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Coming Feb. 17th …

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A FREE Facebook Watch Event: Resurrecting Dead Fairy Tales - Lecture and Q&A with Folklorist Jack Zipes

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A graphic novel co-created by artist Miriam Libicki and Holocaust survivor David Schaffer for the Narrative Art & Visual Storytelling in Holocaust & Human Rights Education project. Made possible by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

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The Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience is scheduled to open soon.

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Tag: Kerry Sandomirsky

Preparing for her next role

Preparing for her next role

In Late Company, Kerry Sandomirsky and Michael Kopsa are a couple who has lost a son to bullying. (photo by David Cooper)

“One year after a tragedy, two couples sit down to dinner. Far from finding the closure they seek, the dinner strips bare their good intentions to reveal layers of parental, sexual and political hypocrisy.”

So begins the promotional material for the award-winning play Late Company, being presented by Touchstone Theatre later this month. It continues, “Loosely based on the true story of the son of a Tory politician who killed himself after being extensively bullied, Late Company imagines what a restorative justice dinner held a year later might have looked like between the parents of a dead gay son, his chief tormentor and that boy’s parents.”

Kerry Sandomirsky takes on the role of the grieving mother. She spoke with the Jewish Independent about the part – and other topics – via email.

JI: The subject matter – and small cast – of Late Company combine to make what seems like a very heavy, intense role. How do you prepare for such roles in general and this one in particular, especially as a mother yourself?

KS: I put my attention on the things that are important to the character, and the world starts to inform you via synchronicity. I was riding on a bus to Kerrisdale and I saw an ad above me for the Josh Platzer Society. It’s for teen suicide prevention and awareness. I contacted them and I’m now communicating with a mother who lost her son. I am also using their recommended reading list for research.

At the same time, my character is a sculptor so I’m reading a biography of Barbara Hepworth.

Earlier this year, I did a similar maternal role in Clybourne Park for the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton. When it comes to intense parts, your nervous system doesn’t know that the grief on stage isn’t real, so there’s a cost. Your adrenal system gets depleted. Being a mom, you have to guard against the play contaminating your life.

I got through Clybourne Park by exercising every day and not drinking any wine. Maybe for this one I’ll have to do the opposite.

JI: The last time the JI spoke with you was in 2011, before The Philanderer. At that time, you were returning to the stage after a two-plus-year hiatus to recover from a head injury. In what ways did that period of being away from theatre change your work/life?

KS: I became a teacher at Studio 58, I accepted an offer to direct, and I decided to take more holidays! I also gave myself permission to be a writer. I turned down playing Cleopatra for Bard on the Beach and instead attended SFU Writers Studio to work with Ivan E. Coyote. After that, I was chosen to go to the Banff Playwrights Colony to work on my one-woman play called Wobble.

JI: Your directorial debut (… didn’t see that coming) was a Pick of the Fringe this year. What were some of the highlights and challenges of directing? Can you see yourself doing more directing?

KS: It was a delight to direct one of my favorite people on the planet, Beverley Elliott, and we had Bill Costin doing our music. So, it was a privilege being in the same room with that much talent for almost a month. I’d definitely do it again. I loved not having to learn all those lines.

JI: When I met you at a recent Museum of Vancouver event, you mentioned having just filmed with Denys Arcand. Is there anything about that you can share?

KS: When you work with someone that gifted, there’s no fear on the set. There’s no ego. There’s just creative collaboration. Denys Arcand and the director Adad Hannah both welcomed input from their actors. Denys is quick to laugh. He was a joy to be around.

JI: What are some of the projects on which you’re currently working?

KS: I want to finish writing Wobble. And, of course, doing another new Canadian play is always fulfilling. I dream of collaborating with Crystal Pite. I’m not a dancer, but I did a workshop with her anyway. I was a troll among the whippets. And I’m hoping to work with Jovanni Sy, the new artistic director of Gateway Theatre. I met him at the Playwrights Colony. He’s a great addition to our Vancouver theatre community.

JI: In what part of the process from idea to stage is Wobble?

KS: Katrina Dunn, the director of Late Company, came to Banff and helped me workshop it. We’ve got a solid first draft. I value her intelligence, her feminism and her compassion. As the artistic director of Touchstone Theatre, she champions new Canadian work. The playwright for Late Company, Jordan Tannahill, just got nominated for a Governor General’s Award, but Katrina chose do a play by him long before that. Her instincts are superb. This will be our fifth production together. It’s a treat to be directed by her.

***

Late Company is at the Cultch, Vancity Culture Lab, 1895 Venables St., from Nov. 21-30, 8 p.m. (Tuesdays to Sundays), plus Nov. 22, 29 and 30, 2 p.m. There is a two-for-one preview Nov. 20, 8 p.m. Tickets ($27/$22) are available from the Cultch, 604-251-1363 or tickets.thecultch.com.

 

 

 

Format ImagePosted on November 7, 2014November 5, 2014Author Cynthia RamsayCategories Performing ArtsTags Cultch, Kerry Sandomirsky, Late Company

Storytellers excel at Fringe

Sold out. That pretty much describes every show the Jewish Independent saw during the Vancouver Fringe Festival last month – two even made the Pick of the Fringe, which ran the week after the festival.

There were at least five shows in which a member of the Jewish community was involved. Kerry Sandomirsky directed and Lynna Goldhar Smith was the production manager for Beverley Elliott’s … didn’t see that coming, which made the Fringe Picks, along with Goldhar Smith-directed Dirty Old Woman. Both of these shows featured confident, funny older women in the lead.

Elliott’s was a one-woman show, but pianist Bill Costin added well-played and well-timed musical (and other sound) accompaniment, as well as being funny in his own right, and he provided some lovely harmonies in the vocal arena. The performance moved along quickly, with Elliott sharing both humorous and touching stories of her life, from her lack of success with internet dating – “47 coffee dates and I’m going broke” – to a longtime friend committing suicide, to a New Year’s Eve show at Vancouver’s Royal Hotel, hot yoga and more. Interspersed with the stories were many songs, several of which were original numbers, and they, too, ranged from the silly to the sentimental. It was a standing-ovation-garnering performance.

photo - Charlie Varon
Storytellers Charlie Varon (photo from Tangeret via Charlie Varon) and Naomi Steinberg (photo from Naomi Steinberg) were among the highlights of this year’s Vancouver Fringe Festival.

While the audience remained seated after Dirty Old Woman, they certainly whooped it up during the show, the actors having to pause more than once before the laughter subsided so that their next lines could be heard. The “dirty old woman” was played with impeccable comedic timing by Susinn McFarlen, who also made Nina a character with whom the audience empathized and for whom they rooted. She was surrounded by the excellent cast of Robert Salvador as Gerry, the much-younger and very handsome man with whom Nina strikes up a relationship; Emmelia Gordon as Liza, Nina’s daughter, who is somewhat jealous and completely unsupportive of her mother’s new relationship; and Alison Kelly as Diane, Nina’s best friend, whose marriage is “fine,” until it’s not. Written by Loretta Seto, the play didn’t feel scripted, but rather like watching snippets of real life.

Another writer who seemed to bring real people to the stage at this year’s Fringe was Charlie Varon, with Feisty Old Jew. Varon actually performed in front of the stage, a glass of water and a music stand the only props or set. As he enacted 83-year-old Bernie’s encounter with three 20-something surfers with whom he’s hitchhiked a ride back to his retirement home, Varon became each character.

Sharing not only what is said aloud between the people in the car, but what is going on in Bernie’s head, Feisty Old Jew is very funny and it is obvious that this production, these stories, are, as Varon told the audience, “a love letter” to his parents and that generation of Jews. Varon also shared a couple of short stories about another retirement-home resident, Selma, and, when he was finished, it was as if we’d met her. Varon said he has completed eight of 12 stories that he plans to publish as a collection in the next couple of years – it’ll be a fantastic read.

At the other end of the age range was Trey Parker’s Cannibal: The Musical, presented by Awkward Stage Productions, which provides young actors and crew the opportunity to learn theatre by doing. Young, of course, doesn’t mean inexperienced and the cast (which included Henya Rosen) and crew of this Fringe show did an excellent job from start to finish – especially considering that there is no official script for Cannibal, which includes cartoons and animated backdrops, songs, dancing and dialogue. A lot goes on in this story, “loosely based” (to say the least) on that of Alferd Packer, “the first American to ever be convicted of cannibalism.” Not nearly as gross as it sounds, except for the short opening cartoon, this show was funny throughout and extremely well-executed.

photo - Naomi Steinberg
Naomi Steinberg

Rounding out the entertaining Fringe fare enjoyed by the Independent this year was Naomi Steinberg’s Goosefeather, which was quirky, thought-provoking, innovative and mesmerizing. In 2011, Steinberg interviewed her grandfather at his Paris apartment. She asked him 100 questions – about his youth, his first job, how he helped her grandmother survive the war, why he finds measurement so fascinating, why she, Naomi, is so stubborn. “You were born like that,” he responds in what turns out to be characteristically brusque fashion.

But this isn’t straight narrative. An experienced storyteller, Steinberg intersperses what she knows and learns about her grandfather with observations about the concept of measurement, of time and space. What do we measure? Our waists, our burdens? What are our favorite measuring tools? A yardstick, the position of the sun? There is no such thing as an exact measurement, she notes – scientists always allow for a margin of error.

Steinberg adds goose honks and other sounds, ticks of time passing, packaging tape unrolling; she responds to questions and reactions from the audience; she hugs a plastic blow-up globe, hangs a pocket watch on the wall; she is dressed in a corset made from her grandfather’s ties. The presentation as a whole is much more than the sum of its parts.

Currently traveling the world, “crossing longitudes and latitudes, carrying [her] own prime meridian” and making a map, Steinberg told the Independent in an email that she is “working on shows in California, Australia, China, Japan, England, Switzerland, France, Israel and then returning through NYC and across Canada.” When Goosefeather lands again in Vancouver, take the time to see it.

Posted on October 3, 2014October 1, 2014Author Cynthia RamsayCategories Performing ArtsTags Beverley Elliott, Charlie Varon, Henya Rosen, Kerry Sandomirsky, Lynna Goldhar Smith, Naomi Steinberg, Susinn McFarlen
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