Alien Contagion: Rise of the Zombie Syndrome tasks audiences with finding a downed UFO that has crashed on earth. Virtual Stage’s interactive adventure runs to Nov. 1. (photo from Virtual Stage)
For anyone who has dreamed of saving the world, now’s your chance. All you have to do is take part in Virtual Stage’s Alien Contagion: Rise of the Zombie Syndrome, which runs until Nov. 1.
Several shows have already sold out, with people keen to take on their mission. “This year, audiences are tasked to respond to a highly confidential NASA report about a downed unidentified flying object that has crashed on earth. The exact location is unknown,” reads the promotional material. “To add to the mystery, the alien pilot is reportedly injured, has escaped and is hiding in Vancouver. Furthermore, every NASA official sent to locate the UFO has returned in a zombie-like state … brave and adventurous audience members must find the downed spacecraft, quell the nearby zombie uprising and, ultimately, save the human race from the brink of extinction.”
This is the fourth annual interactive, smartphone-enabled theatre experience produced for the Halloween season by Virtual Stage.
“The idea originated four or five years ago after I went to the West End in London, England, to see a bunch of theatre,” creator Andy Thompson told the Independent. “I saw all sorts of plays in many different styles of venues. I went to very fancy theatres. I went to small, edgy, Fringe-type theatres. I was even lucky to witness rare performances including Kevin Spacey playing Richard III, as well as the ‘real-life’ theatrical event of Rupert Murdoch getting pied in the face in the British House of Commons.
“The most engaged I felt as an audience member, however, was during an interactive play called The Accomplice. It took place on the streets of London and involved the audience being endowed as key figures in an adventure to recover stolen loot. It was so much fun! The piece was basically a crime drama, but I wondered how a horror-genre show could use a similar format. Add to the mix my interest in technology and smartphones and I quickly developed an idea for a smartphone-enabled, site-specific, roving, zombie-themed theatre adventure with audience members tasked with saving the world.”
Thompson said the series, which premièred in 2012, wasn’t meant be an annual event. “It was a huge creative risk ‘one-off’ event and I thought it could easily flop,” he said. “Needless to say, it came as quite a pleasant surprise when the show was so well received, selling out almost shortly after we opened. People just loved it. After I realized the popular appeal, I looked at how it could be designed as an annual series that is completely new each year.”
This is not Thompson’s first foray into science fiction. The Jewish community member’s credits include – but are in no way limited to – the three previous Zombie Syndromes, SPANK!, 1984 (an adaptation of George Orwell’s novel) and the sex-comedy musical Broken Sex Doll, which featured original music by fellow Jewish community member Anton Lipovetsky, as well as episodes of TV’s Fringe.
“It is so much fun to imagine the seemingly endless possibilities in the universe,” said Thompson about his interest in science fiction. “I often contemplate our reality on planet earth, which often feels like a far-fetched science fiction story idea. Consider: we are on a small planet, whipping through space, revolving around a star. Our star is merely one of billions of stars in the Milky Way galaxy. And, if that’s not all, there are billions of galaxies in the universe. So, by my rough math, that means there are at least 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the universe. Earth and our existence seem extremely small when put into this perspective. And that’s just when we look at ‘third-dimensional’ reality. I am convinced that there are tangible, intelligent realities on other vibrational frequencies that we are unaware of. Like the sound of a dog whistle, humans are just not currently attuned to be aware of them. Without a doubt, what Shakespeare said in Hamlet is certainly true: ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’
“Life is pretty mind-blowing when you really think about it. Science fiction allows us to imagine the possibilities. And, half the time, because our existence is so vast, we get to explore far-fetched ideas that cannot be definitively refuted. To me, it’s a great deal of fun.”
And a great deal of work. Alien Contagion: Rise of the Zombie Syndrome features “about 45 performers this year, as well as about a dozen crew and designers,” said Thompson. “The logistics are mind-numbing, but we have a great team and a lot of experience under our belts. We generally start planning the show a year in advance. Things progressively kick into higher gears over the spring and summer. The storylines are often collaborative. This year, my stepson Finn [Ghosh-Leudke] co-authored the story with Tyler Clarke and myself. I then wrote the script based on that story.”
The show is fully wheelchair accessible. However, it is rated PG-13 because of the subject matter, and children under 13 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian. For tickets and more information, visit thevirtualstage.org/tickets.
Camille Legg as Romeo, left, and Adelleh Furseth as Juliet share an intimate moment in Studio 58’s Romeo and Juliet. (photo by David Cooper)
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is such a well-known play, done so many times on stage and on screen, it’s hard to imagine an original interpretation, but Studio 58 of Langara College manages to shine new light on this ageless tale.
This production marks the beginning of the studio’s 50th season and director Anita Rochon has incorporated that into her vision of the play, setting it in 1965, the year Studio 58 was born. Music from the 1960s – the catchy tunes of Velvet Underground, Rolling Stones, Turtles and others – permeates the show. Older audience members will recognize their youth in these songs, as well as in the clothing, but these are only frills. The core of the play remains unaltered – the immortal and tragic love story between Romeo and Juliet.
However, there is one profound adjustment to the classical version: Romeo is a girl. Accordingly, the pronouns are switched in the text, and a son becomes a daughter. Other than that, the text is more or less authentic, albeit abridged, for the student performance, and the young actors handle the 500-year-old verses with professional panache.
The change benefits the show. For most people in 21st-century North America, family feuds – to the death, anyway – are the stuff of legend, while parental resistance to their kids’ gay or lesbian inclinations is still all too real. Some experience it firsthand or have friends who did; others are on the parents’ side of the equation or know someone who was. But everyone in the audience could relate to this aspect of Romeo and Juliet’s forbidden love.
Everyone could also feel the wonder, the breathtaking discovery of their first encounter. Highlighted by the expressive and inventive choreography of Jewish community member Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg, the first meeting of the lovers felt almost like a ballet, a lyrical and beautiful duet, with the corps providing a counterpoint. The visual echoes from such classical ballets as Giselle or Swan Lake were unmistakable.
On the other hand, the fight scenes by David Bloom, who also happens to be a Jewish community member, were ferocious, with some really scary moments, especially when Mercutio swings a broken bottle at Tybalt. Both young actors, Conor Stinson-O’Gorman (Mercutio) and Kamyar Pazandeh (Tybalt), infuse their stage duel with energy, but all I could think about was, What if someone missteps and hurts his friend? Fortunately, no accidents occurred, and both combatants expired safely.
Of course, the two female stars of the show deserve mention – both acted brilliantly.
Camille Legg, who played Romeo, excelled in her part. Her Romeo was young and naive, a girl on the brink of adulthood, and her wide-eyed innocence made her character’s belief in the power of love plausible. Romeo’s love is radiant and boundless; her grief, all-encompassing.
Adelleh Furseth as Juliet, while strong overall, lacked enough of the child-like nature that I attribute to the character. She portrayed a more mature, more sexy Juliet, more a woman than a girl. At times, she struck me as a character actor or comedian, funny rather than naively exuberant.
The humming chorus during the play’s last scene, the young lovers’ double suicide, was inspired and poignant.
In the director’s notes, Rochon writes: “… there are real people all over the real world who are falling in love as you read this, in spite of all kinds of opposition arising because of their gender, nationality, political affiliation or otherwise. Familiar stories, but each with its own beating heart.”
Romeo and Juliet runs at Studio 58 until Oct. 18. For tickets, visit langara.ca/studio-58.
Olga Livshinis a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
A screenshot of Dr. Gabor Maté and Rita Bozi in The Damage is Done, from video by Patrick McLaughlin.
The Cultch often presents non-traditional shows that confront uncomfortable questions. This year, one such show, The Damage is Done by Rita Bozi, brings to the stage an examination of trauma and its psychological impact on individuals and families.
The Damage is Done combines theatre, dialogue, essay, video, music and dance. It features two performers: Bozi, and physician and author Dr. Gabor Maté, who has written on various psychological issues, including addiction. Bozi plays several characters in the show, while Maté plays himself.
“I comment on Rita’s actions on stage, like a Greek chorus,” Maté said in an interview with the Independent. “We are trying to find some meaning to the trauma endured in the past, the traumas our families went through, and to learn from it. If we don’t process trauma, it will control our lives. The after-effects of trauma influence how we see ourselves: either as victims, or it makes us overcompensate, try to appear more powerful than we are. Sometimes, people try to get away from the pain with drugs – that’s where addiction comes from.”
Maté explained that deep trauma is often transmitted through generations. It affects social units and families as well as individuals. “The children of Holocaust survivors often have elevated stress hormone levels. When a young mother is depressed, her baby suffers, even though everyone loves the baby and nobody wants it hurt…. The play is an exploration of how trauma works and how we can find liberation from it. Before we heal, we must find the problem, acknowledge it.”
He accepted this project despite a busy schedule and multiple speaking engagements because it touches on issues about which he has been advocating for years. “Medical schools don’t teach students about trauma and its psychological impact. When the young doctors start working, they feel the lack of that knowledge. They want a guidance of how to connect physical and emotional healing, and not many people talk about the subject.”
So, many professionals turn to Maté. His seminars are in such demand across North America that sometimes he spends days on the road. “In the last week, I had eight speaking engagements,” he said. In various American and Canadian cities, addiction workers, trauma specialists, therapists and educators, as well as family members and others, comprise Maté’s audience.
“I’m trying to answer the question, ‘Why?,’ the same question Rita asks in her play, so I provide the framework for her story. I think it’s very important. So many people suffer from trauma, physical and psychological. It’s impossible to separate the two. I’m not going to launch a second career as an actor, of course,” he added with a smile, “but it was an interesting challenge, something different. Besides, I like Rita.”
Bozi also spoke with the Independent. She explained that the show was years in development. Its most recent version premièred in Yukon last year. “This show is ultimately about compassions for ourselves and others,” she said.
Maté’s involvement in the project was paramount to her. “I attended several workshops with Gabor and I read his books. He once said, ‘We need to be asking not why the addiction but why the pain?’ As a therapist and a child of immigrant Hungarian parents who lived through the war, the Soviet occupation and the revolution, I have long been concerned with inherited historical trauma and its effect on families and offspring.”
She continued, “I wanted Gabor a part of it. Why mention him if I could have him? I had already been making a connection with Gabor through email over our shared Hungarian backgrounds…. He felt like kin. We were speaking the same language (apart from Hungarian) and we both felt the power of the mind-body connection affecting our lives.”
It took Bozi 12 years from the seed of the idea to the show itself. “I play out my family drama, and Gabor plays the poetic counterpoint. He helps my character come back to ‘self.’ He helps her understand her own experience of the family situation, her part in it and how to begin to transform the inherited pain. He brings his razor-sharp insights to the show and his ability to be concise about what is happening. He sees what is hidden, cuts to the chase and helps guide one to the pieces of self that were lost when trauma occurred.”
According to Bozi and Maté, healing comes from the ability to look at traumatic events from infancy and early childhood with humor and compassion – even though the damage is done, we can defuse its impact.
The Damage is Done will be performed at the Cultch from Oct. 20-24. Before that, Bozi and Maté are taking the show to Banff, where both their evening shows are already sold out. For more information about the local production, visit thecultch.com/events/the-damage-is-done-a-true-story.
Olga Livshinis a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
Kyra Zagorsky as Emily and Patrick Sabongui as Amir in Arts Club’s Disgraced. (photo by David Cooper)
Politics and religion generally are considered taboo topics for discussion. But, sometimes, they can’t be avoided. This is the case in Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced, now playing at the Stanley.
Akhtar puts four Manhattan 30-somethings – secular Muslim corporate lawyer Amir, his upwardly mobile artist Caucasian wife Emily, his African American female colleague Jory and her Jewish art gallery curator husband Isaac – together for what is intended as a celebratory meal with cocktails, fennel and anchovy salad, and designer dessert.
The progression to the fateful dinner starts rather innocently. The curtain rises on a very well- but half-dressed Amir (Patrick Sabongui) posing for Emily (Kyra Zagorsky, Sabongui’s real-life spouse) as she paints his portrait based on her inspirations from Middle Eastern art. The cozy domestic scene is interrupted by Amir’s nephew, Abe (Conor Wylie), previously known as Hussein Malik – he ditched his name to make life easier.
Abe entreats his uncle to assist a local imam who has been jailed, accused of helping finance Hamas. Amir, a self-declared apostate and proud of his apparent assimilation into Western society, wants no part of it, avowing his disdain for Islam and its culture. However, Emily and Abe pressure him into attending the court hearing, where his presence is noted by the media. Amir’s reported connection to an accused terrorist does not bode well for his partnership track at his firm of Leibowitz, Bernstein and Harris. Strike one.
As well, his law partners discover that he has misrepresented himself by saying that he was born in India instead of Pakistan and by giving his name as Kapoor instead of Abdullah. Strike two.
The fading chance of a partnership for Amir provides the background for the dinner party. The conversation starts with discussions about Emily’s new works that will be exhibited in Isaac’s gallery, the Whitney, but soon disintegrates into heated arguments over Islam. Emily defends the religion and culture while Amir declares it to be tribal, violent and totalitarian. He calls the Koran, “one long hate mail letter to humanity” and yet, in the next breath, he admits he felt some pride during the 9/11 attacks because it showed that, “we were finally winning.” Oh, oh, shades of an identity crisis … and strike three soon follows.
The play is very much a Greek tragedy with the hero’s downfall and the destruction of his “American dream.” Director Janet Wright noted in a media release that it “really hits you in the gut emotionally and leaves you questioning your own ideas and how you fit into our complicated society.”
All of the actors are very good. Sabongui is a standout as the suave, initially confident protagonist. Zagorsky develops her character from one of naivety to understanding with ease. Marci T. House and Robert Moloney provide some comic relief – and other food for thought – as Jory and Isaac, and Wylie competently portrays the confusion of a conflicted teen. The set is a swanky Upper East Side apartment with a view of the New York skyline – the mood lighting and easy music complete the effect. All in all, Disgraced is 80 uninterrupted minutes of intelligent, thought-provoking theatre that literally packs a mean punch.
Akhtar was brave to have written this critical piece, which appears to be somewhat autobiographical, and his courage and tough-minded approach have been rewarded with the play enjoying successful Broadway and West End runs and garnering the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for drama. Now, it is here for us to see, ponder and discuss – maybe over Shabbat dinner.
Disgraced runs until Oct. 18. For tickets and more information, visit artsclub.com or call 604-687-1644.
Tova Kornfeldis a Vancouver freelance writer and lawyer.
Left to right: Playwright Vern Thiessen, composers Anton Lipovetsky and Ben Elliott and novelist Terry Fallis, whose The Best Laid Plans will see its musical première at York Theatre on Sept. 19. (photo from terryfallis.com)
It’s going to be a busy fall for author Terry Fallis. Already working on his sixth novel, his fifth is due in bookstores this October. And his first novel – which saw a CBC television adaptation in 2014 – will have its première as a musical at Vancouver’s York Theatre Sept. 19-Oct. 3.
For anyone who has dreams of being a successful author, Fallis is a beacon of hope. While the best laid plans of mice and men may often go awry, or “gang aft a-gley,” as wrote Scottish poet Robert Burns, Fallis’ rise in publishing is a tale about the good places to which awry can lead you. Many in the industry point to the internet as the main cause of publishing’s demise, yet that’s where Fallis’ The Best Laid Plans (McLelland and Stewart Ltd., 2007) – and his novelist career – got started.
A public relations professional, Fallis and a colleague created a podcast in 2006 called Inside PR. It occurred to him, he said in a phone interview from his office in Toronto, that, “in this emerging world of social media, where we are our own program managers … I would try that in the publishing world. When I couldn’t find anyone to take an interest in my first novel – I didn’t even get rejection letters, I was greeted with a deafening silence, perhaps because I’d written a satirical novel of Canadian politics – I decided to try and build an audience for it on my own. That’s when I decided to podcast the whole thing for free and give it away on iTunes and on my blog, just as a way to gather some kind of a following and to see whether or not I had written a novel because I honestly didn’t know whether I’d written a novel, so I was looking for objective feedback from anybody I could interest in listening to it.”
McLelland and Stewart Ltd. have since published every one of Fallis’ novels, all bestsellers, critically acclaimed and award nominees or winners. He remains loyal, he said, “to the podcast listeners and blog readers who were there right at the very beginning, who gave me that feedback and were encouraging. Without that support, it’s an open question of whether or not I would have self-published the novel. And, if I hadn’t self-published the novel, none of the rest of these wonderful things would have happened.”
In his continued appreciation, Fallis still shares content for free and listens to what people think of it. “Now, generally the book is finished by the time I podcast it,” he said, “so, to be clear, when I’m looking for feedback, it’s not so much that I want advice on how to change the novel, it’s more that I think it’s important for authors to be accessible to their readers. When the reader’s interested, you can actually have a contact, and I find that an important part of being a writer.”
Fallis said he loves both the “isolated solitude that comes when you’re in writing mode” and also gets “a charge out of traveling around and meeting readers and talking about the books, and talking to other writers. And I teach as well,” he added, “at the University of Toronto, in the writing program, and I like all of that stuff and I feel lucky that I happen to have both sides of that working for me.”
With more people reading these days than ever before, Fallis has hope in the publishing industry’s future. Acknowledging that people are “finding their content in many more places than were available 20 years ago,” he said, “I think this new world opens up a whole bunch of opportunities for writers and for publisher alike, and the ones who are surviving have embraced that which is new…. So, I think there are real opportunities, and writers can get their work in front of more eyes than ever before, even if they’re not published. There are websites and apps available, and communities online that will welcome new writers, and it’s sometimes a route to traditional publishing as, in a way, it was for me.”
When Touchstone Theatre’s Katrina Dunn contacted him and his agent about the possibility of adapting The Best Laid Plans into a musical, Fallis said, “We were really quite impressed with Katrina and Touchstone and Patrick Street Productions and what they had done in the past, and their vision for the musical, so it seemed like the right way to go – and we’ve been thrilled ever since.”
While he has yet to see the show, he has heard a few of the songs and read a portion of the script. Last fall, at the Vancouver Writers Festival, Fallis participated in a session with Dunn, playwright Vern Thiessen, composers Anton Lipovetksy (a member of the Jewish community) and Ben Elliott and director Peter Jorgensen of Patrick Street Productions. “They had a singer as well, and Anton and Ben both sing,” said Fallis. “And, for the first time ever, while I’m sitting on stage in front of this packed hall, I was hearing the songs for the first time, at least a few of them, and that was strange. I was very conscious of – people are watching you now as you’re reacting to the song, make sure that you’re polite, and I loved the songs, there was no need to be concerned, they were terrific. It was a great experience, and quite surreal to hear someone singing about characters I had created and carted around in my brainpan for so many years.”
While many of Fallis’ characters do indeed face challenges that arise from plans gone wrong, his novels are humor-filled and uplifting. He said that he is, by nature, an optimistic person.
“I think I see the world through relatively clear eyes,” he said, “but, I figure, if we have some choice in the matter, of crying or trying to find the thin, little sliver of goodwill somewhere in the story, I will go there. I don’t usually have much trouble finding humor in it. I grew up in a family where humor was just a daily staple.
“I think there’s a certain engineer’s logic in how I think about things, as well,” added Fallis, who got a degree in engineering before being lured into politics, where he worked in various capacities before entering the PR world, eventually co-founding Thornley Fallis. “If something happens and it can’t be changed, and we have no control over it, I don’t spend a lot of time wondering why it happened. You just move on, and I try not to dwell on it.”
Fallis credits growing up with an identical twin for helping form this positive attitude. He also has a younger sister – “We all get along wonderfully,” he said, “It’s rather an idyllic little family” – but “having someone you’re exactly the same age as and [who is] exactly like you, there is always someone to goof around with … having a twin brother to trigger that at every moment of every day was part of that, for sure.”
As is his innate curiosity. “I’m fascinated by so many things,” he said. When he was interested in something as a boy, he “would read every book around” on it and his mother would say, “’Terry’s on one of his kicks’ … you can’t imagine how many things I was interested in for short bursts of time, and I’ve maintained an interest in most of them, but not with the same intensity. The library became my friend and I find it stimulating and fulfilling.”
Curiosity is something, he said, that he and his wife have encouraged in their sons, now 23 and 20, who will be joining them on the trip to Vancouver for the première. “Curiosity is a wonderful gift,” said Fallis, “and I feel sorry for those who don’t have it in the same amount that I do.”
Now in the midst of plotting out his next book, which is going to be about twins – though the protagonist “doesn’t know he’s an identical twin until some ways into the book” – Fallis explained his creative process. Describing himself as “a heavy outliner,” he said, “The last thing I ever do is write the manuscript, and that’s right at the tail end of the process. The last four months I spend writing the manuscript, the previous year I spend thinking about it, mapping out the story, plotting it, developing the characters, and then doing a chapter by chapter outline. That’s the engineer in me – I need a blueprint for my novel before I can build it.”
For tickets and more information about The Best Laid Plans: A Musical, visit tickets.thecultch.com or call 604-251-1363.
Susan Freedman was inspired by her parents’ love letters. (photo from Susan Freedman)
Among this year’s Vancouver Fringe Festival offerings are several one- person shows, including Spilling Family Secrets by Susan Freedman and The Inventor of All Things by Jem Rolls – both of which have had soldout performances and received high praise on the Fringe circuit. The Independent spoke with each artist about their creation.
Spilling Family Secrets is Susan Freedman’s fourth one-woman Fringe show. Its basis is love letters that her parents wrote to each other between 1927 and 1937, which she melds with stories of her own “marital misadventures.”
JI: You’ve performed Spilling Family Secrets at other Fringes. What has some of the audience feedback been?
SF: I’ve had terrific audience feedback on this show – and a lot of it! People talk to me about the letters themselves. They are very touched by them. People tell me about how they have seen/found their parents’ or great-grandparents’ love letters. Sometimes the letters have been burned! Sometimes people tell me they’re going to go back and look at them again.
I’ve had many people talk to me after the show about their marital and family issues. It’s an intimate show and people sometimes feel that because I’ve shared my stories, they are comfortable sharing theirs. There is lots of laughter in the show and often some teary-eyed audience members at the end. Yesterday, I had a woman (in Edmonton) run up and give me a huge hug. I’d never seen her before but she was very emotional and positive about the show and felt comfortable coming up to me like that. Pretty lovely!
JI: Sometimes in performing a role more than once, different understandings develop along the way. Have new revelations about your parents, your “marital misadventures” or other parts of the material arisen over the last year-plus?
SF: I am struck by how patient my parents were and how impetuous I was in my love life. More and more, as I do the show, I realize the great benefit in really getting to know the person you are going to marry – before you marry them! I’m more grateful than ever that my parents had such great values, and I realize my good fortune in having had them as parents. I love doing this show and when I mentioned that to my daughter, she said: “Of course you do. You get to spend time with your parents at their best.” It’s true. In their letters, they were young and hopeful and, as my father said in a letter written to Brownie in 1929: “I don’t think we will ever grow old.”
JI: Could you give a brief overview of your creative process, taking the letters from, well, letters, to a performance?
SF: [In the program, it explains:] “My parents’ love letters filled 75 pages – single-spaced – when I transcribed them in 2012. I did it because Brownie and Sam’s 80-year-old letters were too fragile to pass around and I wanted a record of their love story for the family. The letters were long, intimate and wonderful to read. But I do Fringe shows, so I wanted to use the letters in a show. Reading letters on stage is a challenge, so I edited – a lot. I hope what’s left gives you a flavor of Brownie and Sam’s personalities and their relationship….”
That’s what happened. And then I started to combine and add the events from my own life (and my daughter’s) that related to love, the letters and the milestones in the letters. I worked with a wonderful dramaturg-playwright, Lucia Frangione, and she pushed me, asked the right questions and helped so much. Everyone needs a great editor, right? She is mine. I worked with her until I had a good “rehearsal script,” a year ago April.
By now, I’ve done 18 drafts … and I’m pretty pleased with it. It’s just 45 minutes (including time for laughs) and it seems to be a very simple show. It took me a very long time to make it look simple!
I have continued to make small changes and, if I do it again next year (I’d still like to do Montreal and Ottawa Fringes), who knows, maybe more changes.
* * *
Jem Rolls’ The Inventor of All Things is based on the life of Hungarian Jew Leo Szilard (1898-1964): “peacemaker, physicist, refugee, celebrity, Martian, and more. And very funny. Hated by generals, first to think of the atom bomb, and too good to flush his own toilet.”
JI: When did you first “discover” Szilard? What went into creating Inventor?
JR: I was stuck in Dauphin, Man., one Christmas with nothing to read but a cheesy book on Nazi science, which led me to [Austrian Jewish physicist] Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch, who have a bunch of great stories I could imagine telling, most notably the famous walk in the snow on Christmas eve of 1938 at Kungälv, where she’s just escaped the Nazis by the skin of her teeth, and Auntie Lise and Nephew Otto discuss the strange results in Berlin and suddenly realize that they have all already been splitting the atom in their labs for years – a massive realization which opened everything up.
And that looked like a great story, but then it led me to the funniest, craziest guy of them all – Leo Szilard … he’d thought of the nuclear chain reaction and, so, the bomb, five years before, when he escaped the Nazis in 1933 and was stateless in London.
If he wasn’t so funny, and so preposterously eccentric, I wouldn’t have a show – it would be too dry and hefty. And the fact he’s forgotten just made it all the better to do, especially as the chief reason he’s forgotten is an antisemitic American general deliberately deleting him from history and the fact it’s such a big story of real historical reach. It’s like Frankenstein’s monster: he is the man who forced the atomic bomb genie out of the bottle – because of his fear of the Nazis – and then desperately tried to get it back in again when the German defeat was certain.
I have been thinking about the show for years, and I would explain my ideas to loads of people on the Fringe tour and they all said, “You should do a show about this,” so, in the end, I have.
I’m a performance poet by trade and, though I’m loath to leave that for awhile, the change has been great and, as it’s storytelling, I’ve had to make myself coherent and completely understandable, which has never quite been a priority before. Plus, performance poetry is a very good place to venture into storytelling from. I have all manner of vocal and physical and linguistic tricks I am thoroughly enjoying deploying in a tight historical narrative.
JI: When and where did you first perform Inventor? What are some of the ways in which you have adapted your performance or the content, if at all, as you’ve performed it?
JR: I wrote the show in Cyprus … having been thinking about it for years, and I edited it and learnt it up the Rio Negro in the Brazilian Amazon, in a lovely small town no one goes to called Barcelos and on the front of the slow boats which ply the reaches of the Amazon…. The journeys take days and I would sit on the front all day watching the unchanging jungle go by and muttering the script to myself as the sun arced the unchanging sky.
The process is a long one: years of thinking and reading/researching, a quick first draft and then a long four-month process of learning and editing to get the story in shape, which involves months of agonizing times, throwing bits out of the show that I really like till I have a tight, coherent thing which still has to be performed.
I always open in Montreal, and only then do I find what the show really is, and then there’s weeks of battle to get a show I am happy with and which my performance is doing justice to. It’s also a struggle to make oneself physically and mentally tough enough to give the show what it needs day in and day out.
Doing the show has forced the horrible realities of the times upon me. I know all the history, of course, but to follow the life of this guy who escaped the antisemitic reaction in Hungary in 1919, then the Nazis, who did so much to help his fellow Jews, who never finished any work because he’d always already had another brilliant idea … I really like the guy. I tell the audience I think he’s a hero, that I’m going to prove he’s a hero. Everyone likes their forgotten heroes and, when I show the audience that he was the chief wrecker of the Nazi bomb, I get a huge round of applause for the guy. One can make the claim that a Jew doomed Hitler – and that man is Szilard. And the forgotten-ness of the story is shocking – why hasn’t [Steven] Spielberg made a movie out of him?
I’ve had some very nice times with the show. I’ve been blessed in Hebrew by an old singer. I’ve had very respectable, well-dressed young men come up to me and shake my hand and say, “Well, I’m a Hungarian Jew and no one ever told me that story,” and I had a professor emeritus of physics from Toronto literally bouncing up and down in glee after show, Bob Logan, a Brooklyn Jewish guy who actually met Leo in ’57 and loved the show. I’ve had an Einstein scholar who had to go back and check his research and see that, yes, I was right, and he’d never realized certain things about Einstein because I am putting together Szilard’s story in a way that no one ever has – I am going for the drama, for the cliffhangers, for the big moments, and there a number of very big moments from 1933-1945.
***
Among the one-person shows at this year’s Vancouver Fringe Festival, which runs from Sept. 10-20, are also:
UnCouth (14+), created by Windy Wynazz with Dan Griffiths, and performed by Wynazz. The show is “a bawdy, campy, comedy cabaret, drawing for inspiration on real-life experiences of being teased in school, falling in with a ‘bad crowd,’ and heteronormative gender expectations,” Wynazz told the JI. The 2014 San Francisco Comedienne of the Year “uses contemporary clowning to dig deeper into the underbelly of humanity, all while providing subversive comic relief on the human condition.” UnCouth is also at the Victoria Fringe Festival till Sept. 4.
Roy Horovitz brings the English version of Benny Barbash’s play My First Sony (which is based on Barbash’s 1994 novel of the same name) to this year’s Fringe. The play is told from the perspective of Yotam, an 11-year-old who records everything on his tape recorder, “my first Sony,” including some of the painful moments in his life, such as his parents’ separation.
Erika Babins, choreographer, and Zach Wolfman, actor, in Awkward Stage Productions’ Titus, written by Andrew Wade and Jenny Andersen. (photo by Corwin Ferguson)
In its sixth appearance at the Vancouver Fringe Festival, Awkward Stage Productions is presenting its first original work: Titus: The Light and Delightful Musical Comedy of Titus Andronicus, written by Andrew Wade and Jenny Andersen.
“Young William Shakespeare wants a hit,” reads the musical’s description. “After cutesy romances and sweeping histories, the young bard is attempting to fold together another blockbuster. He bemoans that no one seems to care for his Titus Andronicus! It seems the violence is not what people want – or at least they won’t admit it. Perhaps it just needs to be presented a little more lightly and delightfully?” Enter Wade and Andersen.
The idea came to Wade when he was acting in a fundraiser production of Titus Andronicus at the University of Victoria.
“I was playing Aemilius and Quintus, and it struck me as so ridiculous how there is a scene where people around him are deciding his fate – accusing him of murder and then sentencing him to be beheaded – and he doesn’t have a single line in his own defence,” Wade told the Independent. “The original play is full of strange, silly moments like that…. During the closing night gathering for that show, I sketched out a one-page brainstorm of ideas if the silly elements to this deeply tragic play were to be highlighted and set to music. I then put that page in a folder and left it alone for four years. And then I pitched the show to Awkward Stage.
“Titus Andronicus has been an excellent vehicle for lampooning [or] sending-up musicals, Shakespeare and our society’s selective obsession with violence as entertainment. The Shakespearean play is so riddled with issues, plot holes and strange character choices, and yet it is also so very, very compelling and touching and human. And what a strange and wonderful musical comedy it turns out to be.”
This is the first writing collaboration between Wade and Andersen, though they have acted together previously.
“While a part of that show,” said Wade, “she mentioned how she might want to write music for a musical at some point.” He made a note to follow up on that discussion and, when he started the first draft of Titus with a different composer and it wasn’t working out, Andersen came aboard, “and our styles clicked.”
“For most of the music, I started by writing some lyrics and sent them her way,” he explained. “Some songs, I added a little voice recording of what it ‘could’ sound like. For others, I included little taglines like ‘sounds like an instructional song from The Sound of Music, but sexier.’ A few of the songs, all I sent her were the words, and Jenny created musical masterpieces from those words, which blew me away.
“And then we would massage the lyrics back and forth for musicality and staging purposes, her telling me I need to cut or add a stanza here or there, me realizing the character needs to elaborate more here and there – a solid, near-egoless workshopping experience. We both dearly treasure what we have created, but we are also both willing to get rid of whatever isn’t working, or fix whatever needs tweaking. I am super-happy with how the collaborative process has gone thus far.”
When Andersen came on board, she said, “a first draft of the book/lyrics had already been written, and I was asked to set it musically.” So, she had no input into the musical’s topic and, she admitted, “a work from the Shakespearean canon would not have been the text I’d have settled on for my first foray into musical theatre composition.”
However, as she has worked with the story, she said, “I’m increasingly realizing the genius in picking this specific play. I think if we had made a musical comedy out of any other Shakespearean work, we would have received polite nods and moderate interest. When we say we’re setting Titus Andronicus as a musical, however, the (nearly universal) response is, ‘That play? How do you make a musical comedy out of that play?!’
“The fact that it’s widely recognized as Shakespeare’s darkest tragedy gives us a few advantages. Of course, people are curious to see how the original text is turned on its ear. More importantly, I think it serves as a statement of what we as a society find funny, what we find acceptable and what we still find as gruesome as we did in Shakespearean times. Why can we often find ourselves laughing at violence, mutilation, murder as comedic tropes, when other issues are still off limits as comedic fodder? Why should any of it be funny, really? What does that say about ourselves as a society?”
Since Andersen came later into the creative process, she said, “For the most part, in my first musical draft, I took Andrew’s lyrics, edited them slightly for smoother musical form/phrasing/syllabic purposes and tried to capture the overall mood of plot and character. We then sat down and parsed out the lyrics to make them universally relevant, to clean up the form and to make sure they were saying what we needed them to say about each situation. For the music, that meant everything from small lyrical tweaks to brand new sections and complete rewrites of certain songs. We went back and forth after that point (often electronically; I think we were in the same room a total of three or four days!) to finesse the flow of the piece. (We literally wrote one of the songs two days before rehearsal started for Fringe!)”
Awkward Stage was created in 2010 “to fill a perceived void of real-life performance and production opportunities for youth in that awkward transition from play acting to professional employment.” As with all its productions, Titus features a cast, crew and creative team “aged 15 to 30ish.”
“Titus has a wide range of ages and experience levels in the show and it’s great to be able to watch them all come together as a cast,” said Awkward artistic associate Erika Babins, who choreographed the musical. “The teenagers in the show are fearless and dive right into the comedic and dramatic high points in the text. During any down time in the rehearsal hall, you’ll find cast members lending their strengths to each other to bring up the overall level of the show.”
When asked about any highlights she could share, she said, “It’s hard to describe some of the funniest moments of choreography without giving away a whole bunch of spoilers but there is a super-serious rhythmic gymnastic dance (as serious as you can be while flitting about with a ribbon), communication through tap dancing, and both life-size and miniature deer prancing around the forest.”
Zach Wolfman plays Bassianus, the late emperor Caesar’s son, younger brother to Saturninus. For the role, he said, “I definitely draw inspiration from my relationship to my brother Jake, who is two years younger than me, and into everything that I’m not – he’s the athlete, sport guy, and I’m the theatrical one. We are both kind of fighting for attention from our parents: my parents divide their time between watching him and my sister in sports games, and me in theatre.
“Professionally, I had a fair amount of Shakespeare training at UBC and through Canada’s National Voice Intensive. It’s fun to examine the Shakespearean qualities that permeate through Andrew Wade’s script, and then go back and look at Shakespeare’s original play.
“I’ve played a lot of wimpy, ineffective princes, who are fighting to prove themselves in some manner or another, and that helps,” he added. “The idealism of Bassianus and the fantasy world that he lives in remind me of a lot of other roles I’ve played – characters falling in love for the first time, young love in a really tender, awkward stage. That kind of new romance seems to breed a certain over-optimistic viewpoint, or rose-tinted perspective in people. Things are new and fresh and awesome, so it’s easy to forget that everyone around you wants to kill you.
“The most challenging aspect of this show is finding the balance between truth and comedy. The show is so fast and funny that you have to fight hard to keep up while you’re laughing. It helps a lot that Andy Toth, our director, is on the side of finding the real heart and truth in this show. Andy opened a rehearsal one day by showing us a great TED Talk by Peter McGraw called What Makes Things Funny. McGraw basically says that, for something to stand out as funny, it needs to step outside of the norm, or background of normal, everyday reality. This show is a roller coaster that goes far off the rails, but is still grounded in characters with real wants, desires and ambitions. Although the show is very dark, at the core, it is a delightful comedy.”
About the most fun aspect of the show, Wolfman said, it “lies in the people I get to work with. Working on this show with three other classmates from UBC is a treat. I feel lucky to be learning so much from Jenny Anderson and Andy Toth every day in rehearsal. Andy drops wisdom bombs left, right and centre and is the perfect person to be directing new work because he asks the tough questions. Andy, Jenny and Erika Babins really bring Andrew Wade’s script to life. Everyone is crazy talented, and I am often in flux between laughter and utter shock.”
Titus is at the Firehall Arts Centre Sept. 10-20. For times, tickets ($14 plus one-time $5 Fringe membership) and the full Fringe schedule, visit vancouverfringe.com.
Playwright, cyclist and world traveler Ira Cooper. Among his many endeavors has been teaching English in China. (photo from Ira Cooper)
“I lust to travel, to see places, to meet people and do theatre,” said Ira Cooper.
In everything he does, he forges his own path; he is not one for conforming to the rules. Even his professional definition is sprouting in all directions. He is an actor and a playwright, an educator and a world traveler, a poet and a filmmaker. In the few years since he graduated from the University of British Columbia theatre program, he has worked with children at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, taught English in China, worked as an actor in the Czech Republic, produced films and written plays.
“I have been writing for a long time, poems and short stories,” he said in an interview with the Jewish Independent. “I never tried to publish anything. If you do, everyone could see who you are.
“Then, after university, I worked as an actor for the Nelson Historical Theatre Society. In 2007, we produced a play about Charlie Chaplin, and there was a gap in the play. The director asked me if I could write a scene for it, and I agreed. It was produced and well received.”
His latest play, Sid: The Handsome Bum, a one-woman show about homelessness in Vancouver, was written and first performed in 2014. The play will be part of this year’s Victoria Fringe Festival.
“I wanted to show that homelessness is not general, it’s personal,” Cooper said. “We listen to Sid because she is in a show. Would we listen to her otherwise?… I was privileged growing up, but not everyone is. I talked to homeless people in downtown, wanted to figure out who they are. My mom taught me that there is no ‘us’ and ‘them.’ It’s all ‘us.’ One of the problems homeless people face is that nobody is listening to them. They want to talk, and I listened. There is a community there, like everywhere else. There is beauty there, not just ugliness.”
The play germinated in his head for several years. In 2014, Cooper and two friends, both UBC graduates, Joanna Rannelli and Hilary Fillier, organized a new theatre company – Spec Theatre – to produce the play.
“We wanted this theatre to be for a non-theatre audience. Everybody should be able to enjoy a theatre, but not everybody can afford expensive venues. A theatre could perform anywhere: in a bedroom, in a garden, in non-theatre spaces. Our theatre is accessible to everybody.”
However, theatre is a tough way to generate an income, he acknowledged. “Our theatre is a labor of love. It’s fulfilling. It’s somewhere between a hobby and a profession. I’d say, I have a relationship with theatre, not a career.”
Like Spec Theatre, the play was a collaborative effort.
“We traded ideas,” Cooper explained. “I would receive feedback from Joanna and Hilary and rewrite. In the beginning, I planned it for a male actor, but later that changed. Joanna is playing the title role, which includes five different characters. We hired the director, Kayla Doerksen, and first performed the show in 2014, in the Little Mountain Studio. It’s a small space, 45 seats, but it was sold out most nights.”
This year, Spec is remounting the play for a bigger audience at the Victoria Fringe. “I don’t know anyone there,” Cooper confided. “It’s terrifying. Here, in Vancouver, many friends came to the show, but there, we have to promote.”
They also have to do all the other jobs a play requires besides acting and directing: lighting, stage management, producing and so on. As in any relationship, in Cooper’s relationship with theatre, no job is too small, and collaboration is extremely important.
“I always wanted to collaborate with passionate people on our own projects, not jump into the industry at the entry level and work my way to the top.”
Cooper’s interests are broad, and he doesn’t confine himself to one area of the arts. In the last few years, he also has created several short films, taught English in China, and traveled by bicycle to Mexico and through Europe.
His enthusiasm for cycling is comparatively recent. “It happened around 2010,” he said. “My mom and I talked, and she said that I was smart but not very physical. I wanted to be physical, too, and I thought biking would be right for me. I did some research and joined a group bicycle trip from Amsterdam to Istanbul. But I had to prepare for such a long trip, so I biked from Vancouver to Mexico. It took about two months. I stopped where I wanted, talked to people. It was all about exploration, not the destination.”
His next long bicycle trip will happen in a couple of years – he will be going to Beijing.
“I’m planning parts of the trip now,” he said. “I will bike from Vancouver to Newfoundland, and from there to Argentina. Then, I’ll take a ship to South Africa and, from there, travel north on my bike, through Africa and the Middle East, tentatively Russia, to China. I started a special website and blog for the trip, and I want my readers to suggest where I should go next. It will be an interactive trip.” (His bicycle trip website is pedaleachmile.com.)
Cooper is also planning to stop and work along the way. One of his more definitive plans is to teach English in Saudi Arabia.
“There is a stigma attached to traveling through Africa or Muslim countries,” he said, “and, in part, that’s what my trip is about: removing the stigmas from people, cultures and places. The same about homelessness – I wanted to remove the stigma. They are just people, like everyone else.”
Sid: The Handsome Bum will be performed Aug. 29 to Sept. 5 in Victoria. For more information, visit spectheatre.wordpress.com.
Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
Liz Lorie, left, and Amanda Krystal. (photo by Hayley Bouchard, Little Cat Photography)
Writers of romance, fantasy, science fiction and horror reinvent many a classical tale with a slant towards their chosen genres. The new play by Lisa Simon, A Modern Fairy Tale, is yet another such retelling, and it has an original twist. This musical parody spins the old tales in a new light, inclusive of LGBTQ concerns and gender-neutral terms.
For starters, a romance is blooming between a female Wolf and Red Riding Hood, but they encounter several roadblocks on their love journey. Granny mistrusts Wolf – the animal-people’s rights are at stake here. Other beloved fairy tale characters populate the play – Snow White and Boots the Cat, gay princes Chuck and Cinder, Alice and Hatter – each one with their own set of problems.
Many of the performers are amateurs, attracted to the project by their love for musical theatre and their social convictions. Among them are Jewish community members Amanda Krystal and Liz Lorie, two young University of British Columbia students.
“We met at the show, didn’t know each other before,” Krystal said.
“Now, we do many things together,” added Lorie. Both provided the Independent with the inside scoop on the show.
Krystal, a microbiology student, is playing Alice. “It’s a pretty big role,” she said proudly. “I’d call it a supporting lead.”
Krystal learned about the auditions for the play through the Vancouver Public Library audition list. “I took dance and music theatre classes at school and I’m still doing tap dance. I wanted to audition for musical theatre so I left my email with the library list. I wanted to be in the Fringe, but the shows of the Fringe are all during midterms. When I learned about the auditions for this show, I thought it would be great, and not interfere with my studies.”
Lorie is in the play as part of the ensemble. She is studying English and thinking about the master’s program. She came to Vancouver from Toronto via the fine arts program at UBC Okanagan.
“Originally, I wanted to study art at Queen’s University in Ontario,” she said, “but they canceled the art program I wanted because there was not enough money for the arts. I got into the Okanagan program, and it was very good but, like in Queen’s, there was not enough funding. Interesting courses got canceled, the instructors left, so I switched to English in Vancouver.”
She noted that art programs are not getting sufficient funding anywhere in Canada. “Art is so important, specifically theatre arts. We are all isolated, but theatre brings us together. It’s therapeutic.”
She encountered the same problem – a limited budget – with this show, but despite the lack of monetary recompense, everyone is very enthusiastic and pitching in wherever they can, she said.
Krystal, besides performing, is an assistant choreographer. “My sister is into professional dancing,” she said. “She and I and Damon [Jang] choreographed three tap dances for the show.”
Lorie, with her artistic background, helped with numerous artistic tasks. “I worked on the posters and on the stage sets,” she said. “There are several sets: a ballroom, a book shop, a hat store, a cottage and a couple of others. It’s a complicated set. I also made my ice crown – I play the Snow Queen.”
Excited to be in the world première of the show, both Krystal and Lorie pointed out that the novelty of the play, while liberating, can be nerve-wracking, too.
“We improv a lot,” said Krystal. “There is no history of famous actors playing our roles. I would do something new, not in the script, and Lisa [Simon, who is also the director] would say: ‘Oh, good, keep it.’ I never know what will happen at the next rehearsal. We all come from different directions to this play, and it’s fascinating to see it coming together. But it adds some pressure, too.”
The fairy tale aspect of the show unites the participants.
“Using fairy tales was a great idea,” said Krystal. “Everyone knows them, can relate to them. Most of us first met them in the Disney versions but, in this play, seeing them from a different perspective is interesting. Some of the changes are in your face, while others are not.”
Lorie elaborated: “Fairy tales are for everyone, and we all draw from them, but they allow lots of creative leeway. In the end, it all comes to the concept of acceptance, to finding out who we are and standing for who we are, to accepting everyone despite their racial or sexual differences.”
The philosophical spotlight of this production translates well into the performers’ experience.
“It’s a light musical comedy,” Krystal said, “but it touches on many dark topics: bullying, anxiety, depression, various sexual orientations. The story focuses on the imaginary animal-people rights, but we all can recognize someone we know.”
“It’s geared towards the LGBTQ crowd, but we hope it won’t turn off the other audience,” said Lorie. “It’s a very eye-opening show for everyone, much more than just an LGBTQ event.”
Joseph Rumshinsky’s Yiddish operetta Di Goldene Kale premièred 92 years ago at Kessler’s Second Avenue Theatre in New York, and was still being performed as late as 1948. The Aug. 5 perfomance at Nicholas Music Centre was the first since then. (image from masongross.rutgers.edu)
It is not often that a neglected or forgotten artistic treasure is rediscovered. But it happened recently at a theatre in New Brunswick, N.J. – a concert version, with full orchestra, of Joseph Rumshinsky’s 1923 musical comedy Di Goldene Kale (The Golden Bride). This joyful, melodically blessed operetta was co-presented with Mason Gross School of the Arts by another treasure, the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, the oldest continuous theatre in New York. Founded in 1915 on the Lower East Side, the theatre is now celebrating its centenary.
Di Goldene Kale’s plot is above the usual standard banal fare of Yiddish plays: it involves a young woman who is heir to a fortune and now has several suitors after her and her money. But she loves Misha and ends up with him, after the usual ups and downs of musical comedy narrative.
Rumshinsky (1881-1956), one of the giants of Yiddish theatre during its heyday in the 1920s and ’30s, continued to work and compose until the year of his death. His operetta is full of memorable tunes, which the audience took to immediately. His musical traditions include influences from the Yiddish theatre, American musicals, European operettas and American popular music, most notably the opening chorus of George M. Cohan’s 1917 First World War song, “Over There.” Yiddish theatre was known for having at least one joyous religious occasion onstage, often a wedding, which nostalgically brought back an aspect of traditional Yiddishkeit to now-secular Jews, who were usually watching the performance on a Friday night, and Di Goldene Kale has a very moving Friday night Kiddush, a lovely melody that the soloists and chorus expand via theme and variations.
After its 1923 première, Di Goldene Kale toured the United States, Europe and South America. It was still being performed as late as 1948. The Aug. 5 show at Nicholas Music Centre was the first performance in Yiddish (with English and Russian supertitles) and full orchestra in 70 years.
The stunning cast was led by the gorgeous operatic voice of Dani Marcus, who plays Goldie, the goldene kale, and the fine baritone, Eyal Sherf – a trained cantor – who plays her boyfriend, Misha. The producer and director was Motl Didner, and Michael Ochs edited the orchestral score from manuscripts dating back to the 1923 première. National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene artistic director Zalmen Mlotek conducted the young, attractive cast, all seasoned in singing, acting and comedy. To find first-rate singers who also act superbly and know Yiddish was a minor miracle and a major achievement. At the show’s end, the full house stood up and applauded. The orchestra and cast then reprised one of the operetta’s songs and everybody went out singing.
***
Classical American Yiddish theatre was also recently the subject of a program hosted by Michael Tilson Thomas, music director of the San Francisco Orchestra, who celebrated the career of his legendary grandparents, Boris Thomashefsky (1868-1939) and Bessie Thomashefsky (1873-1962), who were illustrious Yiddish theatre personalities.
Titled The Thomashevksys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theatre, the show included four singer/actors and members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood playing selections from Yiddish theatre music.
On the morning after his program, I walked down from our room at the Apple Tree Inn across the street to the Tanglewood grounds, where I met Thomas. I began in Yiddish: “Reb Mekhl” – the name his bobbe Bessie used for him – “ken ikh mit eykh redn a bisl vegn ayer program?” (“Reb Michael, can I talk to you a bit about your program?”)
By speaking Yiddish I wanted a) to know if he understood Yiddish and b) to separate myself from a group of people near him. Born in 1944, Thomas – his father shortened the original name – never met his famous grandfather, but the conductor told me that Grandma Bessie spent her old age near the family in California. Since she lived to be 89, she was a presence in Michael’s life until he was 18.
“She would show me around in Hollywood and take me to screenings,” Thomas recalled. “She called me Mekhl or Mekhele and would often jibe at my parents: ‘You’re too conventional. But Mekhele is not going to be that way.’”
When Boris’ infidelities became too intolerable, Bessie simply walked out on him in 1912 (she never did divorce him) and opened a rival theatre and became a success on her own.
“My grandmother used to say of her marriage to Boris: ‘We were a mistake – but a beautiful mistake,’” shared Thomas.
One of the most touching of personal anecdotes is Thomas’ strudel story.
“How did my grandmother make strudel? Here is her recipe: ‘You go home, you put on a clean apron, you wash your hands and you bake a strudel.’ And that’s what I do when I prepare for a concert. I make my way to the hall, I put on a clean tux, I wash my hands and I go out there and bake a strudel.”
The Tanglewood program also included a slide show that added lustre to the narration and a brief clip from the only film that Boris ever made, wherein he sings a Yiddish song. Along with sparkling orchestral numbers, the conductor and four singers offered musical selections and scenes from the couple’s real-life drama.
When Franz Kafka, early in the 20th century, brought a Yiddish troupe to Prague and told his audience, “Ladies and gentlemen, you know Yiddish better than you think,” he may have had the Tanglewood audience in mind for, with every Yiddish joke, most of them broke into laughter.
The highlight of the program was Thomas singing the once-popular song “Thomashefsky,” about the actor himself. The conductor pranced on stage, doing all the riffs and gestures of a veteran Yiddish music hall star, with the song’s memorable refrain, “Who do you think is going to marry my sister?” No doubt Grandma Bessie’s spirit was guiding her einikl in performing this enchanting song.
Curt Leviant’s most recent book is Zix Zexy Ztories. His ninth novel, King of Yiddish, will be published in December.