{"id":37715,"date":"2021-11-05T01:46:18","date_gmt":"2021-11-05T08:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=37715"},"modified":"2021-11-04T17:55:11","modified_gmt":"2021-11-05T00:55:11","slug":"gritty-moving-funny-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2021\/11\/05\/gritty-moving-funny-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"Gritty, moving, funny stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stephen Aberle, Nicola Lipman and Geoff Berner will perform stories from Vilna My Vilna: Stories by Abraham Karpinowitz, as translated by Helen Mintz, as part of Western Gold Theatre\u2019s Virtual Gold series.<\/em><\/p>\n

Vilna My Vilna: Stories by Abraham Karpinowitz<\/em> (Syracuse University Press, 2016) is a collection of 13 short stories and two brief memoirs by Abraham Karpinowitz (1913-2004), translated from Yiddish into English by local storyteller Helen Mintz.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Mintz, \u201cmore of us can now visit Karpinowitz\u2019s Vilna \u2013 a city full of colourful characters, both real and not, and share in a small part of their lives.\u201d (jewishindependent.ca\/vilna-the-place-its-people<\/a>) And, thanks to Western Gold Theatre, even more people will be able to visit Karpinowitz\u2019s Vilna this Chanukah.<\/p>\n

When Vilna My Vilna<\/em> was published, actor Stephen Aberle both helped present\u00a0the\u00a0book and\u00a0interviewed Mintz\u00a0at the JCC Jewish Book Festival.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs part of the presentation, Helen and I read excerpts from several of the stories. I was struck immediately by how engaging and naturally theatrical these stories and characters were, and I\u2019ve been thinking ever since that a dramatic rendition would be a great thing,\u201d Aberle told the Independent<\/em>. \u201cThen, earlier this year, Tanja Dixon-Warren, Western Gold Theatre\u2019s artistic director, approached me with the idea of curating one of their\u00a0Virtual Gold series around Chanukah time. I immediately thought of\u00a0Vilna My Vilna<\/em>\u00a0as the perfect material for such a project, pitched it to Tanja, and she loved the idea, as did Helen.\u00a0So, I set about to recruit my luminously wonderful co-presenters, Geoff Berner and Nicola Lipman, to be part of it all.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Helen and I first began talking about some kind of performance of these stories, we thought of Geoff and it just clicked perfectly. His\u00a0\u2018klezmer-punk\u2019 material and presentation and his beautiful selection and rendition of Yiddish songs\u00a0provide exactly the flavour to suit these rather gritty stories,\u201d said Aberle. \u201cAnd I had got to know Nicola through working together on the development of a wonderful new play by Manami Hara,\u00a0Courage Now<\/em>\u00a0(coming soon to a theatre near you\u00a0\u2013 but that\u2019s another story) about Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese diplomat who helped thousands of Polish and Lithuanian Jews escape the Nazis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lipman was \u201canother perfect fit,\u201d said Aberle. \u201cAnd here we are!\u201d<\/p>\n

Western Gold Theatre will release individual video recordings of the selected stories, one at a time, throughout Chanukah, said Aberle, \u201cand Geoff will frame each of them with some of his stirringly beautiful Yiddish music\u00a0\u2013 an intro and an \u2018extro,\u2019 if you like\u00a0\u2013 thematically linked to the content of the story. I won\u2019t say a lot more except to add that,\u00a0when\u00a0Geoff and I were talking about which songs to do where, what connections to make and so forth, I think we both found it haunting and moving. Chills.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"image<\/a>Deciding which of the short stories to include in the production wasn\u2019t easy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have pages and pages of notes about the stories, characters, settings, arc of the narrative and so forth,\u201d said Aberle. \u201cIn the end, I felt like a lot of my choosing was helped along by the format: we\u2019ll be recording ourselves reading over Zoom, so we need to keep things fairly simple, with not too many characters and not too much complex action. I chose stories where the scenes tend to involve one or two characters at a time, so the performers can dig in and work off each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cI also tried to choose a variety of themes and moods. The stories are written against the backdrop of the writer\u2019s awareness of what was to come: the Nazi annihilation of Vilna\u2019s Jewish community. We have to be true to that\u00a0bleak awareness; at the same time, there\u2019s a lot of joy and humour. I tried to make choices to honour the depth and balance Karpinowitz brings to his work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of the stories to be presented, the production\u2019s press release highlights \u201cVilna Without Vilna,\u201d describing it: \u201cA Vilna native (a pickpocket in his youth, now grown up and respectable) comes back to visit his home city and finds that not a trace of what he remembers remains.\u201d<\/p>\n

In \u201cThe Folklorist,\u201d a \u201cresearcher into Yiddish folklore finds himself professionally drawn to the Vilna fish market \u2013 and personally drawn to one particularly expressive fishwife.\u201d And \u201cChana-Merka the Fishwife\u201d picks up this story, \u201ccontinuing the adventures of the Vilna fishwife and the school of Yiddish Institute scholars who swim after her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, \u201cTall Tamara\u201d recounts how a \u201cVilna prostitute and her friend find their way out of the brothel and into very different lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

The performances will all be online.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheatres are just starting to re-reopen up to in-person performances, but, for this project, we\u2019re sticking to video presentations,\u201d said Aberle, thanking Dixon-Warren and Western Gold \u201cfor their vision in creating the Virtual Gold series.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the pandemic shut things down,\u201d he said, \u201cthey decided they weren\u2019t going to let it stop their work. They also decided it was important to provide opportunities to artists from a diverse spectrum of communities. And to make all the presentations free! That all takes courage and generosity of spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n

For those who watch the Virtual Gold series, Aberle said, \u201cI think I can pretty much guarantee there will be laughs; there may be a few tears. It\u2019s an honour to help share these works so more people can get to know them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The stories from Vilna My Vilna<\/em> will be posted throughout the week of Chanukah, Nov. 28-Dec. 6, at westerngoldtheatre.org\/virtual-gold. The full name of the series is Look! Listen! and Learn! Virtual Gold, and the Learn! segment will feature a video interview with Mintz about Vilna, Karpinowitz and being a translator, which will be posted on the Virtual Gold page, as well as on Western Gold Theatre\u2019s YouTube page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen Aberle, Nicola Lipman and Geoff Berner will perform stories from Vilna My Vilna: Stories by Abraham Karpinowitz, as translated by Helen Mintz, as part of Western Gold Theatre\u2019s Virtual Gold series. Vilna My Vilna: Stories by Abraham Karpinowitz (Syracuse University Press, 2016) is a collection of 13 short stories and two brief memoirs by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37716,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[785],"tags":[20966,6058,20965,3036,20964,1555,4838,6208,5675,186],"class_list":["post-37715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-performing-arts","tag-abraham-karpinowitz","tag-geoff-berner","tag-helen-mintz","tag-music","tag-nicola-lipman","tag-stephen-aberle","tag-storytelling","tag-theatre","tag-vilna","tag-yiddish"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}