Luc Roderique as Usnavi and Sharon Crandall as Abuela Claudia in Arts Club’s In the Heights. (photo by David Cooper)
Even before the musical starts, the set draws you in. Then the music, the lighting, the actors, the choreography. It’s not that any one of these aspects is better than the other in Arts Club’s In the Heights, now playing at the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage. This is merely their order of appearance.
Ted Roberts has created three storefronts and an apartment with a backdrop of the George Washington Bridge. The sun comes up – thanks to Marsha Sibthorpe – as a graffiti artist plies his trade. He’s listening to music, but it takes awhile to realize that there’s a live band “living” above the bodega – directed by Ken Cormier, the music is such a part of the scene that you don’t really notice it until you find yourself moving to it, or the actors start to move to it. Enter Lisa Stevens’ choreography. It, too, is subtle, occurring in bits and bursts with a few professionally trained dancers who raise the quality across the board.
While other critics have found the music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda and book by Quiara Alegría Hudes (who, according to the program, is of Puerto Rican and Jewish descent) wanting, I don’t need to be intellectually challenged when I go the theatre, and I don’t generally expect musicals to portray gritty realism, so I thoroughly enjoyed In the Heights. It was a refreshingly different cultural setting from other musicals and plays I’ve seen in Vancouver, and that made it easier for me to lose myself in it. While I’ll admit to drifting a bit near the end of the first half, the predictability of the story was a comfort, rather than an obstacle to my enjoyment.
There are two main plotlines. One centres around the bodega owner, Usnavi. He is a reluctant entrepreneur, having taken over the business when his parents died. He dreams of returning to the Dominican Republic, but feels duty-bound to keep the bodega going, and he’s also got to think about his sidekick cousin, the wise-cracking Sonny, who helps him out at the store. Not only that but (of course?) he’s torn about leaving, as he is madly in love – but too shy initially to approach – Vanessa, who works at next door’s soon-to-be-closing hair salon.
The other plotline focuses on Nina. Returning home to Washington Heights from Stanford University, she is the pride of the neighborhood, yet she has fallen short. Having to work two jobs has caused her grades to fall and she’s lost her scholarship. Her parents’ car-service business is barely keeping afloat, so there’s no money to be had there. In addition to the tensions that arise when Nina tells her parents the truth about her school situation, there is the not-so-small matter of her being in love with Benny, who, while trusted by her parents, for whom he has worked for years, is not Hispanic.
There is also a heat wave, a blackout and a death, and poverty, gentrification and other social issues are hinted at, however, none of these underlying elements rises to the foreground. In the Heights is light, fun fare and I, for one, won’t complain about that. The actors all do a great job at spitting out their lyrics clearly, staying on key and dancing in step; the musicians hit all the right notes. I left the Stanley in a better mood than I arrived, and that, to me, means it was a musical worth seeing.
In the Heights is on stage until June 7. For tickets and information, visit artsclub.com.
From the JI pages
JWB, 1987
Lisa Stevens, the choreographer and assistant director of In the Heights, grew up in Vancouver, and readers of the Jewish Independent / Jewish Western Bulletin have followed some of the highlights of her career, even her pre-career.
She was part of the Grade 1 classes being fêted at the Shalom Yeladim celebration led by Rabbi Wilfred Solomon and Dr. Sheldon Cherry that welcomed the young students enrolled at Beth Israel School and Talmud Torah in 1973, and she shared her bat mitzvah on May 30, 1980, at Beth Israel with Lisa Goldman. She was winning dance competitions by 1977 and teaching by 1986, when she was reported to be “the youngest choreographer in Canada,” at age 18.
JWB, 2002
Stevens opened her own dance studio in 1987 and her students were winning awards by 1992. In 1993, two of them “beat out 3,000 dancers to win the national finals (duo category) of the Sega Video Dance Contest.”
Off to London, England, in 1996, the JWB also caught up with her once she’d moved to New York. Stevens returns regularly to Vancouver to work on productions here and, no doubt, to visit family and friends. On more than one occasion, she’s taken time to chat with the paper and for that, we are appreciative.
Eran Riklis, director of Dancing Arabs. (photo from Mongrel Media)
Dancing Arabs, which was part of the most recent Vancouver Jewish Film Festival, has its general release on May 15. A multilayered coming-of-age story, the screenplay is by Sayed Kashua, who wrote the novels on which it is based, and it is directed by Eran Riklis.
While called Dancing Arabs, the film is a combination of Dancing Arabs and Second Person Singular, two novels with very different tones.
“I read a first draft that Sayed wrote before I joined the project and it was much more Dancing Arabs and it was much more kind of a comedy,” Riklis told the Independent in a phone interview. But that changed. The first part of the movie, “which was almost pure Italian comedy,” became a way to draw in the audience, “maybe taking away any preconceptions or resistance that an audience might have when it comes to see a film, where it has all the opinions in the world about the Arabs, and this and that.”
Riklis wanted the audience “to fall in love with the character and then, when the film changes its tone and it gradually becomes more and more dramatic … you can’t walk away because you love this character and you want to root for him, you want to join him on his journey.”
With the novel Dancing Arabs being autobiographical, Riklis said he had to remind Kashua that the film was a different entity. It was about Eyad, “and even though there are reflections of reality, the grandmother and the father, whatever it is, it still is a new life, which is true of almost any film that deals with a real story at least partly.”
The challenge was “to do something which is at once meaningful and yet communicative, and striving to reach a wider audience. For me,” said Riklis, “all my films, or most of my films, deal with, let’s say, not easy issues, but I always try to … remember that this has to be a good story.”
Reaction to his films has varied. “If you look at The Syrian Bride, for instance, it had a very warm reception everywhere, both in Israel and worldwide. Lemon Tree was very tough in Israel because it was a little bit too close to home, and then really about sensitive issues, and yet it was probably my biggest success worldwide.” The response everywhere to Dancing Arabs has been “very emotional,” he said, which makes him happy because it means people “understand that this film comes from a place of respect and love and honoring the subject, as complicated as it is, but nobody’s trying to manipulate you here. There is a manipulation in the sense of filmmaking because that’s what filmmaking is about, but I think, emotionally speaking and intellectually speaking, this is a democratic film: it’s like, here are the facts, here’s the situation, here’s a story, here’s the person … and you judge for yourself.”
“… here we’re talking … about a minority that is 20 percent of the country. That’s 1.6 million people…. This is a major thing and, not only that, they’re not in Afghanistan, they’re living right in the middle of the country, next to us, amongst us, with us, and yet they’re invisible.”
When asked what sets Dancing Arabs apart from his other films about the region, Riklis said, they “have dealt with either the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the regional conflicts or the Druze conflict, whatever, but here we’re talking … about a minority that is 20 percent of the country. That’s 1.6 million people. It’s not like you have some people living on the hillside with two camels. This is a major thing and, not only that, they’re not in Afghanistan, they’re living right in the middle of the country, next to us, amongst us, with us, and yet they’re invisible.”
The novels’ treatment of an internal conflict within Israel “was something that I felt was close to home,” said Riklis. “It’s important enough, and it’s getting more important by the minute. I can see what has happened between the time I shot the film and now. The internal tensions and the growing gap within Israeli society, both within the Jewish one and between the Jews and Arabs inside the country, I felt it’s time to shed a light.”
Riklis and Kashua worked on the script for about a year, on and off, not only because of the material but because they were both busy. Kashua was not involved in the filming process.
“In a strange way, even though it was not an easy film to make on many levels, when I look at it now, I feel it was one of my easiest films,” said Riklis. “That’s because, emotionally, I was so much into it. People ask me, how can you create an Arab family? Well, first of all, I had Sayed writing, so it comes from a very authentic place, but also, once you step in, you say, well, this grandmother is my grandmother, this father could be my father. It’s very easy for me … well, not easy, but, I go back to using respect and knowledge and making sure you get your facts right, at least emotionally, then it’s not so difficult for me because when I watch people, when I look at people, I don’t see color and race, not even age, I don’t really care.”
As with many books, much of the action in Kashua’s novels takes place in the protagonist’s mind. “I think the answer is simplicity,” said Riklis about transforming that style of writing to the screen. “It’s almost like just tell the story, just go with your characters, put them in interesting situations, make sure that every situation is a step forward.
“At the end of the day, I think a director, and almost everybody, is a slave to the story in terms of making sure the story keeps being interesting, keeps being reflective, keeps moving forward.”
“One thing I’ve discovered – but it’s me and another million directors, I think, or at least the good directors have realized – that every inch on the screen is significant. You can sometimes convey 10 pages of text by the color of a shirt. There are so many elements that you put together and I’m really careful with that in terms of what a person is wearing … what’s his environment and what other people are doing and what he’s looking at. And then you have the camera, the kind of lens that you choose and the lighting. There are so many elements that support you but also mean that you have to take responsibility and make sure that they really serve the story. At the end of the day, I think a director, and almost everybody, is a slave to the story in terms of making sure the story keeps being interesting, keeps being reflective, keeps moving forward.”
Music plays a big role in both books, and also in the film.
“It’s funny,” said Riklis, “because there were a lot of things in the script where it was like, ‘Naomi [Eyad’s Jewish girlfriend] and Eyad go to a concert in a club in Jerusalem,’ and we didn’t dig into it…. Then I found myself Googling myself to death to find what was popular in the late ’80s in Israel.” He came upon a song from a controversial rock opera, with explicit lyrics about rape and the Palestinians, and it became “a totally different scene. Suddenly, it’s emotional, and suddenly Naomi’s not feeling comfortable and Eyad is not feeling comfortable, and it has its own message and it’s brutal, and yet it’s not.
Eyad (Tawfeek Barhom) and Naomi (Danielle Kitzis) in Dancing Arabs. (photo by Eitan Riklis via Mongrel Media)
“Same thing went with, for instance, Joy Division, ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart,’ which came from me.” Riklis had seen Control, a film about the British band. He said, “Ian Curtis, the lead singer, was epileptic and used to collapse on stage and at some point couldn’t take it anymore and committed suicide at a very young age – I felt, wow, this is the song for Yonatan, this is exactly a reflection of Yonatan’s life.” A peer who Eyad helps with his schoolwork and eventually befriends, Yonatan has muscular dystrophy.
There were other sound choices, as well. For example, where the script says Naomi and Eyad go to a movie, “I realized that following the scene where Eyad carries Yonatan to the bathroom, which is a very emotional scene, and he carries him almost like it’s a very Christian or Jewish image … my next cut I knew was Naomi and Eyad at the cinema and I didn’t want to see a clip from a movie, I wanted to listen to it. Then I said, OK, what’s appropriate here?… I thought about Wings of Desire, the Wim Wenders film, which in Hebrew is called Angels of Berlin. I said, what we need now, what Yonatan needs now, maybe Eyad as well, is an angel to protect him and to maybe keep him alive. And so I said, maybe it would be beautiful if they [are] listen[ing] to this monologue from the film, the beautiful voice of Bruno Ganz. Even though it’s in German, it’s just purely emotional.
“That’s the way I work,” said Riklis. Whether it’s the music, films “or even the news clips that you see in the movie, they always give you another layer. For example, Eyad comes to Edna’s and Yonatan’s house for the first time and he’s left alone in the living room. On television, there’s a report about a suicide terrorist who drove a bus into a ravine and dozens were killed.… The reality outside is on TV and yet he goes to the window and he watches and he hears the Arab prayers coming from the Old City. It’s almost like he’s looking at his own [life], like his older life is calling him back. And yet, he’s in this fancy apartment in west Jerusalem.”
Riklis admitted, “It’s interesting, I think, when people see the film for the second time – they discover so many things they haven’t seen the first time.”
Ruth Hoffman with baseball player Arthur Lusala, left, who today studies developmental economics at university, and coach George Mukhobe. (photo from Ruth Hoffman)
Vancouver baseball teens and their parents piled into the Rothstein Theatre on Sunday, April 19, for Opposite Field, a documentary by Jay Shapiro about a Ugandan Little League baseball team and its struggle to compete on the international stage.
The story caught Shapiro’s eye several years ago when he learned about an American businessman, Richard Stanley, who was sponsoring Uganda’s first baseball field and creating a Little League team. It was comprised of tenacious youngsters, many from poverty-stricken homes and unable to afford the most basic baseball gear. But the Ugandan team proved you don’t need fancy equipment to be a winner. What they lacked in material possessions they more than made up for in determination and skill, eventually traveling to Poland in 2011 to play in the regional championships. There, they earned the right to compete in the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Penn., where they would have been the first African team in history to participate.
Bureaucratic red tape forced the cancelation of their trip, when visas to the United States were declined due to insufficient documentation. One player in Opposite Field explained that unlike most families in North America, who possess and protect important documents like their children’s birth certificates, in Uganda this is close to impossible. Birthing clinics fail to record information and families struggling to feed their children have other priorities than obtaining and keeping the documents.
Enter Ruth Hoffman, a Vancouver accountant who heard about the plight of the Uganda Little League team in August 2011, not long after their visas were declined. A specialist in microfinance who has worked in Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Hoffman is a mother of three and well acquainted with baseball.
“My twin boys competed in Poland and their team made it to the World Series in 2006, something that became the highlight of their youth,” she recalled. Her sons’ trip had almost been canceled, too, as they were trying to fly to the United States at precisely the same time as the shoe bomber’s failed attack was discovered, stopping most international flights. Hoffman recalled hovering at the airport among the reporters, waiting desperately to get onto a flight. Determined as they come, she told her boys’ story to a reporter – that they were scheduled to play but couldn’t get a flight out to their destination. It quickly garnered media coverage with surprisingly positive results. “British Airways put the boys and their team on the first flight [possible],” she said.
With this experience in mind, if there was anyone could change the plight of the Uganda Little League team, it was Hoffman. First, she called the mayor of Langley, B.C., as the team had been scheduled to compete at the World Series against the Langley Little League team. She suggested they bring the Uganda team to British Columbia to play Langley. After further discussions with Uganda coach George Mukhobe, it was decided that the Langley team would visit Uganda, instead.
Shapiro and his cameras were there for the January 2012 trip, as were three members of Major League Baseball, Jimmy Rollins, Gregg Zaun and Derrek Lee, who felt compelled to join the unique journey. Hoffman partnered with a humanitarian organization, Right to Play, which encouraged her to leave a legacy for what became known as the Pearl of Africa series. Together they raised $155,000 for this trip, funds used towards education of the Uganda team players, equipment, improvement and construction of baseball fields and a player transportation fund.
It might have ended there but that was just the beginning for Hoffman. In Part 2 of the Pearl of Africa project, she raised another $40,000 for the Uganda team, funds that helped train Uganda softball and baseball coaches. Her goal for Part 3 is to raise another $20,000 for the Uganda Baseball and Softball Association.
Opposite Field tells some of this story, focusing mostly on the time leading up to the Langley team’s visit. Filmmaker Shapiro humanizes the team by focusing on individual members, their personal struggles and their motivations and goals. In the process, he takes viewers deep into Uganda, revealing a level of poverty unrivaled in North America. It’s a beautiful story with a happy, or happier, ending, one that’s still in the making.
View an excerpt online at opposite-field.com or look out for the entire documentary, whose Canadian rights have been purchased by CBC, on television.
Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond, B.C. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.
Caroline Cave appears in a Shakespeare double feature, May 5-17. (image from escapeartists.ca)
Shakespeare’s plays are favorites with both actors and audiences. In Vancouver, the Shakespeare annual summer festival Bard on the Beach is a sold-out affair. This year, local actress Caroline Cave appears in a Shakespeare double feature here in May. Both are world premières created by Tracey Power’s theatre company, the Escape Artists, reimagining Shakespeare for an all-female cast.
“Tracey thought that there are too few roles for women actors in theatre. She set out to change that,” Cave told the Jewish Independent.
Power’s original musical Miss Shakespeare centres on an imaginary underground all-female theatre group in Shakespearean times, when women were forbidden to tread the stage. In tandem with Miss Shakespeare comes J. Caesar. This re-worked tragedy about Julius Caesar and Brutus is set in a dystopian future, where women rule. Like the original version, it deals with honor, friendship and patriotism.
“It’s Shakespeare’s play,” Cave said. “All the words are by Shakespeare, but all the roles are played by seven female actors, the same ones that participate in the musical.”
The roles Cave plays in each show are nearly opposite in personality. “In J. Caesar, I play Brutus. Brutus is a strong character, both physically and mentally, a rebel. Unlike Brutus, my character in Miss Shakespeare, Susanna, is a prim and proper woman, very religious and conforming to the society rules. Not a rebel at all.”
Cave is not a novice in playing complex characters. Her repertoire includes several award-winning theatre and screen roles. Twice, in 2010 and 2011, she won a Gemini Award for lead actress for her portrayal of Catherine Scott in the Showcase original series Cra$h & Burn. She also won awards for her theatrical performance in The Syringa Tree by Pamela Gien – a play about South African apartheid.
Cave grew up in West Vancouver. She studied piano and ballet as a girl and then received her training as a classical actress at the University of Alberta. She also apprenticed at the Royal National Theatre Studio in London.
Despite her much more lucrative work for the screen, she loves theatre. “Theatre feeds my soul. It keeps me humble,” she said, contemplating the differences between mediums. “Theatre is inspiring and challenging. You have to find the connection with the audience. On the other hand, camera allows much more intimacy. You don’t have to tell the whole story, just pieces. You can concentrate on one scene and forget all else for awhile. Not so in theatre. Here you tell the whole story in one evening, and it’s a different story every night.”
According to Cave, theatre depends on the actors as well as the public, the audience. “Theatre brings people together, and the actors feel it. We play with our public, as well as with our fellows on stage. The reaction of the audience is very important.”
Caroline Cave (photo from Caroline Cave)
Cave admitted that she loves British audiences the best. “In England, the public is much more honest, much freer than here, in Canada. Canadians are more repressed in the theatre, as if theatre is for some sort of elite. But it is not. It is for all of us.”
The most difficult audiences she’s encountered have been in Montreal. “The audience there is hard: stiff, unresponsive, very quiet.”
Theatre shouldn’t be quiet, she continued. “It should be visceral, brave, daring. It shouldn’t be a clone of reality, like a movie. It should be like magic. That’s why Cirque du Soleil is so popular,” she suggested.
To instigate a visceral experience for audiences, an actress needs all the tools in her creative arsenal. Among those tools are two types of acting. One is when an actor plays herself in the given circumstances. Another – when an actor transforms into her character. “I can do both,” said Cave. “When I played The Syringa Tree, I had to be 24 different characters. In one evening, I had to switch between men and women, young and old, black and white. It was demanding and wonderful and very physical. I couldn’t be myself there. Other roles don’t need this kind of transformation. They might be closer to me physically, too, so the approach is different.”
Being an established, sought-after actor in Canada, Cave is lucky to be able to consider roles with different theatre companies. “I don’t audition for theatre in Canada anymore,” she said. “But, for the screen, I audition for every role, big or small. In movies and TV, there are so many factors out of my control, luck among them. I might do the best audition work ever, and they wouldn’t cast me. Or I might be dissatisfied with my audition, but I would be cast. Theatre is different. In theatre, it’s mostly on merit. If you do your job well, if you are professional, have a strong work ethic and respect for the craft, you can make it.”
When she was invited to participate in Miss Shakespeare and J. Caesar, she gladly accepted. “A chance to play Shakespeare doesn’t come often,” she said with a happy smile.
Both plays run at Performance Works on Granville Island from May 5-17, and at the Kay Meek Centre for the Performing Arts in West Vancouver, May 21-29. For more information and for tickets, visit escapeartists.ca.
Olga Livshinis a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
Jennifer Levine, Fred Schiffer’s daughter, speaks at the opening of the exhibit of her father’s work. (photo by Cynthia Ramsay)
On April 16, with the help of volunteers from King David High School and others, the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia welcomed more than 250 visitors to the opening night of Fred Schiffer Lives in Photos. At the Make Gallery until May 31, the exhibit is part of the Capture Photography Festival.
Michael Schwartz, coordinator of programs and development at the JMABC and curator of the exhibit, gave the crowd a brief overview of what the JMABC does, and how the Schiffer photos fit into the museum’s holdings.
Of the 300,000 photographs housed by the JMABC, said Schwartz, “The Schiffer collection comprises over 10,000 photos. The JMABC has been working on this collection – organizing it, processing it – since it was donated by Schiffer’s family in 2001. To date, we’ve digitized 2,000 photographs, which are available to researchers online. The 45 photos that you see in this exhibit are selected from those 2,000, and an additional six photos are on display at the atrium of the Langara library through May 4th in a satellite exhibit.”
Schwartz explained that Schiffer fled Vienna, seeking refuge in England, where he stayed for 10 years before heading to Argentina, where he also lived for 10 years. “He arrived here in Vancouver in 1958 with his wife Olive and their two young children, Jennifer and Roger.”
The Schiffers operated a small studio under the Hudson’s Bay Co. building, on Seymour Street. “Schiffer was respected by his peers, not only for his skill but for being a kind and generous man, a true mensch, as we say,” said Schwartz. “He was president of the local photographic association, wrote frequently for the association newsletter and shared his knowledge of the trade with his colleagues.” He was one of the people who “led the charge to develop a professional photography program at Langara.”
After thanking the partners and funders of the exhibit, as well as his colleagues, Schwartz introduced Jennifer Levine, Schiffer’s daughter, who attended the opening from Toronto.
While her father was the person behind the photographs, she said, “he had two quite remarkable women who loved him and worked with him”: her mother, “who was the person you would always meet in the studio and who was also the organizer and the bookkeeper,” and her aunt, Irene, “who was not only a master retoucher but, also, I think she did some of the printing … together they discussed how things should be, and collaborated to make the prints happen.”
The family came to Vancouver from Buenos Aires, which had a “very lively photographic culture and my father was part of a group of photographers who met together, collaborated, discussed their work … they were sophisticated, they had annual photo shows in art galleries,” said Levine. When he came here, he thought he could interest the Vancouver Art Gallery in his work. “The response was, ‘Oh no, that’s photography, that’s not art.’ And it’s interesting that Vancouver has become such … an international centre for exciting work in photography, but let me tell you that, in the ’50s and ’60s, that was not happening.”
For her father, she said, “coming to Vancouver, which he chose to do, I think, largely for his children … because he had a sense of what was happening in Argentina, meant that the exploratory and experimental nature of his work would have to be held in because people in Vancouver were not interested…. I see how he had to shape his work for the marketplace and I know he did it for us and I honor him for that…. Artists have to make compromises sometimes for the people they love, and my dad did. I’m really proud of him as a photographer but I’m proud of him as a dad, too.”
The current exhibit at the Zack Gallery, Tales of Light and Dark, features two artists from opposite sides of the continent. Alina Smolyansky is a local artist; Judith Joseph lives and works in Chicago. Their paintings hang side by side on the gallery walls as if they belong together. Their similar small size, bright color and propensity to tell stories balance the differences in technique and visual effects, as well as the two artists’ distinct creative auras.
Both artists explore Judaic themes. In the case of Joseph, her paintings relate her family’s history through the medium of Jewish symbolism. Almost every piece of hers includes birds as their most important element. Peacocks, firebirds and owls populate Joseph’s work.
“I love birds because they can fly. I wish I could fly,” Joseph said in an interview with the Independent. “A bird stands in for a person but it doesn’t have age or gender, it isn’t poor or rich. It represents everyone.”
In a way, in her art, she does fly, free of the restrictions of reality. Using the bird metaphor and the mysticism of the Torah, she spins tales of courage and suffering. Several of her paintings are dedicated to her grandmother who came to America from Ukraine after the First World War. In one image, a girl travels across the ocean on a menorah. Her vessel is wobbly, but she hangs stubbornly for her life, and the menorah glows with triumphant light, illuminating pain and sorrow but also victories and achievements.
Many pieces incorporate metal-foil embossing into the paintings. The process used for the embellishment is called repoussé. “I learned repoussé in high school,” Joseph recalled. “I like working with metal.” Her owls’ feathers and floral borders of her paintings glint with intricate copper patterns, infusing the pictures with a sophisticated and funky ambience.
Her paintings always start with an emotion and an idea, she said. “I always have a sketch book with me and, whenever an idea appears, I make a sketch. Most paintings in this show come from my sketches practically unchanged. I know that if the emotion that inspired it is genuine, unfiltered, then people respond to it.”
Like any art show, this one only highlights a small segment of the artist’s output. The majority of her art is beyond the scope of the show. “I paint ketubahs,” she said. “Most of my commissions are ketubahs. I started making them in high school and still love them. By now, I have done hundreds of them. Recently, I also do digital ketubahs. I would paint by hand, then have the image photographed professionally, and then play with it on the computer: add calligraphy, change colors, customize. I had to learn new software to do that, and my skills are still limited, but I’m learning.”
The courage to combine old materials, ancient art form and new computer skills is what makes Joseph a 21st-century artist. The same modern streak also made her collaborate with an online seller of ketubahs, the Canadian company ketubah.com. “Three of their bestsellers are mine,” she said with a smile.
Alina Smolyansky (photo by Olga Livshin)
She works predominantly in egg tempera, the type of paint that was exclusively used until about 1500, when it was largely replaced by oil paints. Few artists still use egg tempera, but its brightness attracted not only Joseph but also her partner in this show, Smolyansky.
The credit for bringing them together belongs to the gallery director, Linda Lando. “I put them together because I thought that their work has a similar sensibility,” Lando said. The artists didn’t know each other before the show.
Unlike Joseph with her art degree, Smolyansky arrived at this point in her life by a vastly different route. She started her professional life as an engineer in Kiev. Like many Jews during the Perestroika era, she immigrated to Israel and, after four years there, she came to Canada in 1995. She kept working as an engineer, but wasn’t satisfied with her professional life. She felt the need for a change.
“I was searching for myself,” she explained. “I’ve been a dreamer all my life. I liked making up and writing stories and painting watercolors. When I was a child, I attended an art school. I always liked learning, always was an A student. If I could, I would be a permanent student,” she admitted.
To satisfy her craving for knowledge, she studied writing at Douglas College, and then enrolled in the professional communications program at Royal Roads University. She was thinking of a technical writing career, but felt she couldn’t settle.
At about the same time, around 2006, she began studying yoga, and discovered a spiritual path. “I’m not religious,” she said, “but I need to form my own connection to the Creator. I need to understand where we are coming from and where we are going.”
She quit her engineering position and spent some time in Thailand at a yoga school, but an unknown force was still pushing her towards a different goal.
“I was on Granville Island,” she recalled. “It was 2008, and I was looking for some classes to take when I saw this ad for an icon painting class. It was absolutely unexpected. I didn’t know anything about icons, but it seemed I was driven to this class. I took it and I was good from the beginning.”
The class introduced her to egg tempera and to icon paintings, both Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic. “I was fascinated by egg tempera. I haven’t painted watercolors since.”
She stayed with her icon teacher for three years, until he moved out of the city. She still paints icons on commission and she teaches icon painting, occupying a small but exclusive artistic niche in Vancouver. But she didn’t abandon her quest for knowledge. In search of more spiritual learning, she began her studies with Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Research and Education Institute, based in Israel.
The mysticism of kabbalah appeals to her. “My art in this show is influenced by my kabbalah studies, especially the … Zohar,” she said. Her Tree of Life gladdens the eyes, her old scholar contemplates the Jewish destiny and her menorah shines for all.
Ester Rada is at the Imperial on May 2 and McPherson Playhouse on June 19. (photo from Ester Rada)
Ester Rada’s most recent recording, I Wish, was released in March. The EP features Rada’s interpretation of four of her “favorite songs of the great Nina Simone”: “I Wish (I Knew How It Would Feel to be Free),” “Sinnerman,” “Four Women” and “Feeling Good.” Rada takes these classic songs made famous by an iconic singer/songwriter and makes them her own. Chutzpah, in the best sense of the word – which makes it fitting that Rada is being presented in Vancouver by Chutzpah!Plus. She plays the Imperial on May 2.
Rada was born in Kiryat Arba, just outside of Hebron, a year after her parents and older brother immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia as part of Operation Moses in 1984.
“Childhood is an amazing period of time because, as a kid, you see only the good in life, and there is a lot of good growing up in a small town, so life was great,” Rada told the Independent about her younger years. “Only when I look back I realize how strange and unnatural it is to grow up between fences and soldiers and fear from your neighbor.”
Raised in a religious household, Rada was exposed mainly to religious music, as well as Ethiopian, of course. Her mother’s decision to move the family to Netanya when Rada was 10 (her parents had divorced many years earlier) turned out to be pivotal.
“Netanya is a bigger, non-religious city near the sea, no fences and borders,” said Rada. “Drawn to this freedom, I allowed myself to enter the secular world. At the age of 12, MTV and VH1 were the platforms I could get music from, and there I was exposed to Stevie Wonder and Babyface, Boyz II Men, Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu, D’Angelo; their souls entered mine.”
Rada composes, sings and plays multiple instruments. When asked to highlight some of her musical training and/or performing background, she said, “At the age of 10, I was part of Sheba Choir. At the age of 15, my brother bought me my first guitar and I taught myself how to play. At 18, I was recruited to the army as a singer for two years.”
She has lived in Tel Aviv since the age of 21. “It is the best place in Israel,” she said. “The culture and art, music and beauty, freedom and love are the things that took me there.”
Joining Habima Theatre, Rada’s acting career took off before her singing career. She has performed on stage, on television and in film. While she still works in both arts, she admitted, “It’s getting harder combining the two. Last year, I was still acting in the theatre, but when I started touring I had to quit. I still get offers, but I’m not going to do theatre soon – but I’m shooting a movie this summer.”
While she speaks more than one language, Rada sings mainly in English. Her full-length record, Ester Rada – which includes the four songs on her debut solo recording, the EP Life Happens – features all English songs, with the exception of “Nanu Ney.”
“The music I listen to is mainly in English, the first song I wrote at the age of 13 was in English – also, I want to share my love with the whole world and I feel English is an international language,” she explained.
Her music has been described as a fusion, “gracefully combining Ethio-jazz, urban funk, neo-soul and R&B”; “her own blend of ska, reggae, world music, dance beats and jazz.” But Rada told the Independent, “I don’t like to describe it, as there is no one definition. I’m a mix of a lot of things and so is my music. Also, I’m changing all the time, so I believe that the ‘Ester Rada sound’ will change as well.”
Her look certainly has changed over the years, and one can’t help but remark on her unique, keen sense of fashion.
“I’ve always loved beauty,” she said of her style. “I remember myself as a kid wearing my mom’s shoes, clothes and makeup. I love that by wearing different clothes I can become something else.”
And much of her music celebrates such freedom, encouraging listeners to have the courage to explore, to not be afraid, to experience life and to enjoy it. Rada’s musical adventures tell us that she definitely practises what she preaches.
Ester Rada’s 19+ show at the Imperial, 319 Main St., on May 2 starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are $36 (students $25), plus GST and service charge, from chutzpahfestival.com or 604-257-5145. She also is scheduled to perform in Victoria at the McPherson Playhouse (rmts.bc.ca or 1-888-717-6121) on June 19, 7:30 p.m.; tickets are $45/$53.
Tracy Neff (Eliza Doolittle) and Warren Kimmel (Henry Higgins) before the phonetics lessons start. (photo by Tim Matheson)
It was hard not to sing along. In fact, the couple in the row behind me couldn’t stop themselves on more than one occasion. So wonderfully witty and familiar are all of the songs in My Fair Lady, which is playing at Massey Theatre until April 26.
Directed by Max Reimer, the Royal City Musical Theatre production is well worth the trip to New Westminster. If you’re like me, the proposition is daunting. I made an afternoon and evening of it, heading out from Vancouver before rush hour, enjoying a walk along the quay and dinner with friends before heading to the theatre for the 7:30 p.m. show. While it took almost an hour to get to New West, I made it back in about 25 minutes. Granted, that’s about 15 minutes longer than if I had been coming from downtown, but the parking was plentiful and free – and I had longer to sing in the car on the way home, which made the drive seem that must faster.
I had forgotten just how funny are the book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner – even 50ish years after they premièred on Broadway! With the stellar cast enunciating brilliantly, nary a word was lost, and the 22-piece live orchestra and 30-plus cast also gave justice to Frederick Loewe’s music.
Of course, the musical’s origins go back further, more than 100 years, to George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion. Phonetics professor Henry Higgins bets phonetics enthusiast Colonel Pickering that he can take Eliza Doolittle, a street seller of flowers, and transform her: “You see this creature with her curbstone English that’ll keep her in the gutter till the end of her days? In six months, I could pass her off as a duchess at an embassy ball. I could even get her a job as a lady’s maid or a shop assistant, which requires better English.” (In Shaw’s version, the bet is three months to “pass that girl off as a duchess at an ambassador’s garden party.”)
Jewish community members Kathryn Palmer and Jonathan Boudin in the ensemble of Royal City Musical Theatre’s My Fair Lady. (photo by David Cooper)
Led by Warren Kimmel as Prof. Higgins and Tracy Neff as Eliza, there are many standouts in the Royal City production, including John Payne as the charming scoundrel Alfred P. Doolittle, Eliza’s father, and tenor Thomas Lamont as Freddy Eynsford-Hill, who falls for Eliza at the Ascot (her test run as a lady) when she cheers on the horse Dover to win, hollering, “Come on, Dover! Move your bloomin’ arse!” In addition to Kimmel, other Jewish community members involved in the show are Jonathan Boudin and Kathryn Palmer in the ensemble. Both do very well, but Palmer is particularly expressive, standing out as both a flower seller and a maid, very much at ease on stage.
The entire cast seemed to be having a great time on the preview night I attended, good-humoredly negotiating through a couple of technical glitches, including a tough-to-light candle. And the main two sets, which go from being two sides of a London street corner to Higgins’ study when they are turned around and pushed together, are fabulously detailed and necessarily sturdy (the actors must travel to a balcony on one side, a landing on the other), but they must be quite heavy – every time the halves of it slowly came together to form the study, I released a small sigh of relief.
None of this detracted from the performance. In fact, these instances made it seem more intimate, and reminded me of one of the reasons live theatre is so fun to watch. It was a great show. I got lost in the words, music, sets, costumes (gorgeous!). The cast, crew and musicians all deserve kudos – as Pickering says to Higgins after the ball, “Absolutely fantastic.… You did it!”
For tickets ($26-$47) to My Fair Lady at Massey Theatre through April 26, visit masseytheatre.com or call 604-521-5050.
Emma Slipp and Graham Percy in Arts Club’s Farewell, My Lovely. (photo by Benjamin Laird Arts & Photo)
Shadowy figures, damsels in distress, fedoras tilted just below one eye, ex-cons and gunshots galore fill the stage at the Art Club Theatre this month.
Raymond Chandler’s 1940s work Farewell, My Lovely is brought to life with enough campy villainy and “careful, shweetheart” to fill size 11 cement galoshes. And I loved every minute.
A warning though: if you’re used to minimal plotlines, you might want to bring a notepad to keep track of the twists and turns and numerous characters.
Graham Percy brings tough-nut detective Philip Marlowe to life as he investigates the case of a murdered nightclub manager and the missing girlfriend of an ex-con. Hired by the ex-con and pushed into the case by a lazy detective, Marlowe first tracks down Jessie Florian, the nightclub owner’s widow. A sad case, in a scotch-induced stupor, she throws herself at him, then reacts in disdain, then seems to genuinely want to help him.
On what seems to be a different track, but soon turns out to be connected to the original case, Marlowe takes a job for Lindsay Marriott (Anthony Ingram). Marriott wants Marlowe to act as a bodyguard in an exchange of a cash ransom for a rare jade necklace. That ends with Marlowe knocked unconscious, Marriott dead and a new character – Anne Riordan (Emma Slipp), who turns out to be the daughter of a policeman known to Marlowe.
Riordan knows who the owner of the necklace is – a wealthy woman by the name of Helen Grayle (Jamie Konchak). Riordan wants to join Marlowe on the case, and also demonstrates affection for him. At first, he returns her affection but is reluctant to have her involved. He continues his quest, eventually meeting with a psychic named Jules Amthor (also played by Ingram), who is somehow linked to the necklace and is also involved with drugs.
Marlowe visits with Grayle, then reconnects with Florian after she leads him down a dead-end, and then finally ends up looking for clues on an offshore gambling boat. Here is where all the loose ends are tied up, the answer to the case is found and more people are shot.
Aside from the theme of the gruff-but-good detective versus the bad guys, the thread of Marlowe’s love life keeps popping up. Each of the female characters – Florian, Riordan and Grayle – tries to seduce Marlowe. He sympathetically rejects Florian’s drunken flirtations, seems to have something serious for Riordan, but risks it for the flattering attention of the beautiful and seductive Grayle. After the case is done, he ends up with … well, you’ll have to see it for yourself.
While Percy does an admirable job of reprising the well-known hard-boiled detective role, there’s something about his character I didn’t find believable. While he had the lines and the tone right, he came across as having more of the sloppiness of Peter Falk’s Columbo than the alluring and mysterious attractiveness of Humphrey Bogart’s Sam Spade. Perhaps it’s unfair to make the comparison, but I just couldn’t see Percy’s character taking the place of Bogart’s Marlowe opposite Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep.
One thing that did impress me in the Arts Club production was the creative use of the actors rearranging the stage set as needed between scenes, while still staying in character. I also admired the choice to use film sequences projected over the set to add context to the action on stage. Dramaturg Rachel Ditor and stage manager Jan Hodgson deserve kudos for the adaptation and presentation of the performance. Well done, shweethearts.
Farewell, My Lovely runs at the Arts Club Granville Island stage until May 2.
Baila Lazarusis a freelance writer and media trainer in Vancouver. Her consulting work be seen at phase2coaching.com.
New Home, New Hope edutains on aliya and the Soviet Union.
With the themes of Passover still reverberating, I read Aliza Ziv’s book New Home, New Hope (Contento de Semrik, 2014). About a single mother making aliya from the Soviet Union with her two young children, the book is about freedom, being strangers in a new land, becoming part of a community, respecting the past while trying to create a more promising future.
The story centres on Marina, Boris, 9, and Tanya, 4, and their experiences integrating into Israel from 1985 through 1995. It is both a specific and universal tale about immigration, and the challenges and opportunities new immigrants face anywhere in the world. However, the specificity is what most intrigued me. Ziv writes with authority and in detail about both the absorption process in Israel at the time and the political situation there and in Russia during that decade.
“This book was written on the basis of my vast experience teaching new immigrants who came to Israel (olim hadashim),” wrote Ziv in an email to the Independent. “These immigrants had to face a new culture, language, values, and had to adapt themselves to their new homeland.”
Ziv explained that she first published the novel in Hebrew in 2002 with the title Difficulty Beyond Words. “Later on, my husband Joe and I decided to translate it into English. It was published in October 2014, with a new name, New Home, New Hope.”
“The book is also based on what we had to face when we and our three children made our aliya in 1967,” added her husband in a separate email. “Aliza was a shlicha, sent to teach modern Hebrew using the ulpan method. She taught in Halifax, Toronto and, finally, in Vancouver at the Talmud Torah.”
While Aliza was born in Jerusalem, Joe grew up in Vancouver, went to VTT and King Edward High School, and graduated from the University of Alberta. “I was active in Young Judaea, one of the first organizers of Habonim, and one of the founders of Camp Miriam,” he said of his local connections.
The Zivs’ personal experience with immigration comes through in Aliza’s writing. She doesn’t sugarcoat the difficulties of leaving an established life, family and longtime friends and integrating into a new country, having to learn another language, find a home, (re)start a career, build relationships, etc., etc., all the while worrying about those you’ve left behind. And your new fellow citizens must also get used to your presence in their country – immigrants seem threatening to some people, to their job security, their traditional way of life, and Ziv also tackles these issues in her novel.
One particularly interesting scene is a party on a moshav at which the more established Israelis are playing old Russian songs, wondering why the new immigrants aren’t joining in. One of the Israelis explains how the chalutzim (pioneers) “came to build the Jewish homeland, and within them was an integration of socialist and even communist values and concepts. And so they established cooperatives, kibbutzim and moshavim…. We grew up with lots of love of the Russian culture, its music and especially its songs. It is really in our blood.” The new immigrants are not convinced, and one points out that many of these songs “not only have a romantic base but also have an antisemitic and militaristic, murderous one. About Bogdan Khmelnsiky, Simon Petliura, have you heard of them?” The debate continues, and it is these parts of New Home, New Hope that I found the most compelling. (I have since looked up both of these men online.)
From a literary perspective, New Home, New Hope is not one of the best books I’ve ever read, and the formatting and editing is not as clean as it would be if it had been put out by a conventional publishing house, but it is one of the more interesting books I have ever read. Ziv is a good writer and she is a fount of knowledge on topics that many readers would profit from – and enjoy – learning about.
New Home, New Hope is available in both digital (Kindle) and printed formats through Amazon.
