Category: Arts & Culture

The time is right for comedy

Adam Olgui, centre, stars in Theatre in the Raw’s production of Enter Laughing, which opens May 9 at Studio 16. (photo from Theatre in the Raw)

“The show has everything you could ask for: comedy, romance, great music and a great message at the heart of it, without taking itself too seriously,” actor Adam Olgui told the Independent about Theatre in the Raw’s latest production, Enter Laughing.

Enter Laughing opens May 9 at Studio 16. It is directed by Theatre in the Raw artistic director Jay Hamburger.

“It is time,” Hamburger told the Independent, “for this 25-year-old theatre company – that has toured parts of B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba and resided primarily in Vancouver – to do a full-blown comedy: Enter Laughing by Joseph Stein of Fiddler on the Roof fame.

“We just finished producing the intense Incident at Vichy, dealing with the systematic arresting and putting away Jews for ‘processing’ in the occupied part of France during the Second World War, all part of the Holocaust,” explained Hamburger. (See jewishindependent.ca/miller-play-remains-relevant.) “The Stein two-act play is a positive challenge for an independent theatre company to spread its wings and take on a comedy with lots of fun, and universal and Jewish humour inherent in it. The characters are searching for love, relationships and something positive to do with their lives, and there are some wonderful, gentle yet funny, scenes that can melt the heart through very good acting, with the fine talent on board.”

Stein’s play is an adaptation of the 1958 semi-autobiographical novel Enter Laughing by actor, writer and comedian Carl Reiner, said Hamburger. “Reiner co-wrote and acted on Caesar’s Hour and Your Show of Shows, and formed the comedy duo with Mel Brooks for the 2,000-Year-Old Man. He has acted in numerous films, such as The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming. Reiner, at 97, is one of the oldest celebrities still active, and has been honoured countless times, including receiving the Mark Twain Prize for American Humour in 2000.”

Olgui won the lead role of David Kolowitz.

“During the audition process,” he said, “I read for a few different roles including David, Marvin and the Foreman. Auditioning for Jay is always fun because he doesn’t limit himself to ‘traditional casting’ and he approaches the audition process with an open mind. And the same can be said for the rehearsal process as well. Jay is an extremely humble and gracious director and he lets his actors bring their ideas to the table, which isn’t always the case in this industry.”

Olgui described David as “a young guy who dreams of being an actor but he’s caught between the desire to make his parents happy, while also wanting to pursue his passion. David has an eye for the ladies, but he’s got a heart of gold. He’s a storyteller with a bad habit of telling tall tales, but he’s also honest to a fault. All of which makes for some interesting situations along his journey.”

There are several aspects of David’s character and story to which Olgui can relate.

“We’re both young Jewish men pursuing acting careers despite the sticky situations it gets us into. And, while most of David’s situations are stickier than my own, I’ve been in a number of situations that have required a fair bit of explaining and negotiating on my part,” said Olgui. “Like David, I can relate to the late nights, the Jewish mother, the tough family conversations, the proverbial Jewish guilt – all this, and much more, firsthand. But, as wild as the situations sometimes get, at the heart of it, David’s story is that of a young man chasing after his dreams, and I think that’s something anyone and everyone can relate to.”

As a young actor, though, Olgui admitted that he wasn’t that familiar with Reiner’s work before taking on the role in Enter Laughing. “I had seen a few hilarious Sid Caesar skits…. But, being in this play and researching the man behind the character has really given me the opportunity to discover more of Carl Reiner’s works and the comedy legend that he truly is.”

Reiner was an associate of Stein, Brooks, Caesar, Dick Van Dyke and other well-known creative sorts out of New York and Hollywood, said Hamburger. “This play in particular was originally written in the early ’60s and then revised in the mid-’80s and I think it’s a good show to do at the moment,” he said. “It’s our first large comedy production in a long time and, at times, audiences need to laugh and have a bit of comic uplift.”

Hamburger added that Enter Laughing has special meaning for him, as “it was the first professional piece of theatre I did (as an apprentice) way back in the 1960s with the Cleveland Playhouse at their yearly Chautauqua, N.Y., festival. What a wild and crazy and fun play to break into the art performance form as an apprentice.”

As to its continued relevance for today’s audiences, Hamburger said, “With the play Enter Laughing, we get a chance to see a young man in the late 1930s of low income starting to follow a dream he has of becoming an actor. He has an inspiration that he wants to be an actor, though has little to no idea of what even being in a play entails. There are a number of trial and errors that he goes through on his journey to get on the stage with a role in hand, as well wanting to hold onto a girlfriend who has helped him reach beyond his low-income neighbourhood.

“Surely, in 2019, there is many a young person looking for a career or working on a hunch of what truly interests them, and moving forward with what it is they really might want to do. Surely, in 2019, there are young and old peoples who go for their dreams, having little idea of what it all might entail, or how it all might work in terms of the craft or job they seek to do. Yet they take the plunge, learn and enjoy what the craft or business is about and find solace, enjoyment and purpose with that choice(s) in life.”

In sum, Hamburger said Enter Laughing “is a fine story that gives faith and courage to those with dreams, seeking to make their inspirations and likes come true.”

Enter Laughing previews May 8, and runs from May 9 to 19. For tickets, visit theatreintheraw.ca.

Creating pause and reflection

“Wink Wink – Whatcha Looking At?” by Shira Gold.

Shira Gold’s photographs seem to create a break in the space-time continuum. For a moment, the busyness and noise of the world fades away, and the viewer is standing on a beach watching the light and shadows of the clouds over the ocean, or in a snowy field, inhaling the crisp, cool air. A quiet contentment, a sombre joy.

Gold is one of some 30 artists joining the West of Main Art Walk for the first time this year. More than 60 artists will open their homes or studios to the public over the Mother’s Day weekend, May 11-12. Several other Jewish community members are also participating, including Michael Abelman, Olga Campbell, Pnina Granirer, Lauren Morris and Rae Maté, some of whom have been involved from the beginning in what used to be called Artists in Our Midst – Granirer co-founded the walk with Anne Adams in 1993.

“Crissy Arseneau and I were invited to join in by our All Together Collective partner painter Amy Stewart,” Gold told the Independent. “We are reuniting at Amy’s studio on Granville Island for the weekend of the walk. I chose to participate because showing locally is something that is important to me. The walk is a unique way to see the immense talent of creators that live in our city. The types of work being shown will be so diverse, crossing many mediums, and the artists vary from emerging to seasoned Vancouver talent. I also love the idea of being able to visit artists in the spaces they create their work in.”

While there is a preview exhibit and sale on May 9 at the Roundhouse Community Centre, with donated artwork being sold to raise money for Coast Mental Health’s art programs, some artists are raising money for other projects over the weekend. Granirer, for example, is offering her works at 50% off as a fundraiser for Stand Up for Mental Health, which was started by her son, David Granirer, to help reduce the stigma surrounding mental health, among other things. Gold will be selling her fabric-based prints May 11-12, with proceeds going to the Children’s Arts Umbrella Foundation in honour of her mother, Melanie, z’l, “paying tribute to her work in helping shape the school in its early years.”

Growing up, Gold took classes in various visual and performing arts at Arts Umbrella. “I was introduced to photography at Arts Umbrella in my early teens, when they began courses in film photography and darkroom,” she said. “As a child, words and pencils often failed me. Capturing and making images was a way for me to express my view of the world. Having a camera in hand changed the trajectory of my life.”

However, Gold said, “I pushed pause on photography for several years and turned my attention towards fashion design. I worked in design and manufacturing in Montreal, which ended abruptly when my mother was diagnosed with cancer. I took on the role as her caregiver for three years, until her passing. During that time, she and I began to recognize the immense need for patients and caregivers to learn how to engender support around their illnesses, learn advocating strategies and engage in mind/body medical tools to help support a positive mindset through health challenges. We began to develop offerings to meet these needs.

“My mom passed away before this was fully realized. Along with my husband, I gleaned the knowledge through personal experience, as well as course work at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Harvard’s continuing medical classes … to write and complete a workbook/guidebook entitled Choosing Joy’s Empowerment Index. Not long after completing the book, I became pregnant with my first child. It was a time of great introspection. I began to recognize that the pursuit of Choosing Joy was a way for me to keep my mom’s memory alive and not a personal pursuit and decided to change paths. We chose to donate the books created to nonprofits that could share them with people in need.”

photo - “Longing” by Shira Gold
“Longing” by Shira Gold.

About her choice of a new path, Gold said, “Care-giving, grief, new motherhood – those collective experiences reshaped my outlook on how I chose to spend my days and I was ready to begin to deconstruct and share my experiences with others in the hopes of creative dialogue around common issues of struggle and transition. I started my first major body of work – ‘Reflect, Transform, Become’ – as I was preparing to welcome my second child.

“Shot over several years, taking a handful more to complete, the series of 18 women documents the trials and metamorphoses that come with new motherhood, as well as the challenges of experiencing new life without my mother in it,” she said. “This reclaiming of my visual voice shaped my identity as I settled into motherhood. The release of this work was a turning point in my life.”

“Reflect, Transform, Become” has been recognized with honourable mentions from the International Photography Awards and the Julia Margaret Cameron Awards. Her series “Good Grief,” which she describes as “a visual dissertation of my grief journey,” has had selections shown in Italy, Greece, the United States and here in Vancouver. Locals will recognize many of the places Gold has photographed.

“In fact,” she said, “the majority of my work is shot within 10 minutes from my children’s school. Some may perceive the limitations of time and spaces as prohibitive to their creative process, but I like to look at it as an advantage. My reality creates parameters which have enabled me to hone my eye and find moments that are meaningful to me, often minute and fleeting.”

As for the ways in which Judaism or Jewish community influence her approach, Gold said, “I think our culture, our religion, encourages reflection – personal reflection, reflection of our people and their struggles. There are built-in meditative moments in our prayers, in our holidays, in our services, to give us space to look inward. To learn and to digest our past and what has been is a large component of my work. As Jewish people, we actively choose in our times of joy to remember our hardships and, in our times of hardship, to find joy – I am mindful of this as I work and in life.”

In her artist’s statement, Gold writes, “I create portraits rich with emotion, conveying moments saturated by our struggles with grief, identity and change.” But what about the quiet joy that those portraits also convey?

“You are absolutely right,” she acknowledged, “there is pause (stillness) and calm in my imagery. It is intentional; as one who lives my days with a busy mind, there are few things that create pause and reflection. I also have found that, in my grief journey, my mind had made space for pause, for reflection and my world felt very desaturated and vacuous. Those moments were translated in my imagery through the various series documenting my pathways through this terribly difficult process of loss.

“I have been largely directed over the last decade by lyrics of a song by the band Frou Frou – ‘There’s Beauty in the Breakdown.’ Here is a little selection from the song: ‘So let go / And jump in / Oh well whatcha waiting for / It’s all right / ’Cause there’s beauty in the breakdown / (So let go) yeah let go / And just get in / Oh it’s so amazing here / It’s all right / ’Cause there’s beauty in the breakdown.’

“Sometimes, in the deep struggles and darkest moments, beauty abounds. It may shake us and break us down,” she said, “but, if open to it, there is an incredible opportunity to witness the heights of compassion, love, expectance, transformation, connectedness and joy.”

To see Gold’s work and to inquire about purchases and commissions, visit shiragold.com or @shiragoldphotography on Instagram. For the West of Main Art Walk schedule, a preview of this year’s artists and the studio map, go to artistsinourmidst.com.

Complex, funny, beautiful

Dylan Floyde (Willy), left, and Stephen Aberle (Evens) rehearse for Slamming Door Artist Collective’s production of The Sea, which opened May 2 at Jericho Arts Centre. (photo by Michelle Morris)

“Published in 1973, The Sea is fiercely, presciently relevant. [Edward] Bond seems to anticipate David Icke’s mad, xenophobic alien conspiracy fantasies, flat earthers’ denial of gravity, ‘fake news,’ societal upheaval and the potential for devastation – and, through it all, glimmers of hope through stoic resilience, change and growth,” said Jewish community member Stephen Aberle, describing Bond’s play, The Sea.

Slamming Door Artist Collective presents The Sea at Jericho Arts Centre until May 19. It opened last night, May 2.

Director Tamara McCarthy told the Independent that she had seen a production of The Sea at the Shaw Festival in 2014 “and was deeply struck by the complex poetry and stitch-ripping humour, all playing out within a beautiful tragedy.

“There are many current resonances, from Trump to Brexit,” she said. “Interestingly, The Sea debuted in 1973, the same year Britain joined the European Union.”

On a more solemn note, she added, “Eventually, the sea will sweep us all away. Until then, we choose to live in hope or despair. Or both. This play intricately explores these themes.”

The synopsis reads: “A wild storm shakes a small East Anglian seaside village, and Willy is unable to save his friend from drowning. The raving coast guard is too drunk to do anything, Hatch the draper is passing by but he believes that hovering alien spaceships are slowly replacing people’s brains and he refuses to help, while the grande dame, Mrs. Rafi, bastion of respectability, amateur theatricals and velvet curtains from Birmingham, sets her face against the chaos.” The play is set in 1907.

“There are big time echoes of [Shakespeare’s] The Tempest, for sure,” said Aberle. “Storm, shipwreck, collision of worlds and societies, innocence blossoming into love, monsters and a kind of shimmering magic. I would say there’s a strong parallel with the Book of Jonah as well: shipwreck again, and the struggle to find meaning in an often apparently unkind and unfair world. Ecclesiastes, too: ‘the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happens to them all.’”

Aberle plays the character of Evens, who he described as “the grizzled, weathered, often drunken ‘wise fool.’ A bit of the Prospero type, if we want to look at The Tempest connections, with aspects of both Jonah and the big fish, as well. He has withdrawn from society and lives (and drinks, ‘to stay sane’) in a little hut on the beach. It’s said of him in the village that he ‘knows the water round here,’ though, as he points out, ‘… luck and chance come into it. It doesn’t matter how clear the main currents are, you have to live through the details. It’s always the details that make the tragedy….’ The young hero, Willy, comes to him, looking for answers. Whether he finds what he seeks is a question whose outcome you’ll have to watch for.”

“Slamming Door Artist Collective presents classic contemporary works that aren’t otherwise being produced in Vancouver,” said McCarthy. “We provide not only opportunities for our audience to see these plays, but for established and emerging actors and designers to play with us on material they likely wouldn’t have the chance to otherwise.”

Joining Aberle on stage will be Raes Calvert, Genevieve Fleming, Dylan Floyde, Jessica Hood, Elizabeth Kirkland, Cheyenne Mabberley, Michelle Morris, Melissa Oei and Mason Temple. The collective’s members “work professionally in film, television and theatre throughout the Lower Mainland.”

Aberle said he is “overjoyed to be introduced to this play and this playwright.”

“In my experience,” he said,

“Edward Bond is sadly unsung and underproduced – I’d never seen or read any of his work before and it’s delicious. My sense is that, when he came on the scene, he alienated the powers-that-be in British theatre. He’s from the working class and he writes about class alienation, struggle and societal transformation, with sometimes brutal clarity of vision. Apparently, there was nearly a riot when one of his early plays, Saved, was first performed – shouting from the audience and fisticuffs in the lobby.”

For tickets to The Sea, visit theatrewire.com.

Propaganda is all around us

Ai Weiwei is among the artists featured in Propaganda: The Art of Selling Lies, a documentary by Larry Weinstein, which will screen twice during DOXA. (photo from DOXA)

This year’s DOXA Documentary Film Festival lineup includes Propaganda: The Art of Selling Lies, which “explores a diverse range of mediums, from well-recognized symbols of fascist movements, to more subtle forms in political satire and online slander.” Ahead of the festival, veteran filmmaker Larry Weinstein spoke with the Jewish Independent. Propaganda screens twice during the festival, on May 9 and 10.

JI: Can you share a bit about your background a few key moments on your path to being a documentary filmmaker?

LW: I’ve been directing for 35 years and have made close to 40 films in that time. But I actually started in high school and especially became interested in documentary (and propaganda) when I made a film about a slaughterhouse soon after I had become a vegetarian. It was the usual stuff – slow-mo shots of slit jugular veins and unborn calves being ripped from their slaughtered mothers all set to the music of Debussy.

After the film screened in my school, a good percentage of the students became vegetarian and I realized that, with this power to persuade, I wanted to make more documentaries. But, my first professional film 10 years later was quite different and a bit more subtle – Making Overtures: The Story of a Community Orchestra was a film which seemed like a home movie but it did very well, including an Oscar nomination. It set me on the road to a long series of music films, especially those about composers like Ravel, Schoenberg, Falla, Rodrigo, Weill, Beethoven and Mozart. It’s hard to refer to key moments. Each of the films is special to me. I’ve been very lucky.

JI: The topics you’ve covered are wide-ranging, from music and the performing arts to global politics to Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas and the documentary on Maya Farrell. How do you choose your subject matter?

LW: Originally, all my films were music based but, more recently, I’ve made three sports-based films. The latest, The Impossible Swim, is on three generations of marathon swimmers and was co-directed with my filmmaker daughter, Ali – something very special for me.

photo - Filmmaker Larry Weinstein
Filmmaker Larry Weinstein (photo from DOXA)

Our Man in Tehran is a documentary about the 1979 hostage crisis that corrects the inaccuracies of Argo; Inside Hana’s Suitcase is [a] Holocaust film. But, to tell you the truth, many of the music films also deal with history, with science, with politics, with culture and they are quite varied in form as well as content. Many of the films have come out my own dreams and interests. Many have been suggested by broadcasters and other sources, but those must also become internalized and feel like they come from me before I can really proceed with them.

JI: Propaganda has existed since humans appeared on earth. The DOXA blurb asks, “How do we know what we know?” But is it possible to not sell a specific perspective, if not a lie. Someone’s truth is another’s lie? What’s your diagnosis of the problem and do you have a suggested remedy? Or is propaganda a problem that can never be solved?

LW: Propaganda has indeed existed from the beginning. It was born along with the birth of art, of language, of spiritual thought. Orwell said that all art is propaganda. That’s debatable but probably accurate.

Propaganda is mind-control. It’s not necessarily sinister but I subtitled the film The Art of Selling Lies because I was in a bad mood, often reading Trump’s tweets first thing in the morning, fed up with his lies. Nothing he says is the truth; seeing that he was directly inspired by rhetoric of Stalin and by the speeches of Hitler. But propaganda is everywhere – it surrounds us and seems to be flung at us exponentially with social media – whether politically, socially, economically, religiously, too. We are fed lies and untruths from the moment we are born. Coke tastes good. You want a Barbie doll. You want a Corvette. This political party will save you; that one will destroy you. Religion is your salvation. There is an omnipotent, omniscient God who loves you but you’re [screwed] if he’s angry. All that stuff. Lies. Propaganda.

The remedy? Think about what you are being force-fed. Be rational about it. Propaganda feeds on emotion, on your fears, on your anxiety, on your superstitions. Resist and don’t accept crap just because somebody says it’s true, when it’s obviously questionable.

Propaganda screens May 9, 8:30 p.m., at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, and May 10, noon, at Vancity Theatre. The May 10 screening is part of Rated Y for Youth and includes a post-film discussion. Tickets to DOXA can only be purchased online: doxafestival.ca. For more information about the festival, which runs until May 12, call 604-646-3200.

JCC celebrates Israeli culture

The outdoor fair features live entertainment. (photo by Galit Lewinski)

The Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver invites the entire community to its annual JCC Festival Ha’Rikud. The theme this year is “Seasons of Israel,” with a variety of programs to inspire, inform and entertain visitors. The highlight of the month-long celebration, which runs May 9-26, will be the outdoor community fair.

Beginning at noon on Sunday, May 12, the JCC parking lot will be transformed into an Israeli street fair with food trucks offering shwarma, falafel, vegan Middle Eastern choices and other popular treats; a marketplace (shuk); live music performances; family activities; dancing and more. Admission is free and everyone is welcome.

photo - Israeli culinary journalist Gil Hovav will give a presentation
Israeli culinary journalist Gil Hovav will give a presentation. (photo from JCC)

For Israeli dance lovers, there will be two shows in the Rothstein Theatre, at 1 and 3 p.m., featuring Orr Vancouver dancers and visiting performers from Mexico and Miami. For foodies, there will be a presentation at 5 p.m. by Gil Hovav, a leading Israeli culinary journalist, author, TV personality and speaker.

Other festival events include a group art exhibition in the Zack Gallery, which opens May 9; Israeli recreational dance workshops May 10-12, hosted by the Vancouver Israeli Folk Dance Society; an evening of poetry inspired by the artwork in the gallery, on May 16; and an Israeli song sing-along on May 26. Visit israelifestival.com for the complete schedule.

 

The Ornithologist

Raizel does not like to leave her apartment during the long, cold, season. She sits perched at the windowsill, torn bits of challah portioned beside her on the ledge, waiting for her feathered friends. A robin’s egg blue pashmina draped loosely across her thin shoulders.

On the Esplanade below, her neighbour Malka is carrying grocery bags on her way back from St-Viateur. It’s almost Shabbat and she is hurrying home to prepare the flanken, matzo ball soup and lokshen kugel. Raizel, on the other hand, makes cholent. She has everything she needs. Sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less.

Before Abe passed, Raizel would prepare a proper erev Shabbat meal; never went without kreplach or tzimmes. Now, she doesn’t even light the candles. There’s no one to say the brachah with, no one to make Kiddush. It’s all too quiet. She goes to bed early. When the children call, she’s taken the phone off the hook; doesn’t want them to know she’s alone in the dark.

In the morning, Raizel props open the bay window and rolls over the heavy oak desk chair. The one Abe sat in for 62 years preparing client accounts and tax returns; the threadbare cushion still warm. She picks up the binoculars, placing her elbows firmly on the ledge, and straightens her arthritic back. The air is fresh. A light snow is falling. The parade of black-capped chickadees, blue jays and purple finches remain hidden until she drizzles sesame seeds and the bread along the sill. But, today, she is looking elsewhere. They will have to wait.

Scanning the park, past the wrought iron fencing and its pointy spires, and past the rose garden buried under tufts of snow, she spots Malka. And Chaim, trailing close behind. A pleasure to see him. Raizel first began to notice Chaim only after her daughter bought her the binoculars, “to give her something to look at,” her daughter had said, “since she was refusing to go out.”

At first, Raizel thought she must be imagining things, thought maybe she should call Dr. Lipschitz to make an appointment. But, no, it was him. Chaim would swoop down close behind Malka, a few feet off the ground, his arms gently flapping, like a midnight black crow. He would accompany Malka as she walked along the stone pathway, always just as far as the gate leading onto Fairmont Avenue. And he would be dressed for the season: pastel peach plumage in summer and shimmering black feathers fringed with vanes of barbs in winter; how did he know?

Raizel and Abe had gone to the funeral, they went to the shivah, they consoled Malka and her children; there was no doubt, Chaim was gone. But now, here, there he was, fawning over Malka all over again, her constant companion. Raizel had been curious how it was that Malka couldn’t see Chaim, didn’t seem to even know he was there. No hidden smile, no look back, no small wave. Nothing. So, it was strange when Malka started spending so much time promenading around in the park, no matter the weather, or time of day.

Raizel felt a little chilled. She had been watching them for nearly an hour. She pushed the window closed and began to set the table for lunch. Cholent. It would warm her up.

Before sitting down to eat, Raizel picked up the binoculars again and scanned the apartment. Would she be so lucky? Would it be one or two for lunch today?

Karen Schauber is a family therapist practising in Vancouver. Her earlier writing is non-fiction and details three decades of psychosocial and analytical cases. Flash fiction is a new adventure for her, and her work has been published in literary magazines and anthologies, including Brilliant Flash Fiction, Bending Genres, CarpeArte, Ekphrastic Review, Flash Boulevard and Blood Puddles: An Anthology. The upcoming Group of Seven Flash Fiction anthology, celebrating the Canadian modernist landscape painters, is her first editorial flash venture. Schauber manages vancouverflashfiction.weebly.com and can be reached at karenschauber.weebly.com.

Israeli music icon sings here

Yoni Rechter will be in Vancouver to perform for Yom Hazikaron and Yom Ha’atzmaut. (photo from Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver)

“I love to know the world through music, and music has brought me to many places …. When I come and play and then I also make connection with the place, I prefer it to being the usual tourist. So, I’m glad I have the opportunity to come back to Canada after so many years … especially to Vancouver, that I heard so much about it,” Yoni Rechter told the Jewish Independent in a phone interview.

Rechter headlines the community Yom Ha’atzmaut celebration May 8 at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts. While he has toured around the world, he hasn’t ever performed outside of Israel on Israel’s Independence Day. So, why now?

“There are two artists,” he said, “who were previously in this concert – Nurit Galron [2013] and Shlomi Shaban [2018] – they are both friends of mine, I work with them. Each one of them told me how nice it was to be there at the Yom Ha’atzmaut event, so I got good recommendations.”

Since he wrote his first song more than 50 years ago, Rechter has become a virtual icon of Israeli music. The composer, pianist, singer and arranger has created music for solo performances, bands, theatre, film, symphony, dance and opera. He has more than a dozen albums and has collaborated with a large portion of the who’s who of the Israeli cultural arts scene. Yet, he remains humble.

“I worked with the right people. I mean, people that I had the opportunity to learn from them, from the beginning of my musical career,” he said of his success. “I was first in the group Kaveret – you know, Poogy? By the way, we performed in Canada in ’76. We were in Montreal and Toronto and Winnipeg, and I still remember the temperature in Winnipeg. I think it was in winter; it really was the lowest temperature I ever felt. Anyway, then I worked with Arik Einstein, then I worked with Yossi Banai … and then I had the opportunity to work with very important theatre directors, like Hanoch Levin, Nissim Aloni and Miki Gurevich, and, also in movies. Because this is a small country, if you are willing to work, you can do various musical activities…. I had a lot of people to learn from, and really great, great artists.”

He said Israel is different than the United States or Canada with regard to the concept of celebrity. In Israel, he said, “We grew up very simply, and I go every day to swim. It’s not that I live in a protected house and I have bodyguards. It’s not this type of culture in Israel, first of all, but still there are people in Israel who might use their publicity for power or this kind of thing, but my character, I feel that I’m a musician, it’s the music and not me…. I feel that I have what to say in my music, but I never speak about myself; nobody knows about my wife, about my children, my private life. I’m really not into doing something with it, and it’s many years like this, but, I must confess, that I’m also not required by people or by journalists to speak about my personal life. Really, people accept me as I am.”

Rechter almost didn’t become a musician. When he was about to go into the army, at age 18, his father had what was probably the biggest architecture firm in Israel at the time. Even though his parents separated when Rechter was very young and he didn’t live with his father, he said it was a big decision as to whether to follow in his father’s footsteps. But, also, he said, music came easily to him.

“You know, I was just sitting at the piano and I composed, everything flowed, so I thought maybe life should be more difficult, and I should go to places that are more requiring of effort,” he said. “And this feeling I had, I was sure I was going to be an architect, but, in the army, I played in a military group of the artillery … and, when I finished the army, I thought to go to study architecture but then I got a telephone call from the members of what was going to be Kaveret group (Poogy group), and they called me for an audition. I heard the music and I fell in love. In the end, it came out to be [that I became] pianist of this group and a member of this group that changed … my career…. I have a brother who continues my father’s legacy.”

As to music and the projects he takes on, Rechter said there are a couple of factors he considers, notably the seriousness of the request and whether he has something to contribute musically. He gave the example of the Israeli Opera, who asked him to create a work for them, which will play again next year. He based the opera, Schitz, on the play by Levin.

“To write an opera,” he said, “it’s a year of 12-hours-a-day work; it’s really very [intensive]. It was an 80-minute opera, symphonic – I made all the arrangements and orchestration and I worked with the singers; it’s a huge work. It takes one year to do it, so, the first condition is that I know the project is serious.

“I have to find the right text,” he added, “because I really connect it to lyrics, to text, and I feel I have something to say in this. It’s a process. So, I start to improvise on this and I see if I have something to say musically. And, when I feel it’s all connected, I start to work on it. For example, the other [opera] … it was by David Grossman. Itamar Pogesh Arnav, it’s called, Itamar Meets a Rabbit. It’s a for-children opera, we made it with the Israeli Philharmonic. Of course, David Grossman, I knew he’s a very interesting man and I can find a way to connect with him, to communicate.”

Rechter said it is hard to define “Israeli music.” From the state’s inception through the 1970s, he said, “before the great internet and … we became one global ‘forum’ … [Israel] developed its own voice, which was, I would say, influenced by Russian music, from the immigrants that came, and also by music from the east, from Sinai, from Jordan, from all our neighbours. I think I grew up with influences of this spirit – sometimes I liked it, sometimes I didn’t like it. It depends on the people; for example, there was Sasha Argov, who was a very famous composer, and I really liked his music, which was very rich harmonically. Today, I think, after this explosion of communication, I don’t think it’s different from other places.”

That said, Rechter singled out some Israeli jazz performers, like Avishai Cohen, who is now based in New York, and others. “So, there is something here,” he said. “I think that living under pressure all the time [has something to do with it] … your life, all the time, is in danger because you don’t know when the next missile will fall in Tel Aviv. In my life, it has happened already two or three times…. Last week, there was one missile or two that fell near Tel Aviv. So, our life is, all the time, not protected, in a way. I believe it influences in a positive way our art, because we make art – all the Israeli artists – like you must survive. It gives us some very different energy than Europe, that used to be very calm.” He said, “The good artists that are serious become very known in the world [outside of] Israel.”

Music is important, said Rechter, “because it, especially in this time, I think that music should be a messenger. It has a task, and the task is to bring people back to real feeling, to themselves, to touch their souls, their energy, their spirit. Music is a force of nature, something that comes out of real creativity, at its best. Sometimes, I go to a concert and I cry from the music, it touches me so deeply. And that’s what I want to make. I don’t want to be somebody who’s going there to make lots of money; it doesn’t interest me. I want to touch people and, when it happens, for me, it’s the best prize.”

Rechter is coming to Vancouver with a band, “all of them Israeli, who live in New York” – singer Tammy Scheffer, saxophonist and player of multiple woodwinds Eitan Goffman, guitarist Shahar Mintz, bassist Uri Kleinman and drummer Shay Wetzler. “I sent them all the notes and the recordings of what I plan to play in Vancouver,” he said. “They’ll practise and we’ll meet at the beginning of May for two rehearsals n Manhattan.”

The audience at the Chan Centre can expect some of their favourites, said Rechter.

“I started to write songs when I was like 14, because of the Beatles,” he said. “I fell in love with the Beatles…. The first songs [of mine] were written in this age. I think the most famous song was – there is a song called ‘Dma’ot Shel Mal’achim,’ ‘Angels’ Tears.’ It became a song of memorial, and I wrote it in high school … with my friend who was sitting near me, his name is Danny Minster, he wrote the lyrics and I wrote the music. I tell this to you because I will sing it in Vancouver at the Yom Hazikaron memorial.”

Rechter will perform just the one song at the memorial May 7, 7:30 p.m., at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver. On Yom Ha’atzmaut, May 8, 7:30 p.m., at the Chan Centre, he will perform more than 20.

Presented by Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, Yom Ha’atzmaut is supported by 46 community partners, with the Jewish Independent as the media sponsor and Georgian Court Hotel as the hotel sponsor. For the first time, there will be a party after the concert, though there is limited space available and only guests who attend the Yom Ha’atzmaut celebration may purchase tickets to the party. Visit jewishvancouver.com/yh2019.

The power of resilience

Ballet BC dancers Scott Fowler and Parker Finley in rehearsal for the company’s final program of the season, which features all Jewish community choreographers. (photo by Michael Slobodian)

Ballet BC concludes its season May 9-11 with Program 3, featuring all Jewish community choreographers: Israel’s Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar, Vancouver’s Serge Bennathan and Israel’s Ohad Naharin.

Program 3 begins with the North American première of Eyal and Behar’s Bedroom Folk and concludes with the return of Naharin’s Minus 16, a crowd-pleaser that Ballet BC presented in 2017. The middle piece, by Bennathan, is a world première, commissioned by Ballet BC.

“Emily Molnar invited me to create a work for the company,” Bennathan told the Independent in a phone interview. “That’s it. All the rest is for me to create what I want for them.”

Given that leeway by Molnar, Ballet BC’s artistic director, Bennathan said he wanted to create a work for all the dancers.

“I’m so in love with the company that I felt it will be wonderful to have them all, mostly for the kind of work I do,” he said.

“When I create work, whatever it is, for my company or another company, I always say I like to have the group of people that are strong individuals that make sense together,” he explained. “That is exactly what the company is right now. If you take Ballet BC now – individually, they are quite fantastic, each of their personalities, they’re fine, but they make so much sense together. That’s the beauty of it.”

Bennathan was born in France and came to Canada more than 30 years ago. Artistic director of Toronto’s Dancemakers from 1990 to 2006, he then came to Vancouver, where he founded Les Productions Figlio.

“My work, I would say, is quite physical, but my point of departure is to work from the energy. Not the energy being exuberant or something like that, but the energy that makes you move. So, you have to be present in the moment with your body and move from inside…. You have to find it in yourself to move.”

Bennathan has created many full-length works, both for his own companies and others, and he has a long history with Ballet BC.

“My first-ever commission was the first time I came to Vancouver. Reid Anderson was the artistic director,” he said. “I had just arrived in Canada. I was a young immigrant and I was doing work here in Vancouver and they saw my work and they invited me to create. The first-ever piece was a duet. And then, throughout the years, the invitations kept coming, so I created.”

Set to an original score by Montreal-based composer Bertrand Chénier, Bennathan shared a little about next month’s première, as well as his creative process.

“It’s [about] how do you find the form of resilience. How do you sustain that [thing] that keeps your head above water? That’s what it is,” he said of the work.

“Before I create the piece with dancers, I spend time [on my own] – I paint, I sew and I write and I explore these ideas that come to me through painting; not to paint movement … but to try to extract what it means in a poetic way. So, when I ‘write,’ in the studio with the dancers, what happens is, when I choreograph, I don’t think about the piece. I let my body talk because I believe that the mounds and mounds and mounds that I read – like, for this one, I read a lot of poetry, I painted, I wrote poetry – when I’m in the studio with them, I just let my body talk when I choreograph. And then they grab it. But this is only the beginning. After that, there is another period. I don’t want them to do exactly what I did. The movement can transform itself – what needs to stay true is the essence of why we did this movement at the beginning.”

For Bennathan, dance is more than an art form.

“I left my family quite early, I was 14 years old. Let’s say, my life was taking a direction that, deep inside me, I knew it was not the direction I wanted to take. I want to say [that] to people because, sometimes we see a lot of youth and we say, ‘Oh, you should get out of this, or you should do this …’ but the fact is, sometimes, mostly when you are young, you are taken into a spiral and you cannot get out. And, if you do not have the opportunity, or create yourself the opportunity, to lead you to someone that can tell you a word or a phrase that will change you or offer something you can open the door to, you are in a terrible situation, you cannot get out. I was able to have this in my life and … at 14, I said, ‘OK, I’m going to leave this, I’m going to Paris, I’m going to study dance, and that’s what I want to become, a dancer. This saved me, literally. I needed to do this to get out of a situation I didn’t want for me.”

Bennathan described dancers as “courageous, at all levels; not courageous just to apply themselves physically – because it’s there, they have the courage to abandon themselves into this art form – but, at the same time, to live as a dance artist. And, even more in our days, you have to be courageous, you have to have resilience.”

He said he can’t just invite talented dancers from other parts of the country to come work with him here because Vancouver has become so expensive. “Young artists or young families cannot come live here anymore. That’s the thing. And you have to be courageous to say, ‘OK, I’m going to come.’… These days, you don’t just say, ‘Oh, I’m going to live in Vancouver.’”

Bennathan believes in the power of dance, and art in general, to improve the world.

“A lot of people say ‘art can save the world,’ but why can you say that? It’s because we need the inspiration, we need poetry in our lives. Sometimes, poetry, these days, is dismissed. We so forget the importance of the inspiration of poetry in our day-to-day lives. There is a reason, not only in North America, but everywhere in the world right now … why cynicism is the most important thing…. It’s because we left all this – whether it’s writing poetry, written poetry or dance or music – we stop these art forms at the door instead of inviting them into our lives.” If we did invite them in, he said, “we would talk differently and we would start to see things differently.”

Program 3 is at Queen Elizabeth Theatre May 9-11, 8 p.m., and Ballet BC will celebrate 10 years with Emily Molnar as artistic director with a reception after the closing performance on May 11. For tickets to the performances, visit balletbc.com. Tickets for the reception are available via eventbrite.ca.

Defending a neo-Nazi

Kenton Klassen, left, and John Voth co-star in Pacific Theatre’s production of Cherry Docs. (photo by Dylan Hamm)

I often wonder, as a lawyer and the child of a Holocaust survivor, if I would be able to defend a skinhead charged with a racist crime. Can a person shut off their emotions and take on a case that is at odds with their moral compass?

This is the premise of Cherry Docs, a two-hander playing at the Pacific Theatre until April 28. Playwright David Gow penned the piece in 1998 as a response, in part, to the homophobic attack by a group of skinheads on his university friend and, in part, to his Jewish Belgian family’s Holocaust experiences.

“I wanted to explore and come to terms with my own anger at seeing young people dressed as Nazis and adopting Nazi thinking 50 years after the end of a war that killed so many millions,” Gow told the Jewish Independent. “Now, 70-odd years later, we seem to have more neo-Nazis than ever before. It looks far, far worse today than in 1998, when someone could (and did) say with a straight face, are you sure this is a problem? It was not good in 1998. Now, of course, it is a problem of epic, international proportions.”

Cherry Docs has been produced globally, including a long run in Germany, where, said Gow, “the critical reception … was extremely detailed, extremely well-written, unlike anything we see in North America, even from, say, the New York Times, in terms of depth and breadth of commentary and analysis. The play ran for something like seven years in rep in Berlin. Two distinct productions have been done in Tel Aviv over the years, and maybe two in Jerusalem.”

As well, he added, “productions in Poland ran for 13 years. One Polish production went to Beijing for an international theatre festival and, there, it played with Chinese subtitles, so, an English Canadian play in Polish and Chinese, in China.”

The success of the play and its international acclaim led Gow to adapt the story for the big screen. Its cinematic debut came in 2006, as Steel Toes. It won several awards on the film festival circuit.

In the two-actor play, which features John Voth as Danny Dunkelman and Kenton Klassen as Mike Downey in the Pacific Theatre production, Danny is a Jewish legal aid lawyer who has been assigned the task of defending Mike Downey, a 20ish, tattooed skinhead, who is charged with murder in the stomping death of a Pakistani fast food worker in a back alley in downtown Toronto. The play’s title represents Mike’s pride and joy, his steel-toed, cherry red Doc Marten combat boots, which he is wearing when he commits his hate-motivated crime. The rationale for Mike’s unprovoked, drunken attack is his perception of the decline and fall of white male supremacy as brought on by what he sees as unchecked immigration, reverse discrimination for employment opportunities and a ZOG (Zionist occupation government) conspiracy of the Jewish elite.

Mike has been indoctrinated into the white racist youth movement and recites antisemitic clichés with ease and conviction. He is a proud foot soldier for the Aryan resistance movement. He goads Danny on by saying, “In an ideal world, I would see you eliminated, but I need you. I know you will do a good job for me, as you are a Jewish liberal thinker, a humanist, who believes in checks and balances in the system.”

Mike insists that he be tried for his crime, which he admits – although he says he did not intend to kill the victim – as an individual. “Try me,” he says, “not the skinhead ideology.”

Danny aggressively challenges high school-dropout Mike to formulate a convincing defence strategy, taking him through “the eye of a needle” in an effort to make him stand up and be accountable for his actions.

photo - John Voth, left, and Kenton Klassen co-star in Pacific Theatre’s production of Cherry Docs
John Voth, left, and Kenton Klassen co-star in Pacific Theatre’s production of Cherry Docs. (photo by Dylan Hamm)

The two travel their own paths of discovery through the seven months of legal proceedings. Mike’s journey leads him to a path of redemption, while Danny struggles. Danny must confront not only his violent dislike for his client, but his own racism; in doing so, he explores his Judaism and its tenets of atonement and forgiveness.

The biblical names of the characters Daniel (in the lions’ den) and Michael (the archangel) suggest an allegory, “A battle from above played out here,” said Gow. As the story unfolds, we see the impact that two ideologically opposite humans can have on each other, and that Danny is no saint and Mike no devil.

All of the action takes place in the prison, where Mike is being held in administrative segregation. The style – alternating monologues from the protagonists followed by intense bouts of verbal sparring – and the sparse set (two chairs and a table) are appropriately stark for the subject matter and the intimate theatre space. The costumes also are uncomplicated – Mike’s prison jumpsuit and Danny’s business attire. Subtle lighting and sound cues complete the atmosphere.

Klassen is superb in his portrayal of Mike. At the opening night reception, he shared with the Independent that he had prepared for the role by talking to a reformed neo-Nazi skinhead, which gave him insight into his character. While Voth is solid as the defence attorney, he is not as engaging as Klassen.

Two particular scenes bear mention. In one, the two actors stand at opposite ends of the stage, just breathing and looking at each other with no words spoken – the silence is more powerful than any dialogue. In the second, Mike sits alone on the stage, repeatedly opening and closing a lighter, his face mirrored in the glow of the flame – again, the silence says it all. Kudos to director Richard Wolfe for bringing all the parts of this production together into a riveting whole.

As for another reason why audiences should come to see the play, Gow said, “It is highly entertaining, and that is why it has attracted tens of thousands of audience members. The best-known actor associated with the play has said, ‘It will recalibrate your soul.’ I am not sure about that, but certainly thought-provoking, I believe … not an average play, in any case.”

Cherry Docs is, indeed, a thought-provoking play, whose themes remain timely and relevant. It is difficult to perform and a brave choice for Cave Canem Productions and Pacific Theatre – it is both a visceral and intellectual experience, suitable for older teens and up, as it contains mature subject matter, violence and profanity. For tickets, call 604-731-5518 or visit pacifictheatre.org.

Tova Kornfeld is a Vancouver freelance writer and lawyer.

Responding to the landscape

“ReView 2” by Ian Penn.

Ian Penn is not a new name for regular visitors to the Zack Gallery, which has exhibited his work before. “I like this gallery,” Penn told the Independent. “It’s like a public marketplace. It’s transparent and open. Children come in. Older people. People on the way from their lunch or the gym. The gallery is accessible, the way art should be. I could show at a traditional gallery, but I don’t want to.”

Penn makes one exception to this statement – for his homeland, Australia. “I have a gallery in Australia that represents me, and I exhibit there frequently, once or twice a year,” he said. “Last year, I was an artist-in-residence at that gallery. I gave artistic workshops to high school children. It was fun.”

His current exhibition at the Zack, From the Deck: View and ReView, is dedicated to landscapes, specifically the scenery he sees from the deck of his house: trees and mountains, water and clouds. Penn has painted these landmarks in different lights and different seasons. “I tried to capture different moods,” he said. “Some are grand, panoramic. Others are smaller, more intimate.”

He explained his idea behind the show. “View and re-view are two parts of the process. I look at the view from my house deck, have been looking at it for years. I enjoy the landscape from a single view. I take photographs. I sketch it multiple times. It’s my immediate response to the landscape. I’m part of it. I’m mapping it. This is ‘View,’ but it is not the territory, just a map. It is my understanding of the place.”

Penn’s View paintings are more abstract, sometimes just splashes of colour. What is important to the artist is that every element appears in the right size and shape in relation to the other elements. “I measure all the distances at this stage and mark the proportions. How far is this treetop from that ship passing through? How large are these bushes compared to that shoreline? I make lots of drawings.”

The second part of the process, the review, is done in the studio, later. “This is the second part of my response,” he explained. “I’d think: what is important in that idea? A ‘ReView’ is my emotional and physical answer to the ‘View’ and the landscape. It’s all about the place itself, the place and the painting. At this stage, I’m recreating the territory.”

photo - Ian Penn at the opening of his latest solo exhibition at the Zack Gallery, which runs until April 28
Ian Penn at the opening of his latest solo exhibition at the Zack Gallery, which runs until April 28. (photo by Olga Livshin)

Unlike the bold brush strokes of his Views, most of his ReViews are more detailed, while still exploring the same landscape. And the ratio of abstract versus figurative slants towards the figurative. “I’m interested where representation and abstraction interact,” he admitted.

In his ReViews, a tree becomes a more detailed tree, not just a blob of yellow, even while maintaining its impressionistic abstract profile. A ship becomes more identifiable as a ship, not simply a dark squiggle. And a cloud can’t be mistaken for anything else.

In fact, clouds play a huge role in most of the paintings on display: light and fluffy in one image, heavy and menacing in another. “Clouds change constantly; that’s why they interest me. I’m fascinated by change, by periods of transition,” said Penn. “That’s why most of these paintings are done in spring or autumn. Those are the seasons of change. In summer, the landscape is full and the sky is clear, but, with autumn, comes change. The colours of the leaves change. When the leaves fall, the shapes of the trees change. The bones of the landscapes are transformed. The weather changes. Same in spring. By exploring those changes, I’m addressing the changes in our lives.”

By the juxtaposition of constant change within the same view – from one location – Penn follows in the footsteps of one of his favourite artists, Paul Cezanne. “I studied Cezanne. He painted Mont Sainte-Victoire countless times, all different,” Penn said. “He changed the landscape genre forever, took it apart and re-created it.”

Penn’s investigation of the landscape as an art form goes further. “A traditional landscape is horizontal, with certain set dimensions,” he explained. “I’m challenging those dimensions, trying landscapes of different formats. A portrait shape. A diptych, which is much wider than a traditional landscape. I’m playing with different geometry. What if the two parts of a diptych are of different widths: one square, another a wider rectangle? What if both parts are off-squares?”

Penn’s experiments with the shapes of his paintings, with the changing of weather and seasons, makes the show diverse. The exhibition demonstrates the richness of landscape as an art form.

“Landscape as we know it is relatively new in the modern Western art,” he said. “Before the Renaissance, landscape was mostly a background for figures in the composition. It only became a separate art form in the 16th and 17th centuries, after the paint tubes became small enough that artists could take them out of the studios, to paint on locations. That was what the Group of Seven did. That is what I do.”

Penn’s show runs until April 28 at the Zack. For more information about his work, visit ianpenn.com.

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