted at your historical tastes and how that can be harnessed to manipulate your choices and decisions and fixes you into a stereotype of yourself,” explained Berkowitz. “This has become even more [relevant] in the current political climate and the ‘post-truth’ world, in which social media has played such a heavy role, and surveillance is an ever-increasing fact of life.”

“We wanted to play with the idea of the dancers being trapped in a curated space (the stage), where the musicians subtly manipulate the dancers’ movement and reactions,” added Margolick. “The dancers are also aware of the audience’s gaze, subconsciously at first but, as the piece goes on, they become aware of the audience and curators and are left exposed.

“As a performer, I was always intrigued by the fact that you’re in an enclosed space together with the audience, where you are aware that the audience is watching you as you are also watching them. This feeling of being observed while also observing is something I wanted to explore in this piece.”

Margolick has family connections in Vancouver, and has given of her time to the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver’s Festival Ha’Rikud, which she will do again when she is here in May. She also has connections to the Metro Vancouver dance community.

“I trained at Arts Umbrella from 6 to 18 years old and, through that program, I was introduced to both local and international dance artists and choreographers,” she said. “Over the past couple years, I’ve traveled between New York City and Vancouver and have been involved in dance projects with Donald Sales’ Project20 and Shay Kuebler’s Radical System Art. As for the Jewish community, through growing up attending Temple Sholom, working at the JCC summer day camp and dancing with Or Chadash, I was immersed into the local Jewish community.”

Berkowitz, too, has local ties.

“I was fortunate,” he said, “to be involved with the Chutzpah! Festival in the past, joining Shay Kuebler’s Radical System Art’s residency in Sointula to document their process and teach photography to local residents. And, in 2015, my up-and-coming band Twin Wave had two performances in Vancouver, at the Imperial Theatre and the Red Room.”

Among the major supporters of birds sing a pretty song are the Jewish Foundation of Greater Vancouver, Phyliss and Irving Snider Foundation, Diamond Foundation, Betty Averbach Foundation, Canada Council for the Arts, B.C. Arts Council and the City of Vancouver.

Birds sing a pretty song is at the Rothstein Theatre May 13, 8 p.m., and May 14, 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $29.50, $25.50 (senior) and $23.50 (student) and can be purchased at chutzpahfestival.com, 604-257-5145 or in-person at the JCCGV, as well as from Tickets Tonight, 604-684-2787.

A night for your imagination

In The Fifth Season, Shadi Habib Allah focuses on Palestinian writer and teacher Ziad Khadash, who wants his students to know what freedom feels like. (photo from Vancouver Jewish Film Centre)

The Sir Jack Lyons Charitable Trust Student Film Prize is awarded annually to two students from Jerusalem film schools. Selected by a jury, the winners receive a monetary prize and the opportunity to present their films and meet industry professionals in Canada. This year, Shadi Habib Allah and Alex Klexber are coming to Vancouver and Toronto with their award-winning short films.

The event Celebrate Jerusalem, hosted by the Jerusalem Foundation with the Vancouver Jewish Film Centre, will take place at Congregation Beth Israel on May 8, 7 p.m. It will feature the screening of Habib Allah’s The Fifth Season and Klexber’s HaYarkon Street and a Q&A with both filmmakers. It will also feature the screening of Avi Nesher’s The Wonders, a “mystery, comedy, psychological thriller, political intrigue and romance” all rolled into one.

photo - Shadi Habib Allah — Shadi Habib Allah *(photo from VJFC)*

Born in Nazareth, Habib Allah received his bachelor’s from the Jordan University of Science and Technology, where he studied architecture. He began his studies at the Sam Spiegel Film and TV School in 2015, and the 15-minute The Fifth Season is his first-year film. In it, Palestinian writer and teacher Ziad Khadash wants his charges to know what freedom – physical and intellectual – feels like.

At first, Khadash just wants his class to be over; he has lost his enthusiasm for teaching. He asks his students at Amin al-Husseini boys school in Ramallah to write about the difference between summer and winter, not really caring what the assignment might bring. But, for whatever reason, when a student asks why there are only four seasons, not five, Khadash becomes inspired.

Having grown up in Jalazone refugee camp, Khadash knows what it means to not be free. He notes that his mother, 68, has not ever seen the sea – his students will be more fortunate. He leads them in a mini-rebellion at the school, in which they state, “We come here as a creative generation, a democratic generation, to take over the school, to take it over for a few minutes – a cultural, intellectual, creative takeover, not a violent, armed takeover.” Their demands include “no more school uniforms,” “tear down the school wall,” “a monthly field trip to the beach,” “the right to express ourselves freely in class.”

Khadash is an odd bird – for example, he doesn’t believe in marriage, as it leaves no room for the imagination – but he seems like a good person, a positive role model for his students.

About The Fifth Season, the Lyons film prize jury wrote, “The film brings to the screen a teacher and educator with a unique educational approach, which the director manages to translate into a complex and rich cinematic language. Effective editing weaves together narration with staged and illustrative scenes that represent the film’s protagonist, who wishes to release his students from the shackles of reality and thought, using unlimited imagination.

“The visual boldness, and the expression of freedom and liberty as universal values by cinematic means, indicate that a promising talent is evident in this debut film.”

photo - In HaYarkon Street, Alex Klexber tries to recreate his childhood memories of the neighbourhood in which he grew up — In HaYarkon Street, Alex Klexber tries to recreate his childhood memories of the neighbourhood in which he grew up. *(photo from VJFC)*

Childhood is also the focus of Klexber’s four-minute film HaYarkon Street.

Born in Ukraine, Klexber is now a fourth-year animation student at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. He moved with his parents to Israel at the age of 6 and grew up in Rishon Lezion, south of Tel Aviv. His short film recalls his younger days – with images drawn both from his memory and from his artwork of those early years.

With animation and other techniques, Klexber tries to recreate the HaYarkon Street neighbourhood of old, and it is both fun and touching to watch. Viewers will most certainly remember their own youthful sketches and wonder from where some of those ideas came.

“Klexber’s short film movingly combines the world of imagination and reality,” wrote the film prize judges. “He manages in a few minutes to create a unique world, rarely seen in Israeli cinema. With sensitivity and imagination, the director depicts a specific memory of his, but the theme and approach are universal. This is a personal story related to the Israeli experience of immigration and affinity to the place. The simple name given to the film is in fact the basis for a host of memories, ambitions and dreams.

“The prize is awarded to the film in order to encourage the director to continue exploring this world.”

photo - Alex Klexber — Alex Klexber *(photo from VJFC)*

According to his bio, Klexber “created his first stop-motion short, Junkyard Episodes, while attending high school and also started making live action YouTube videos with his friends that became popular in Israel.” During his army service, in his free time, he “continued making YouTube videos and animation shorts, including the short film The Paintbrush (2010), that combined live action and stop motion.” And, he “composed original music on all his videos and short films.”

Celebrate Jerusalem also features, appropriately, a film that casts the city as one of its main characters, The Wonders.

“For me, Jerusalem was a great city for film noir, for something that explored the darkest side of the human experience while trying to reach for the higher element of the human experience,” said Nesher in an interview at London, England’s 2014 Seret film festival, where The Wonders screened.

The Wonders ponders the secular – via graffiti artist and bartender Arnav – and the (un)holy – Rabbi Shmaya Knafo, the leader of a cult-like group, who is kidnapped. Among the other characters are “a hard-boiled investigator,” “a gorgeous mystery woman” and Arnav’s former girlfriend. Animation helps bring to life Arnav’s active imagination and the film blurs the lines between fact and fiction.

Celebrate Jerusalem is a free event. To register, visit vjff.org/events/event/the-wonders.

Ballet BC trio of firsts

Choreographer Emanuel Gat, who was in Vancouver for a few weeks at the beginning of the year, will return for the Ballet BC world première of his new work. (photo by Wendy D Photography)

Ballet BC finishes this season May 11-13 with Program 3, which features a world première by choreographer Emanuel Gat, an almost world première by Emily Molnar and the Ballet BC première of Minus 16 by Ohad Naharin.

“I have long admired the works of Emanuel Gat and Ohad Naharin and have been eager to bring them to our artists and audiences,” says Molnar, artistic director of Ballet BC, in the press release announcing the program. She isn’t the only one to admire the creativity of choreographers Gat and Naharin, and many dance fans will be excited to see their work performed. Professional dancers age 16 and over will even have a chance to learn with Gat in person on May 6, when he teaches excerpts from the 30-minute piece he created for the full Ballet BC company (balletbc.com/choreographic-workshop-emanuel-gat).

Both Gat and Naharin started their dance careers relatively late, in their 20s, but have more than made up for any lost time. Born in 1952 in Kibbutz Mizra, in northern Israel, Naharin has been artistic director of Batsheva Dance Company since 1990 and is the creator of the movement language called Gaga – it is not an exaggeration to say he is an icon of contemporary dance. Born in Netanya in 1969, Gat is artistic director of Emanuel Gat Dance, which he established in 2004, and his works have been performed around the world.

Gat’s career trajectory changed when, at age 23, he attended a workshop led by another Israeli choreographer, Nir Ben Gal.

“I was studying music at the time,” Gat told the Independent in an email interview. “I’d just started a first year at the Rubin Academy of Music, and intended to be a conductor. I stopped a few months after starting to dance.”

Within a couple of years, Gat was working as an independent choreographer. When he founded his company, it was at the Suzanne Dellal Centre in Tel Aviv, which Batsheva Dance Company also calls home. However, after about 15 years in Tel Aviv and a few in the south of Israel, Gat moved to France in 2007, where he lives in a small village near Aix-en-Provence.

One of the aspects Gat most likes about being a choreographer is that “you work with a group of people, that it’s not a solitary process, and that it’s always full of surprises and insights.”

In various interviews, he has stressed the importance of process in the creation of a work.

“Time, space and eager dancers, basically,” he said of the elements needed for a creative environment. “All the rest is a result of an ongoing process of examining different questions regarding these elements, the way in which they come together and affect each other.”

While the Ballet BC program doesn’t name Gat’s new work, his website lists it as Lock.

“It comes from a certain task I gave [the dancers] on devising ways of joining two separated phrases,” he said about the title. “One of the strategies they came up with, they named ‘lock,’ which I liked the sound of.”

Gat was in Vancouver for a few weeks at the beginning of the year to create the piece, he said, and he will be returning “to finalize the work and create the light[ing] for it.”

“I’m very happy about this project,” he said, “and it was a lot of fun creating together with this talented bunch.”

Heading the talented bunch at Ballet BC since 2009 has been Molnar. The National Arts Centre in Ottawa commissioned her latest work as part of ENCOUNT3RS. The NAC presentation paired “three Canadian choreographers with three Canadian composers to create works with original scores, in celebration of Canada’s 150th anniversary,” notes the Ballet BC release. Molnar’s creation, set to a score by Canadian composer Nicole Lizée, saw its world première in Ottawa at the NAC April 20-22 and local audiences will see it as part of Program 3.

Rounding out Program 3 is Naharin’s Minus 16. Unfortunately, the choreographer won’t be able to make it to Vancouver for the performance. For just over two months now, he and Batsheva Dance Company dancers have been developing Venezuela, a full evening work set to start its première run at the Suzanne Dellal Centre May 12. But Batsheva personnel will be helping Ballet BC rehearse their first Naharin work.

“I have a team that can do it without me, though I would love to join all the premières,” Naharin told the Independent in a phone interview from Tel Aviv. “I trust them,” he said. “They have done it before without me many times.”

photo - Ballet BC will perform Ohad Naharin’s Minus 16 as part of Program 3 — Ballet BC will perform Ohad Naharin’s Minus 16 as part of Program 3. *(photo from Ballet BC)*

At the start of his career, he said, “I didn’t have the safety net of people I can trust and that knew how to do it; I didn’t have the skill myself to teach other people how to do it. Over the years, and especially with Minus – because Minus has been done by a lot of companies and also it’s a work that we do, or we do versions of it – my assistants have become experts at doing it and teaching it. It’s true that still, given the control freak that I am, it’s an exercise of letting go each time, but it’s a good exercise.”

The Ballet BC program description of Minus 16 mentions its “mesmerizing use of improvisation.”

“The idea is to give dancers as much information as possible, because it’s not about free form or do whatever you want,” explained Naharin about how improvisational aspects are “written” into a piece of choreography. “It’s about basing your intention, dynamics, texture, volume on very clear ideas, and those ideas are shared with the dancers, then they improvise and they get feedback. Usually, it’s not about what not to do. Feedback usually will highlight what was weak or what was right, what was the moment that produced what it needed. What is nice about the situation is that it can offer a [dimension] that I didn’t write that can be just as good, if not better sometimes.”

But, he said, about Minus, “There is very little improvisation in the piece, actually. What has made the piece easy to teach … is that it is very structured. Also, some of it is built on repetition and accumulation; it is not crowded with a lot of steps. Some of my work has a more complex structure, many different people doing different things and different movements, and that takes a lot of time and also skills and experience to learn and to teach. With Minus, a lot of it is unison and a big chunk of it is about repetition and accumulation, and very clear counts – so many times, my work is done to music that doesn’t have a groove or a beat, and the manic of the movements comes from listening to each other and understanding the essence of the creative pulse of the movement. With Minus, almost all the movements are counted and based on a particular rhythm that also comes from and is supported by the music. The improvisation part of Minus is meaningful, but it’s not the big part of it.”

Originally created in 1999, Minus 16 is “set to a score ranging from Dean Martin to mambo, techno to traditional Israeli music.” Of what ties its elements together, Naharin said, “I think, in balance, what ties things together in a right way is not how different the ingredients are from each other or how similar they are, but it’s how you try to create the right tension between all the elements.

“It’s just like if you go and look at the landscape. Sometimes it can be just desert and sky, and sometimes it can be a landscape that’s crowded with a lot of elements, including bridges or houses or the sun or clouds or birds or animals or people or machines, and it can still create something that is coherent and clear. It can also create, potentially, the sensation of ‘wow!’ And the reason it’s all connected is not because of what the ingredients are but how they are all organized.”

While there are no rules about what music can go with another music, he said, “a choreographer has his own rules, or his own code.” He explained that a choreographer could set an evening-length work to only the music of Mozart and still the work’s elements may not connect well, whereas shorter pieces set to vastly different music could work together well as a whole – “you could put John Zorn with Vivaldi and it can be magnificent,” he said. “It has to do with creating the right tension and the right mix.”

Naharin has been creating that balance since his choreographic debut in 1980.

“There are a few things I can think of immediately,” he said about what he loves about his work. “One of them is the pleasure of research and finding things that I didn’t know existed before I found them, couldn’t even imagine before I found them, and I find them in the process.

“Another thing is the pleasure of working with a brilliant, generous, beautiful, creative group of people that I love; learning from them and sharing with them what I learn.

“I love what the dancers offer me. Not when they show me my choreography but when they show me their interpretation of my choreography, and when they can offer a narrative that I didn’t write. That can be very moving.

“I like to dance. I love to move. I love to make up movements. I need to dance. It’s something that, if I don’t do it, I’m unhappy.”

He added, “For me, to dance is not about performing. I don’t need an audience to dance.”

One of his favourite places to dance? “I love to dance in the shower.”

Anything else he’d like Jewish Independent readers to know? “Just not to forget to dance a little bit every day.”

Program 3 runs May 11-13, 8 p.m., at Queen Elizabeth Theatre. Tickets range from $21.25 to $91.25 and can be purchased from 1-855-985-2787 (855-985-ARTS) or ticketmaster.ca. For more information, visit balletbc.com.

U.S.-Israel relations in Norman

Richard Gere, left, as Norman Oppenheimer and Lior Ashkenazi as Micha Eshel. In the unlikely confines of an upscale shoe store, the two characters forge a connection that will have profound ramifications. (photo by Niko Tavernise, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics)

The marvelous tragicomedy Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer depicts an aging, desperate Jewish influence peddler who has survived in a shark-eat-minnow world via a smooth patter that blends alleged connections with half-promises.

Through manipulation, charm and luck, Norman (a poignant Richard Gere) devises a rendezvous with a minor Israeli deputy minister (Lior Ashkenazi) at loose ends in the Big Apple. In the unlikely confines of an upscale shoe store, they forge a connection that will have profound ramifications for both men – for better and for worse.

The film, which opens today, April 28, marks the first movie that acclaimed writer-director Joseph Cedar has shot in his birthplace. Cedar grew up in Israel from the age of 6, returned to New York to earn his degree in film at New York University and established himself as one of Israel’s finest filmmakers with Time of Favour, Campfire and a pair of Academy Award nominees for best foreign language film, Beaufort and Footnote.

The soft-spoken Cedar allows that he’s exceptionally familiar with both sides of the complicated dynamic between Israel and American Jews.

“It’s a messy relationship, which, from my point of view, justifies the film,” he said. “There’s something fascinating about what Israelis think of Americans and what they expect from Americans, and how Americans view Israel, how they view Israelis and what Israel is for their identity. All these things are a big part of my conversations, so the movie allowed me to touch some of the things that are vital to my life.”

Cedar has a simple explanation for some of the curious behaviour that takes place at high-level meetings between the countries, illustrated by a scene where Ashkenazi’s character, Micha Eshel, now a figure of greater importance, lectures a U.S. diplomat visiting his Washington, D.C., hotel suite.

“One of the things that will explain so many of the encounters between Israelis and American politicians is that every time they show up they’re in jet lag,” Cedar said. “Especially around AIPAC, Israelis come to America, they’re treated like they’re Caesar and they’re a little off-balance because their time zone is all messed up. And they still have to be awake for Israeli things, so they’re sleep-deprived.”

Some viewers may presume a key plot twist in Norman was inspired by the gifts that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu allegedly received from Arnon Milchan, but Cedar finished shooting the film before the news broke.

“That relationship, of an American Jew gifting an Israeli politician, that’s not something new and it’s not something Bibi invented, and it’s not going to go away…. This is the nucleus of what the relationship is about: Americans gift Israelis,” Cedar said. “I’m trying to understand it; I’m not introducing it. Everyone knows that that’s what it is.”

The encounter between Norman and Micha in the shoe store – on which the movie turns – is Cedar’s inspired way of conveying the complicated personal and moral aspects of any transaction between Americans and Israelis.

“All the meetings between Norman and Eshel helped me understand this relationship, and helped me understand this on an individual, human level, not on a geopolitical or policy side,” Cedar explained.

Cedar also viewed Norman’s character and fate through another prism, that of the so-called “court Jews” of past eras.

“There’s a set of characteristics of that personality that I’m attracted to,” he said. “I identify with the need to get into a close circle of power, and then the tragedy of being ultimately kicked out because you have no substance on your own. You have no safety net, no one is there to protect you, you don’t have an interest that someone else needs to protect.”

Cedar injects notes of levity and absurdity into Norman’s saga, which stem from the director’s appreciation for the long tradition in movies of characters looking bad for our amusement.

“Norman is a little less naïve and he is not as pure as [Charlie Chaplin’s] Tramp, but it’s the same kind of situations – of pushing yourself into places where you’re not invited and being kicked out,” he said.

“Cohen’s Advertising Scheme and Cohen’s Fire Sale, part of a series of [short] films from 1902 to 1907, take place in a shop or right outside the shop’s window, and [involve] a merchant trying to cheat someone and ultimately being the victim of his own scheme.”

Cedar acknowledged that some contemporary viewers will see something offensive in the Cohen films.

“Putting it in the context of the image of the Jew in cinema, these are crazy portrayals of Jews,” Cedar said. “They’re grotesque. But it’s just a form of comedy. In the ’30s, if you put that kind of character on the screen, there’s an agenda behind it. In the very beginning, I think it was just funny.”

Gere is not an actor one associates with embarrassment and pratfalls, but he is extremely effective here playing a man trying to retain his dignity amid impending disaster.

“There’s something about Norman that I thought might connect to this primal need of moviegoers to see someone make a fool out of himself, to humiliate himself more than most people are willing to humiliate themselves,” Cedar said. “It’s a form of entertainment that I enjoy.”

There’s another basic element of Norman’s character that Cedar shares, however.

“It’s being essential to something,” he said. “Norman feels if he’s not essential to other people’s projects, then he has no existence. So, his whole motive is, ‘How do I become essential to others? How do I create a situation where people are dependent on me?’ I identify with that because I have that. It’s part of me.”

Michael Fox is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.

Diverse DOXA festival offerings

In the very talented ensemble of The Road Forward by Marie Clements are Michelle St. John, left, and Jennifer Kreisberg. (photos from National Film Board of Canada)

This year’s DOXA Documentary Film Festival features several films with Jewish community connections. They explore a wide range of topics: First Nations activism, Fort McMurray and the oil sands, real-life mermaids, bigotry against larger people, and being a freelance journalist in the Middle East. They will make you question your assumptions, ponder the various ways in which humans find connection, and introduce you to ideas, people and places you probably didn’t know existed.

Opening the festival, which runs May 4-14, is The Road Forward. In the very talented ensemble of this musical documentary by Marie Clements are Michelle St. John and Jennifer Kreisberg. As many of us do, St. John and Kreisberg have multiple cultural heritages that form their identity; in their instances, First Nations and Jewish are among them. In addition to performing, Kreisberg also composed and/or arranged many of the songs; the main composer is Wayne Lavallee.

The Road Forward began as a 10-minute performance piece commissioned for the Aboriginal Pavilion at the 2010 Olympics, and premièred as a full-length theatre show at the 2015 PuSh Festival. The documentary has mostly traditional components – interviews, archival footage, news clips – but these are broken up by a number of songs, which add energy and emotion to the film.

The documentary uses as its starting point the Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood, which were established in the 1930s, when First Nations people were not permitted to meet and organize. The groups’ “official organ,” the Native Voice, was the first indigenous-run newspaper in Canada.

“The idea was to honour B.C.’s history, so I started researching and reading online and came across the archives of the Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood, the oldest Native organization in the country. Their parent organization, the Native Fishing Association, is located in West Vancouver, close to me,” explains Clements in the press material.

The Road Forward touches on many issues along its journey to current-day First Nation activists, who carry on in their ancestors’ paths. Though their goals are varied – some fight for particular legal or policy changes, others for restitution and reconciliation, yet others for their own voice and place in the world – they are all seeking justice, equality, understanding.

The songs highlight the immense struggles. As but two examples, “1965” is about the decades upon decades that First Nations have been denied the basic rights that most other Canadians have long enjoyed, and “My Girl” is a heartbreaking tribute to the aboriginal women who have been murdered along British Columbia’s Highway 16, the “Highway of Tears.” The Indian Constitution Express, a movement organized by George Manuel in 1980-81 to protest the lack of aboriginal rights in then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s plans to patriate the Canadian Constitution, receives somewhat more attention than other activist achievements, and the song “If You Really Believe,” based on a speech by Manuel, is quite powerful.

The May 4 gala screening of The Road Forward is the official launch of Aabiziingwashi (#WideAwake), National Film Board of Canada’s Indigenous Cinema on Tour. For the length of 2017, NFB is offering films from its 250-plus collection to all Canadians via [email protected]. The film also runs on May 10 and Clements will participate in a Q&A following both screenings.

* * *

Limit is the Sky follows a handful of 20-somethings who have moved to Fort McMurray to follow their dreams. A few years before the price of oil plummeted in 2015 and the 2016 wildfire decimated the northern Alberta city, the average family income in “Fort Mac,” was $190,000 a year, according to the film. Working on the oil sands was where the real money lay, but others were drawn to the college or to places that serve the oil workers (and others), such as hairdressing salons and restaurants.

photo - The seven young dreamers featured Mucharata, from the Philippines, who had to leave her 2-year-old son behind initially (for fours years) — The seven young dreamers featured Mucharata, from the Philippines, who had to leave her 2-year-old son behind initially (for fours years). *(photo from NFB)*

Most striking about the population we meet in Limit is the Sky is their diversity: they not only come from other Canadian provinces and the United States but from much further afield. The seven young dreamers featured include Max, from Lebanon; Mucharata, from the Philippines, who had to leave her 2-year-old son behind initially (for fours years); and KingDeng, a former child soldier from South Sudan, who had to help support his wife and children (in Edmonton) while at school in Fort McMurray.

“I was looking for young people who’d just recently arrived in Fort Mac, full of hopes, dreams and naïveté,” says filmmaker Julia Ivanova in the press material. “I wanted to walk the viewer through their ups and downs in a place where the men seem tough and the women even tougher. I wasn’t looking for tough characters, though: sensitivity and beauty – both inner and physical beauty – were important to me.”

Ivanova, who has Jewish roots, migrated to Canada from Russia many years ago.

“Being an immigrant myself,” she notes, “I could feel what was at stake for these young people and the challenges they face on a very intimate level.”

The main filming ran from fall 2012 to spring 2015. She felt welcomed by the people in the city, though not by the industry. “That was a brick wall I hit over and over again,” she says. “There was no filming of anyone allowed, anywhere, period.”

By the end of the film, most of the millennials featured had left the city, along with many others. “The town felt almost deserted, compared to how I had seen it in 2012 and 2013,” says Ivanova. “So many people were leaving. There was so much anxiety. I went to all the places I loved – and they’d all changed.”

Ivanova’s film shows the hope, the drive, the challenges, the loneliness of her interviewees. The dynamics are much more complex than one might assume of a city that relied on the oil sands for its prosperity. The environment is of crucial importance, obviously, but people matter, too, and this documentary shines a necessary light on that fact.

Limit is the Sky screens May 5.

* * *

Falling into the who-ever-would-have-thought category, Ali Weinstein’s Mermaids introduces viewers to real-life mermaids, of a sort.

photo - Rachel’s underwater job at the Dive Bar in Sacramento, Calif., helps her deal with a family tragedy — Rachel’s underwater job at the Dive Bar in Sacramento, Calif., helps her deal with a family tragedy. *(photo from DOXA)*

Rachel’s underwater job at the Dive Bar in Sacramento, Calif., helps her deal with a family tragedy. Vicki and a group of former Weeki Wachee Resort (in Florida) swimmers recall their mermaid days, including a show for Elvis and a 50th anniversary performance. Being a mermaid helps Cookie, who was abused as a child and has mental health issues, manage life, and she and her soulmate, Eric, who makes her mermaid tails, are married in a mermaid wedding, after being together for some 30 years. Last but not least, Julz, a transgender woman who was bullied as a child and disowned by her father, discovers acceptance and love in a Huntington Beach, Calif., mermaid group.

Weinstein intersperses these stories with brief summaries of long-told mermaid tales, “from the 3,000-year-old Assyrian figure of Atargatis to the Mami Wata water spirits of West Africa.”

It really is a fascinating documentary, showing just how resilient and resourceful the human spirit is.

Mermaids plays twice during DOXA, on May 6 and 13, and Weinstein will be in attendance at both screenings.

* * *

Think of the cartoon villains and the hapless sidekicks. How are they often portrayed? As fat, dumb and/or oversexed? If those weren’t your first thoughts, think again. The documentary Fattitude convincingly shows how widespread bigotry against larger people is – so much so that it can be overlooked, until pointed out. Then, you wonder how you ever missed it.

image - From the age of 3, the film notes, we are already programmed with negative stereotypes — From the age of 3, the film notes, we are already programmed with negative stereotypes. *(image from DOXA)*

From the old woman in the candy house that eats Hansel and Gretel, to Star Wars’ Jabba the Hut, to the evil squid in The Little Mermaid, these are just a few of the villains. Then there is the heavyset and dumb Hardy, sidekick to thin, smart Laurel; the stereotypical chubby best friend in so many movies; and the archetypal black nanny, forever cast in the caring, subservient role. Miss Piggy is a more complex character, both strong and confident in herself, but also sex-crazy over Kermit. And, in the entire Star Trek franchise – where have the larger people gone?

From the age of 3, the film notes, we are already programmed with negative stereotypes. When all put together, it’s quite depressing. However, Fattitude is a rather upbeat documentary, as its interviewees are spirited, determined and intelligent enough to effect some change, mainly via social media.

Filmmakers Lindsey Averill and Viridiana Lieberman speak to almost 50 people and, to a person, they provide an interesting perspective, connecting the body images depicted in films, television shows, cartoons, magazines and advertisements with their effects on viewers and on our perceptions of ourselves and others. The film discusses the links between race, socioeconomic status and weight, as well as the reasons why Michelle Obama’s campaign to end childhood obesity was misguided.

Fattitude screens May 9.

* * *

Being a journalist in a war zone seems dangerous and frightening, and it is. But it is also tedious and lonely. At least this is what it seems from watching Santiago Bertolino’s Freelancer on the Front Lines.

photo - Jesse Rosenfeld with peshmerga combatants, Santiago Bertolino and Ayar Mohammed Rasool — Jesse Rosenfeld with peshmerga combatants, Santiago Bertolino and Ayar Mohammed Rasool. *(photo from NFB)*

Bertolino follows Toronto-born, Beirut-based freelance journalist Jesse Rosenfeld as Rosenfeld hustles to get story ideas and budgets approved, waits in sparse hotel rooms for fixers to connect him with interviewees, and ventures into Egypt during its post-Arab Spring elections, the West Bank during an Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a Syrian refugee camp in Turkey and to Iraq, where they witness the fight against ISIS from the front lines.

Some of the more disturbing images are of the bodies of Palestinians gunned down in a home by undetermined executioners and the corpses of dead ISIS fighters dumped in the back of a truck, as well as tied to its back bumper. In another memorable part, Rosenfeld yells questions to a caged Mohamed Fahmy, when Fahmy and two fellow Al Jazeera journalists were on trial in Cairo. (Fahmy, who holds both Canadian and Egytian citizenship, spent almost two years in jail of a three-year sentence.)

Rosenfeld has strong views and isn’t afraid to share them, though he struggles to make eye contact with the camera when he makes his pronouncements. Some of the best exchanges in the film are between him and Canadian-Israeli journalist Lia Tarachansky, who hold different opinions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Freelancer on the Front Lines screens May 13 at Vancity and will include a post-film discussion.

For tickets and the full DOXA Documentary Film Festival schedule, visit doxafestival.ca.

First Vancouver Opera Festival

Caitlin Wood and Alex Lawrence star in Vancouver Opera’s The Marriage of Figaro. Jewish community member Leah Giselle Field performs the role of Marcellina in the production. (Emily Cooper Photography)

I am thrilled and honoured to have been chosen to lead Vancouver Opera into a new era,” said Jewish community member Kim Gaynor when her appointment as general director was announced prior to the start of this season. “Vancouver Opera already has a long history of excellent productions and a well-deserved reputation for innovation under Jim Wright’s exemplary leadership.”

As part of its vision for the future, Vancouver Opera is holding an inaugural opera festival April 28 to May 13. The event features a variety of vocal offerings for audiences, as well as workshops and other activities.

“Opera seasons are planned years in advance, so this festival was planned long before I joined VO,” Gaynor told the Independent. “However, I have brought 10 years’ experience managing the Verbier Festival in Switzerland and I am using this experience to shape the festival-going experience here. For example, we will have lots of opportunities to follow the development of young singers, and for audience participation, two things which were very popular in Verbier.”

Her resumé prior to managing the Verbier Festival includes managing director and co-founder of Austria’s Festival Retz, administrator of London, England’s Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition and head of marketing administration at London’s Royal Opera House. She has worked at Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal, the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, L’Opéra de Montréal and Canada Council for the Arts.

photo - Vancouver Opera general director Kim Gaynor — Vancouver Opera general director Kim Gaynor. *(photo from VO)*

Gaynor, who was born and raised in Ontario, returned to Canada from Switzerland last year, arriving in Vancouver in September. She was here in time for another recent Vancouver Opera innovation – the smaller-venue, family-friendly production of Hansel and Gretel in November.

“Hansel and Gretel was a huge success with people of all ages,” said Gaynor. “The whimsical, enthusiastic performances from our young artists and the wonderful puppets charmed everyone who came. I heard so many stories about young people being literally on the edge of their seats throughout the whole performance, and this could lead to a lifelong love of opera. One thing I learned was that the intimacy of the smaller Playhouse theatre really appeals to audiences. They want to be nose-to-nose with the performers – up close to the action.”

The upcoming festival will offer more opportunities to get up close to the action, including a performance at Vancouver Public Library – called Opera Tales – featuring singers from VO’s Yulanda M. Faris Young Artists Program, who the audience will have a chance to meet after the show. One of these singers is Jewish community member Leah Giselle Field, who also will be performing the role of Marcellina in The Marriage of Figaro. (For more on Field, see jewishindependent.ca/fairy-tale-reimagined.)

Among the other festival offerings are a video installation by artist Paul Wong, performances by vocal stylist Ute Lemper and Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq, an evening sing-along with the Vancouver Bach Choir, a film night, master classes for young singers, forums and discussions, preview talks and happy hours.

“We believe that the festival format will attract a new and younger audience who likes fast and furious action, because there will be something going on all the time during the 16 days of the festival,” said Gaynor. “At the same time, we are convinced that our main-stage operas, Otello, Dead Man Walking and The Marriage of Figaro, will appeal to our traditional audiences, who may only want to attend for an evening or two. In our next season, 2017/2018, which has just been announced, we are offering a season and a festival, starting with the ever-popular Turandot in the fall and closing the season with a spring festival.”

Further explaining why the festival concept is being embraced by VO, she said, “Festivals are, by definition, a celebration and people, in general, love to celebrate. We will not only be celebrating opera, but the human voice and all of its expression, from throat singing to choral. Festivals offer the chance to mingle and meet lots of other people who share the same passion. This chance to come together with like-minded people creates an atmosphere which is hard to create in a normal season. But I don’t think festivals are a more attractive model, just a different model, and VO is in the mood for change.”

One of the attractions of moving back to Canada was that Gaynor would be closer to her mom, who lives in Oakville, Ont. One of the appeals of moving to Vancouver was the opportunity to be outside. While circumstances have made that difficult so far, she has found other fun things to do around town.

“Honestly,” she said, “it seems like it has either rained or snowed every day since I arrived (until about two days ago)! I am normally a person who loves the outdoors, so my highlights have been discovering the North Shore mountains and walks along the Seawall with my dog (a 3-year-old border collie). That was before I broke my leg badly at the end of January falling off my horse! I am also finding some great spots for brunch in my neighbourhood around Main and 12th, and have been discovering all of the fantastic cultural organizations in town.”

Gaynor was born in Hamilton, Ont., but the family moved to nearby Burlington when she was six months old.

“We lived almost in the country in Burlington, in a house with a big yard with a small forest behind. More importantly, we were less than a kilometre from a horse farm, where I discovered my passion for riding. My father was a passionate amateur pianist and we had a baby grand piano at home. I got my love of classical music from him.”

Gaynor’s father was a Holocaust survivor.

“My father was one of the 10,000 Jewish children who escaped from Western Europe to England on the Kindertransport,” she said. “He lived in London from 1938 until 1954, when he emigrated to Canada and met my mother, who is not Jewish. He even changed his family name, which was Geier, but sounded too German in postwar Canada and that, combined with his accent, was a handicap. So, he took the last name of his movie star idol – Mitzi Gaynor. Unfortunately, he died quite young, only 53 years of age.

“I know my father’s life was in every way coloured by having lost his family in this way but, like many Kindertransport children, he spoke very little about it to his children. I learned much later, after his death, that a part of his family escaped Austria and made it to Palestine. I was able to find them and went to meet them in 1996. I have often wondered how life would have been different if I had been born and raised in a Jewish family in Austria, or in London. But I have close ties still to the family who adopted my father in London, and to his relatives in Israel and this has enriched my life immensely.”

While she doesn’t “practise any religious traditions in a formal way,” Gaynor said, “I feel quite close to Jewish culture and traditions because of my family and friends, but also I have participated many times in Jewish celebrations, weddings, a few bar mitzvahs and even a bat mitzvah. I also remember some very poignant things from my childhood, such as my father criticizing my mother for not being able to make good matzah ball soup. Clearly, he had some things he missed from home!”

For festival tickets, call 604-683-0222 or visit vancouveropera.ca. For Tanya Tagaq tickets, contact Ticketfly at 1-888-732-1682 or ticketfly.com/purchase/event/1412206.

Joni Mitchell for millennials

Left to right, Andrew Cohen, Sara Vickruck, David Z. Cohen and Anna Kuman are among the cast of Circle Game: Reimagining the Music of Joni Mitchell. (photo by Tyler Branston)

Andrew Cohen and Anna Kuman, a Vancouver-based husband-and-wife team who are both composers and choreographers, will debut Circle Game: Reimagining the Music of Joni Mitchell this month at the Firehall Arts Centre.

The genesis was Mitchell’s 70th birthday in 2013, Cohen told the Jewish Independent.

“There was a lot of press that caught our attention,” said Cohen. “After that, it seemed like her music started following us around, popping up everywhere. We started researching her – her music, her lyrics, her impact on Canadian art and culture. We opened that can of worms and very much found a spark of something. We decided to see if we could take her poignant and meaningful and topical lyrics and reimagine them.”

The pieces Cohen and Kuman came up with are diverse re-arrangements of Mitchell’s material.

“We sat down on the piano to dissect and distil her songs,” said Cohen. “We threw in some harmony or a different drum beat. We came up with 20 different arrangements. Some are mash-ups, some are whole but more acoustic and unplugged, some are indie rock sounding or Latin.”

“We made a conscious effort to make the songs sound as if they were released today,” explained Kuman. “It’s the music of our parents’ generation, but we realized how poignant it still is for us. The social and political issues are repeating themselves. We wanted to change the sound so people could leave their preconceptions about the music of baby boomers behind.”

Kuman points to “Fiddle and the Drum” as a song that really resonates with today’s news cycle. “In that song, the line, ‘once again, America my friend,’ resonates powerfully,” she said.

The song lyrics include the following lines: “And so once again / America my friend / And so once again / You are fighting us all / And when we ask you why / You raise your sticks and cry and we fall / Oh, my friend / How did you come / To trade the fiddle for the drum? / But we can remember / All the good things you are / And so we ask you please / Can we help you find the peace and the star?”

While working on the project, both had songs they found personally meaningful. A song that sticks out for Cohen is “A Case of You.”

“The way we do it is very unique and will be unlike anything you’ve seen or heard before,” he said.

For Kuman, it was “Down to You,” which she described as “a story song.” In the lyrics, Mitchell “really painted a picture, a specific narrative. The way that we staged it in the workshop is that movement really evokes the emotion of the song. The arrangement that Andrew came up with is totally a cappella, yet really full.”

Cohen and Kuman are both in their 20s and are “proud East Vancouverites.” Cohen grew up going to Congregation Beth Tikvah in Richmond, and his parents were longtime members of the Beth Tikvah choir. Both he and his brother were in Perry Ehrlich’s ShowStoppers.

“We grew up at the JCC,” Cohen said, referring to the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver. “Anna taught tap at the Dena Wosk School [of Performing Arts], and we both taught there for years at Gotta Song! Gotta Dance!”

Both Cohen and Kuman are members of Temple Sholom, where they were married by Rabbi Dan Moskovitz.

When Cohen and Kuman started the process of composition, they were dating and not yet married. They did a workshop together, pitched it to Capilano University and were given a three-week residency and the time and space to experiment. This is their first foray as co-directors and co-collaborators.

“We got great feedback from the musicians and did a workshop presentation and invited people in the industry that we respect and we wanted to hear what they thought,” said Cohen. “The feedback was overwhelming and amazing. We knew we definitely had something – the spirit of our generation with the words of Joni Mitchell. There was some constructive criticism that we took and incorporated, too. It was great to have the roses and the thorns of a feedback session.”

“We will be the first to tell you how lucky we feel to be able to work with this calibre of talent,” said Kuman, referring to the musicians they are working with. “They are all multi-instruments who wail like nobody’s business and will sing to break your heart. We had a fairly extensive audition across the country, a ton of incredible talent came out for the show, but we settled for this six because they have the right skills and the right mix.”

The ensemble features Rowen Kahn (Superman: Man of Steel), Scott Perrie (Godspell), Adriana Ravalli (Rock of Ages), Kimmy Choi (Avenue Q), Sara Vickruck (Love Bomb) and David Z. Cohen (Heathers: The Musical). Together, they will play 18 instruments.

“We’d both like to encourage everyone to come out and see the show, whether you’re a Joni fan or not, or whether your mom is a Joni fan or not!” said Kuman. “We think it will be a great way to bridge the generation gap. What we hope we’ve accomplished is making the hits of 30 or 40 years ago sound like the hits that you’d hear on the radio.”

Circle Game runs April 29 to May 20. For tickets and showtimes, visit firehallartscentre.ca.

Matthew Gindin is a freelance journalist, writer and lecturer. He writes regularly for the Forward and All That Is Interesting, and has been published in Religion Dispatches, Situate Magazine, Tikkun and elsewhere. He can be found on Medium and Twitter.

The reach of humour

Director Ferne Pearlstein with Mel Brooks. (photo from Tangerine Entertainment)

Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanours marked the first time that many people heard the philosophical proposition, expressed by Alan Alda’s character, that “comedy is tragedy plus time.”

I’ve always cited “the Woodman” as the source of the insight, probably because it’s consistent with a Jewish worldview. In fact, another Allen, the late, great comedian, composer and TV host Steve Allen, described the phenomenon in a 1957 magazine interview. Maybe he picked it up from somebody else; in any event, this is what he had to say: “When I explained to a friend recently that the subject matter of most comedy is tragic (drunkenness, overweight, financial problems, accidents, etc.), he said, ‘Do you mean to tell me that the dreadful events of the day are a fit subject for humorous comment?’ The answer is ‘No, but they will be pretty soon.’”

Ferne Pearlstein’s wonderfully entertaining and provocative documentary The Last Laugh asks a gaggle of comedians, as well as the viewer, if there might be one subject that defies Allen’s thesis. Seventy years on, is the Holocaust still off limits for purveyors of punchlines? Are there subjects that cannot and should not be the subject of jokes? Or are some of the functions of humour – healing, confronting uncomfortable truths from oblique angles, challenging stereotypes – applicable even in the case of targeted genocide? Finally, as the great wit Hillel famously asked his students at a late-night yeshivah improv set, “If not now, when?”

Pearlstein puts the question to a group of sharp Jewish humourists, interspersing their incisive comments with a parade of clips from films and TV shows that comprise a kind of Rorschach test for the viewer. The expert witnesses include Rob Reiner, Harry Shearer, Gilbert Gottfried and Larry Charles, who grapple with the topic with both hilarious and discomfiting results. As you’d imagine, given their ethnic backgrounds and line of work, they’ve given the matter considerable thought over the years.

Mel Brooks, who displayed unimaginable chutzpah and courage in conceiving and producing The Producers 50 years ago, cites Charlie Chaplin’s brilliant The Great Dictator to illustrate the power of mockery and ridicule to cut the Nazis down to size. Another interviewee provides a reminder that humour played an important role in the camps, providing a brief escape from bleak reality and a way of maintaining one’s humanity and dignity.

But it’s another matter altogether to mine the camps or victims for laughs. (Here’s where the late Joan Rivers makes an appearance with a jaw-dropping one-liner from some archived late-night show.)

Of course, one of the jobs of comedians is to step over the line, in order to impel us to consider where the line is. (Come on down, Sarah Silverman.) And, given the prominence of the Holocaust in shaping the identity of at least two generations of American Jews, it is a taboo that needs to be examined.

Too soon (to use the catchphrase du jour)? About time, I’d say.

Pearlstein implicitly acknowledges two important caveats, however. The reality of the Holocaust can’t be ignored or subsumed in a theoretical discussion of contemporary attitudes, and those who endured the camps should be allowed to comment on what’s funny.

Stalwart survivor Renee Firestone acts as a thread and guidepost throughout The Last Laugh, reminding us of the deadly toll of the Holocaust as well as the determination and, yes, good humour required to create a satisfying life after the darkness of Europe.

Firestone inspires us to consider the highest and best use of memory and, in the context of the film, to see humour as a constructive way of remembering and revisiting tragedy that instils strength. Over and over, The Last Laugh eschews glib analysis in pursuit of deeper truths. And those are always the best punchlines.

The Last Laugh airs on PBS April 24 (check local listings).

Michael Fox is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.