Left to right, Katherine Matlashewski (as Shayna Schneider), Advah Soudack (as Margaret Grant) and Amitai Marmorstein (as Jankl Schneider) in Courage Now, playing at the Firehall Arts Centre until Dec. 4. (photo by Youn Park)
One does not often get a chance to see a world première of a play in Vancouver. After writing my preview article on Courage Now in the last edition of the Independent, I was looking forward with great anticipation to seeing the final product. I was not disappointed.
It is a difficult story to tell but it is done with such sensitivity and style that I highly recommend seeing it. As a child of a Holocaust survivor, any story of courage and heroism arising out of that era resonates with me – this one in particular had me in tears.
From the moment you walk into the intimate Firehall Arts Centre theatre, you know you are about to see something special. The set is austere – a desk, a bench, a lattice-like trellis, an empty wall-mounted picture frame – with a pagoda-style roof and an archway backlit with vibrant colours. (Kudos to set designer Kimira Reddy and lighting designer Itai Erdal.)
To summarize the backstory, Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul in Kaunas, Lithuania, in 1940, against the instructions of his government, issued more than 2,300 handwritten visas in a 30-day period to save Jews trying to leave Poland and Lithuania. He was supported in his decision by his wife, Yukiko, who knew the price the family would pay for going against the government edicts. And a price was paid: career loss, humiliation and Sugihara’s self-imposed postwar exile to Russia for 16 years.
The play follows what appear to be two separate narratives that intersect in an unexpected way in the final scene. In 1986, Yukiko (playwright Manami Hara) is forced to revisit wartime when a visitor from Vancouver, Margaret Grant, born Shayna Schneider (Advah Soudack), comes for answers from Sugihara as to what happened to her father after he put her on a train out of Kaunas when she was 13 years old. She has resented her father through the years, feeling abandoned and betrayed by his sending her off alone; she is also coping with a difficult divorce and her own daughter’s hatred. Sugihara has recently died, however, and Margaret must turn to Yukiko for answers instead.
The play opens with Yukiko waking from a dream where she is visited by the ghost of her husband. Then Margaret enters her garden. She tells Yukiko, “I am a Sugihara Jew, Sempo saved my life.” The play then moves through a series of memory flashbacks, as the audience is transported back and forth between 1940 Kaunas and 1986 Japan.
Katherine Matlashewski plays the teenage Shayna and Amitai Marmorstein plays her father, Jankl. Jankl visits Sugihara (Ryota Kaneko) to plead for visas on behalf of the thousands of Jews who have been lining up every day outside the consul’s office. In a touching and poignant scene, something as simple as a shared cup of coffee gives you a sense of the integrity and honour of these two men as they strive to do the right thing. Kaneko plays Sugihara with a quiet intensity and Marmorstein portrays Jankl with dignity. The scene where he sees Shayna off at the train station is heartbreaking – he watches his only child (his “little mouse,” as he calls her) walk away from him, tattered suitcase in hand, in a fog of smoke and the eerie sound of a train whistle in the distance.
Ryota Kaneko plays Chiune Sugihara and Courage Now playwright Manami Hara takes on the role of Yukiko Sugihara. (photo by Youn Park)
In many ways, the journeys of the two women are love stories. Yukiko grapples with the grief of losing her husband, moving through the stages towards acceptance, and Margaret comes to the realization that it was her father’s love that put her on that train in 1940. Both characters become conduits for the other’s catharsis. When Yukiko shares her husband’s journal from that time, Margaret says, “My father lives in that journal.”
All five of the actors do credit to their roles in this ensemble piece but Hara and Soudack’s performances are sublime. The play is particularly effective when all five actors are on stage at the same time in the memory flashback vignettes.
My one criticism is that there is quite a bit of Japanese dialogue between Kaneko and Hara and it would have been helpful to have either a reader board translating or a program insert with translations.
Hara has penned a lovely tribute to Sugihara and I, for one, am grateful to her for her work.
Courage Now is at the Firehall until Dec. 4. For tickets, visit firehallartscentre.ca.
Tova Kornfeld is a Vancouver freelance writer and lawyer.
When someone loves what they do or is passionate about a certain topic, it’s obvious. In the case of a book, if this someone is also proficient with words and excels at writing, their enthusiasm figuratively jumps off the page and inhabits the reader, getting them as excited as the author. This is how I felt reading Jonathan Berkowitz’s latest book, Tales From the Word Guy: What Your English Teacher Never Taught You(FriesenPress). Excited about the wonder that is language – in this case, the English language.
With the help of his wife, Heather, Berkowitz has compiled a collection of essays adapted from his segments on CBC Radio 1’s North by Northwest over several years as the Word Guy. Noting that people “perceive the spoken word differently from the written word,” he writes: “Adapting the radio columns into written essays requires a sensitivity to the difference between listening and reading. Heather has that sensitivity, not to mention a keen sense of style and grammar.”
North by Northwest host and producer Sheryl MacKay has written the book’s foreword.
“I first met Jonathan when he came in to talk about the National Puzzlers’ League convention, which was taking place that year in Vancouver,” she writes. “I was struck right away by his enthusiasm, his depth of knowledge (in the field of puzzles and beyond), his sense of humour, and by the fact that he could identify patterns in words and numbers everywhere. It’s like a superpower he has!
“I immediately asked him to do a regular column on the show. Jonathan, who is always up for a new adventure, agreed and, for the next year, he was our Puzzling Professor. Every month, he’d appear on the show and introduce listeners to a different kind of puzzle, talk about its history and then challenge them to solve a few. It was such fun and so mind-bending!
“The next year, Jonathan changed focus a little and became the Word Guy for the show. Each month, he takes us on a radio journey through some of the vagaries of the English language. As Jonathan owns more dictionaries and language reference books than anyone I know, he’s well equipped to lead this particular expedition!”
In Tales From the Word Guy, Berkowitz admits that his favourite books are dictionaries, followed perhaps by thesauri (I admit that I Googled the plural of thesaurus). “In fact,” he writes, “thesaurus comes from Latin, meaning ‘treasure,’ and the first dictionary definition of thesaurus is treasury or storehouse. Indeed, what a treasure house it is.”
Words have always been a passion for Berkowitz, but he is also a fan of numbers and mathematics, having chosen a career as a statistician. With his facility for words, numbers and problem-solving, it is no wonder that MacKay, in 2015, invited him to present puzzles on her show. I never heard him in that role, but I did very much enjoy the book those puzzles led to: The Whirl of Words, also published by FriesenPress. (See jewishindependent.ca/playing-with-words-and-more.)
Berkowitz’s breadth and depth of knowledge can be overwhelming at times. To build off his metaphor of this latest book as a box of chocolates, you might get the equivalent of a sugar rush if you read too much of it in one sitting. While the chapters are short, amusing and easy to read, there is just so much information “filling,” from the erudite to the silly to Berkowitz’s trademark puns. (Among those he shares is one of his favourites: “The only thing flat-earthers have to fear is sphere itself.”)
I learned so much in Tales From the Word Guy. For example, I knew that A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y are vowel letters – but also sometimes W?! Berkowitz gives the example of the “uncommon word, cwm, a synonym for cirque, [which] means ‘a deep steep-walled basin on a mountain usually forming the blunt end of a valley.’ Linguists sometimes refer to Y and W as semivowels,” he writes. “Conversely, U and I sometimes represent consonants, as in quiz and onion, respectively.”
I can understand the U being considered a consonant in quiz, but remain confused about the I in onion. But in a good way. I enjoy having my mind challenged, my assumptions upended.
I also enjoy being wowed and there are many “really?!” moments in this book, such as W being a vowel sometimes, albeit rarely. To name just a few of the other things that made me ooh and ah – the origins of the terms uppercase and lowercase; the number of words Shakespeare created (and some examples); and the name for and function of “um,” “uh,” “like,” “you know,” all those annoying sounds or words most of us unconsciously insert into our sentences when we talk.
But it’s not just the many fun facts that make Tales From the Word Guy such fun to read. Berkowitz shares a bit of himself, from more serious topics, like how his mother and father influenced his life, to his favourite, or most beautiful, words, his language pet peeves and his efforts at making up new words. It is easy to see why CBC’s the Word Guy is so popular.
Tales From the Word Guy: What Your English Teacher Never Taught You book launch with author Jonathan Berkowitz in conversation with Sheryl MacKay; adapted from radio by Heather Glassman Berkowitz. Nov. 29, 7pm, at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver. No registration required.
Tales From the Word Guy: Jonathan Berkowitz talks about his new book with Daniella Givon. Dec. 12, 7:30pm, at Beth Israel. bethisrael.ca.
Ben Caplan stars in Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story, which opens at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts Dec. 1. (Stoo Metz Photography)
Ben Caplan is narrator and co-creator (with Christian Barry and Hannah Moscovitch) of Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story, which opens at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts Dec. 1. It is a fantastic show, well worth seeing, which was last in Vancouver for the 2020 PuSh Festival.
“The show hasn’t changed all that much,” said Barry, artistic director of Halifax’s 2b theatre company. “We have a brilliant new drummer and keyboardist working on the show and, on top of that, the team has more skill and experience just by virtue of having had more opportunities to refine our show through repetition. But, ultimately, the reason we are bringing [it] back to Vancouver is all about access. In January 2020, we were only able to perform six times at UBC as part of the PuSh Festival. It was a lovely run with full houses and boisterous responses, but we think there were many people who just didn’t have the chance to see the show. We were thrilled to receive an invitation from SFU to bring the show back, and to perform in downtown Vancouver.”
Margaux Wosk makes pins, magnets, necklaces and other items. (photo from the artist)
Last year’s Affordable Art Show at the Zack was such a success that the gallery is repeating it in 2022, just in time for the winter holidays. Gallery director Hope Forstenzer hopes it will become an annual tradition.
Everything in the show is less than $250, and the selection is wide enough to appeal to a variety of tastes. The participating artists are a mix of repeat appearances and newcomers. Some of the newcomers have exhibited in Zack group shows before. For the others, this is their first event at the gallery.
Margaux Wosk is one of the new artists. Their company, Retrophiliac, produces pins, magnets, necklaces and other items, many of which are priced below $20.
“I’m an autistic, self-taught artist, designer, writer, entrepreneur and disability advocate,” Wosk said. “I have been a ‘retrophiliac’ for a long time. I am inspired by retro and vintage styles, but I also want to celebrate neurodiversity.”
In addition to their company’s distinct merchandise, Wosk creates vibrant, retro-inspired paintings and mixed media work. “I hope to break down barriers and eliminate the stigma of neurodiversity,” they said. “With my art, I want to open a dialogue about what autistic and disabled people are capable of.”
Aimee Promislow, another new artist, works with glass. Her company, Glass Sipper, produces reusable drinking straws. “I met Hope [Forstenzer] a number of years ago,” she told the Independent. “We were both members of the same glass co-op. When she joined the Zack Gallery, she began reaching out to me for various events and shows. Last year, I participated in the Hanukkah show here. I’m excited to be part of the Affordable Art Show this year.”
Aimee Promislow works with glass, making reusable drinking straws. (photo from the artist)
Promislow summed up her creative path and why she chose it. “I have always, since a young age, dabbled in art,” she said. “My mother is an artist, Nomi Kaplan. She had introduced me to various art forms. After high school, I tried pottery, then glass enamel, then I played with resin. Eventually, about 15 years ago, I started melting coloured glass. I love colour and I love watching things form in fire. Glass is hard when cold, but, once heated, it is malleable, and I love moving it around.”
At first, Promislow made glass beads and sculpted little animals out of glass: dogs, cats, turtles. “At the same time, our family enjoyed smoothies,” she said. “The kids wanted straws for their smoothies, but the only smoothie straws I could find were plastic ones.”
Concerned about the environment, she combined her passion for glass with her care for nature. “I had a ‘eureka’ moment,” she recalled. “I realized that, instead of making glass beads, I could make reusable glass drinking straws and decorate them with my tiny creatures. That night, Glass Sipper was born.”
She also makes glass mezuzot and yads (the pointers used to read Torah). “They are perfect gifts for bar and bat mitzvah,” she said. “And everything I make is under $100, ideally suitable for the Affordable Art Show.”
Another glass artist in the show is Sonya Labrie. Her company, SML Glassworks, produces vases and other elements of home décor, as well as jewelry. “I’ve always created pieces that could be in anyone’s home,” she said. “The idea that art is to be loved and available to everyone in our community is very important to me.”
With such a mindset, when Forstenzer invited her to participate in this show, Labrie’s answer was an unequivocal yes.
“I started working with glass in 2005,” she said. “The first glass class I attended was at Red Deer College in Red Deer, Alta. Then I went on to complete a three-year advanced diploma in craft and design at Sheridan College, majoring in glass. I’ve also had the opportunity to study glass at the renowned Pilchuck Glass School in northern Washington.”
Glass artist Sonya Labrie creates vases and other elements of home décor. (photo from the artist)
Labrie said she can’t imagine her life without creating beautiful things out of glass. “My body of work includes blown glass, flamework and kilns-cast items,” she elaborated. “Glass has endless possibilities, it is a challenging medium, and I keep discovering new ways of working with it.”
She also teaches glasswork for the Vancouver School Board. “I teach students grades 8 to 12 and I teach continuing education workshops for adults at the Terminal City Glass co-op.”
Unlike these company-owning creators, fibre artist Deborah Zibrik doesn’t consider herself a full-time artist. Not yet.
“I am a registered dietitian,” she said. “I’m still working part time, finishing a career that started in 1975. I will retire soon, after a research project at the B.C. Children’s Hospital Research Institute is completed. Until then, I simply don’t have enough time each day to work as a full-time artist. However, I consistently carve out ‘me time’ every day to complete some stitching. Ideas are constantly percolating in my head. Typically, many pieces are framed up or in the sketchbook phase at any one time. Perhaps the best descriptor for me is a part-time artist.”
Zibrik makes elaborate embroidered pieces. Some of them are like miniature tapestries, landscapes emerging out of fabric and threads. Others are tiny blossoms, beetles and butterflies that could be used separately or together, each one a delightful surprise. She also does golden embroidery.
“Smaller pieces are often whimsical and stitched quickly, with a minimum of stitches. On the other hand, my gold work requires hours to complete, and the materials are much more costly.”
Zibrik started learning needlecraft when still very young. “Like many girls growing up in rural Canada, I was taught by my mother and grandmother. They wanted to make sure I had all the critical homemaker skills, from crocheting blankets to mending socks…. Later, after 10 years of part-time study at Gail Harker Creative Studio, I completed Level 2 Design (based on a City and Guilds of London Institute in the U.K. curriculum) and Level 4 Diploma for stitch. Luckily for me, the studio is located in La Connor, Wash. That made it possible for me to attend sessions in-person to complete the evidence-based curriculum.”
Fibre artist Deborah Zibrik makes elaborate embroidered pieces. (photo from the artist)
After receiving her diploma in 2015, Zibrik decided to share her skills with others. “Time permitting, I have been teaching workshops for specific needlework techniques,” she said. “Guild members are my usual students. There is currently a discussion among the guilds about the lost generations of children who haven’t learned any of the needle arts, including embroidery; they haven’t had the exposure. Because of that, membership in the guilds is declining, as members age. I am considering ways to fix that. Perhaps I could offer embroidery classes to youngsters, maybe at the community centre level, to teach basic skills and prime creativity to future artisans.”
When asked where they see themselves on the scale of art versus craft, artists’ replies varied.
“I’m an artist and a designer,” said Wosk.
Promislow said, “I am a craftsperson. I use my medium to make things that are functional and beautiful.”
“My work rides a fine line between both,” said Labrie. “There is a fluid movement in my practice.”
“My personal journey suggests that, especially for women, craft and art are inextricably linked,” offered Zibrik. “More, they have been connected for thousands of years. They are but different places on the same continuum. In that sense, I am privileged to say: I am an artist.”
The Affordable Art Show continues until Dec. 30. And, if you’re visiting the exhibit Dec. 5-7 or 12-14, check out the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver’s Chanukah Marketplace, which takes place in the centre’s atrium.
Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
An oil painting by Germany-based artist Gennady Karabinskiy.
An ink drawing by Germany-based artist Gennady Karabinskiy.
Vancouver’s Furniture & Art Concierge, owned by Elliot Nitkin, has received the sole right to bring the work of Germany-based artist Gennady Karabinskiy to Canada.
Karabinskiy, a Russian Jew, uses diverse techniques to express his artistic ideas: oil on canvas painting, tempera, pastel, ink on paper and lithography. In his work, Karabinskiy follows the artistic tradition of Eastern European Jewry, carrying on the work of Jewish painters such as Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani and Anatoli Kaplan.
Since 1989, he has participated in more than 200 solo and group exhibitions, including ones in Norway, Germany, Holland and the United States, and he has been featured in numerous newspaper and magazine articles. His works are exhibited in museums in many countries, and are part of private collections around the world.
Suzy Birstein amid her work, some of which visitors to her studio will see during the East Side Culture Crawl. (photo by Britt Kwasney)
“I am most looking forward to healthily connecting with fellow artists and art lovers in real time, real space. Art is always more powerful in person,” artist Suzy Birstein told the Jewish Independent about the East Side Culture Crawl Visual Arts, Design & Craft Festival, which returns to its traditional format Nov. 17-20. Some 400+ artists will open their studios to the public.
“The sense of community, commitment, excitement, inspiration, appreciation – all that brought me to Parker Street [Studios] and East Side Culture Crawl originally is happening again,” she said. “It feels like a renaissance.”
Photographer Esther Rausenberg, artistic and executive director of the East Side Culture Crawl. (photo by Adam P.W. Smith)
“After the two-year pandemic rollercoaster ride, I am thrilled we are back to a ‘new normal,’” said Esther Rausenberg, artistic and executive director of the Crawl, as well as a participating artist. “I do say ‘new normal,’ as we don’t have a crystal ball and I can’t really speculate how this year’s Crawl will play out. Personally, I am excited to get out and see all of the new and amazing art that has been created and to catch up with the artists. It’s also a real pleasure for me to meet members of the public as they share their enthusiasm for the event, the art and the connections they will be making with the artists.”
Birstein (clay, painting, sculpture) and Rausenberg (photography, Georgia Art Studios) are only two of many Jewish community members who will open their creative space to the public over the four days of the festival, which also features gallery displays, and artist demonstrations and talks. Other community members include, from Parker Street Studios, Shevy Levy (painting), Olga Campbell (clay, mixed media, new media), Mia Weinberg (painting) and penny eisenberg (drawing, painting); from Eastside Atelier, Lauren Morris (mixed media, painting), Ideet Sharon (assemblage, mixed media, painting), Stacy Lederman (mixed media, painting) and Karly Leipsic (mixed media); and, from the Arc, Lynna Goldhar Smith (installation, painting). Overall, festival-goers can explore about 68 buildings and studios in the Eastside Arts District, the area bounded by Columbia Street, 1st Avenue, Victoria Drive and the waterfront.
“This year’s event has a distinctly celebratory tone,” said Levy. “It is a reunion for Vancouver’s established art community, a chance to reconnect, to have meaningful discussions around art, not just with artists, students and educators, but with those who display art, like galleries and art management, and everyone who is excited to work together again.”
During the pandemic restrictions, painter Shevy Levy started a new direction with her abstract work. (photo from Chutzpah!)
Thinking of the last couple of years, she noted, “What was fascinating about the immediate impact of COVID-19 was the sudden loss of collective connection – both human (face-to-face) and the collective understanding of what the future might bring…. When we were forced to isolate, I appreciated the introduction of art to the digital and virtual world, and how it helped the art world, in many aspects, to find new ways to connect with society. However, now I understand how much I, like so many of my colleagues, urgently need constant interactions with the community – 2022 Crawl is here to fill some gaps.”
Goldhar Smith – a multi-disciplinary artist who has spent more than 30 years in theatre performance with painting very much in the background – is excited about the chance to show her visual art to a lot of different people. “I especially love the opportunity to see their responses to the work and engage in lively conversation when it’s possible,” she said.
Lynna Goldhar Smith (photo from Chutzpah!)
Interested in integrating her visual art practice with her performance practice, Goldhar Smith said, “I have been building installations in my studio to that end and so, among my paintings and prints, visitors will see the beginnings of more conceptual ideas in some of the physical objects and paper sculptures in the studio.”
Whether abstract or figurative, Goldhar Smith seeks to express the intangible qualities of human experience in her work. “If I paint a landscape, it is as much an emotional or psychological landscape as a place,” she said. “Yet, at the same time, if I paint an urban crow or a heron, it is more an expression of honouring the urban wildlife, and reminding myself that I am in their domain. I hope that makes sense. Whatever I paint, I am like an improvisational actor, responding to the moment, with one brushstroke informing the next. The meaning emerges after the fact. It is not so much I make my art, as my art makes me.”
For Goldhar Smith, the pandemic was a dramatic reminder “that we need to behave more responsibly, more cohesively, with more compassion and care for each other – with more understanding of our connection to each other – and to view ourselves as part of nature and part of one planet all together. Yet, we are so divided. If there was ever a time for artists to get focused, this would be it.
“Gloria” by Lynna Goldhar Smith (image from Chutzpah!)
“Artists, and art, have the privilege and responsibility of their voices,” she continued. “We need to use our voices to contribute to the global change that is necessary. We need to speak up with courage and make brave art.
“We need to be endowed with the respect that what we do is of great importance and we need to be valued, supported and encouraged because artists bring meaning and perspective and also disruption and confrontation with the status quo. We need to see how our art fits, not so much into the art marketplace, but as a central driver of change that can address the pressing needs of our time.”
Levy expressed a similar view.
“So many artists, myself included, produce artwork with an outcome in mind, such as an exhibition or career step,” said Levy. “The challenges of the past few years forced me to take the time to reflect on my own art practice, taking it to the next level by exploring new avenues and fresh approaches. I had to remove and free myself from that outcome. I was able to experiment and create work that connects me better to the meaning of being a better human and better artist, as opposed to a ‘professional artist’ operating within the structures of a commercial art world.”
Birstein also used the pandemic period for self-reflection. “The enforced isolation of the pandemic,” she said, “gave me the gift of time: time to create, experiment, reflect, all day, every day. This is a first in my art practice and I was very productive.”
Birstein created two bodies of work for two solo exhibits in 2021 and 2022.
“Tsipora: A Place to Land was exhibited at the Zack Gallery,” she said. “Tsipora is my Hebrew name, meaning Bird. Pre-COVID, the bird symbolized a freedom of spirit while taking flight. With COVID, it was a time to nest, to find a place to land.
“Frida: When I Have Wings to Fly was exhibited at POMOArts. Frida is a continuation of my art historical portraits, Ladies-Not-Waiting, inspired by Velasquez’ masterpiece ‘Las Meninas.’ This series speaks to Frida Kahlo as a symbol of feminine strength and empowerment: a person who transcended tragedy and transformed it into beauty. My sculptures and paintings invite the viewer to converse in intertwined stories of myself, my mother, Frida and other historic figures that embody resourcefulness, resilience and beauty.
“Materially, both bodies of work involved much experimentation with structural techniques, surfacing with fired and cold materials, addition of repurposed objects.”
For Levy, the last couple of years allowed her to start a new direction with her abstract work. “Slowly, I developed large-scale canvases that were marked by bold and expressive brushstrokes,” she said. “I am excited to share with the public my new collection, A Portrait of a Flower. My work demonstrates the flowers as a source of lines, shapes, negative space, gesture, colour and value, or another source of abstraction.”
The pandemic period also gave Levy the chance to explore more remote art communities. “Pre-COVID,” she said, “I used to share and exhibit my art within my immediate community. In the last two-plus years, I had more time to develop my social media presence and expertise. As an outcome, 2021 was the best year ever of showing and selling my work.”
Birstein also pointed to the technological silver lining of COVID. “With the necessity of communicating virtually while globally isolated,” she said, “I see the world of art opening in terms of compassion, imagination, inclusion, respect – all of this so apparent at this year’s Venice Bienale, from which I have just returned.”
In addition to the open studios Nov. 17-20, the East Side Culture Crawl features a multi-venue, salon-style curated exhibition called NEXT, which “explores the after-effects of living through a pandemic as we long for and ponder about what’s next.” There are also several other events. For more information, visit culturecrawl.ca.
A scene from Site: Yizkor as it was performed in Sichów Duży, Poland, this past June. (photo from Chutzpah!)
Site: Yizkor is both an intensely personal work and a powerful, universally meaningful work. It is ever-changing and spans the past, present and future.
“For me, this project is a gesture of healing,” co-creator Maya Ciarrocchi told the Independent. “My goal for audiences and participants is that, through the process of shared commemoration, we may put aside our differences and look towards a reimagined future.”
Part of this year’s Chutzpah! Festival, Site: Yizkor is a collaboration between Canadian multimedia artist Ciarrocchi and American composer Andrew Conklin. It is an evolving “interdisciplinary project [that] explores the physical and emotional manifestation of loss through text, video and music.” It is an installation (of video, prints and drawings) and a performance, and includes workshops “where participants are invited to create their own Yizkor pages as a way to mourn and commemorate lost people and places.”
“Yizkor books are documents written by Holocaust survivors to commemorate the villages they lived in before the Second World War,” explained Ciarrocchi. “They capture the spirit of these places by describing the day-to-day life of their Jewish citizens. They include lists of the Jewish residents, the structure of political systems and where the best shopping could be found. They also include photographs and maps of the villages drawn from memory. They document a time and place that no longer exist but the traces of which are visible in the contemporary landscape.”
In introducing the project to workshop participants, Ciarrocchi said, “I tell them that, while Site: Yizkorexamines displacement through the lens of Yizkor, which is an inherently Jewish framework, the project is not limited to the Jewish experience. Site: Yizkor is centred on creating a space for shared commemoration and the universal experience of loss.”
For the local presentation, Conklin works with a local string quartet for the performance, while Ciarrocchi creates “video projections for the performance that include references to the known and erased histories of Vancouver,” and installs the exhibit in the gallery. She leads the workshops, which include both Jewish and non-Jewish community groups, and participants “are invited to read their text as part of the performances or share them as written documents or drawings as part of the exhibition.”
Site: Yizkor has been presented in New York City and in San Francisco. In June of this year, it was presented in Poland, from where Ciarrocchi’s maternal grandfather immigrated to Canada; Ciarrocchi was born in Winnipeg.
The project began in 2018, when Ciarrocchi was a fellow in the Laboratory for Jewish Culture program in New York City. “At the time,” she said, “I was working on a series of drawings depicting former Polish and Lithuanian wooden synagogues layered with memory maps sourced from Yizkor books. As part of the project, I gave a performance lecture where I read passages from Yizkor books, accompanied by projections of my drawings, maps and photographs from Yizkor books. I concluded the performance by prompting the audience to ‘describe a vanished place of personal importance.’ I collected these texts, and they were incorporated into future performances.”
Andrew Conklin (photo from Chutzpah!)
She met Conklin around when she was in residency at Millay Arts in upstate New York. “He expressed interest in using my drawings of maps as a musical score,” she said. “We then started working on a sound/video project comprising his compositions and my animated maps and drawings.”
In 2019, Ciarrocchi was invited to attend an international meeting of interdisciplinary artists in Poland.
“The group gathered in Sichów Duży, a rural area not far from Staszów, a small town that was once an important centre of Jewish life,” said Ciarrocchi. “The site once belonged to an aristocratic family who lost their lands and titles during the Second World War. The buildings had been restored except for one and, one evening, I projected the video on its surface and played Andrew’s music from speakers inside. It was then I knew that I needed to return to this place and present the work live with musicians inside the structure. In June 2022, after three years, a pandemic and a war, I returned to Sichów with a team of musicians from the U.S., Germany and Poland. We presented Site: Yizkor inside the ruin to an audience comprised of Ukrainian refugees who were being housed on the site. The following week, we presented Site: Yizkor in another ruined manor home outside of Kraków. That iteration included dancers as well as musicians.”
It was an emotional experience.
“Gratitude and relief,” said Ciarrocchi about what she felt afterward. “Gratitude to Andrew and the incredible team of performers we assembled and to the funders who supported the work. Relief after all the planning and delays that we were finally able to bring the work to Poland. It was also exciting to see the project come together so beautifully. In many ways, my first research trip in 2019 was where I felt all the sadness and grief. This year, I was too busy to let myself go into the dark crevasses of my emotions. In 2019, though, I spent most of the three weeks I was there crying. I visited my grandmother’s shtetl, which was incredibly powerful. While sitting on the ground in the old Jewish cemetery there, I released all my grief. Poland is filled with ghosts. One does not help but feel their presence.”
It is in this context that the question asking workshop participants to “describe their dreams of the future” was added to the project.
“I added this part of the prompt in Poland,” said Ciarrocchi. “I realized that, understandably, so much of the Jewish experience there is about memory and the past. I’m two generations removed from the Holocaust and, while its effects are written into the code of my body, I am also interested in how we create something new from the residue of this loss. This also comes from these past years of the pandemic, when there has been such a huge loss of life. We’ve had to reimagine how we live now and in the future.”
The performance and exhibition of Site: Yizkor in Vancouver is the Canadian première of the work.
For a recent grant proposal, Ciarrocchi wrote about the première, “This event will also be a coming home. Site: Yizkor is rooted in research into the land and architecture of a place in relation to the known and mythological histories of my ancestors who fled Poland and Lithuania before the Second World War. My ancestors emigrated to Canada to form a new life for themselves and their descendants. On the surface, their story is one of success. My great-grandfather was a seminal figure in Winnipeg’s garment industry, and my family still benefits from his accomplishments. This story belies how the effects of trauma and displacement have persisted from their origins in Eastern Europe so many decades ago. Forming cross-cultural connections through Site: Yizkor’s performance and workshop model, first in Poland and now in Canada, irrigates ancient inherited wounds.”
Site: Yizkor is co-presented with the Zack Gallery and in partnership with the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, with the support of the Jewish Community Foundation. The performance takes place Nov. 19, 8 p.m., at the Rothstein Theatre, and it will livestreamed and available on demand; it will include a facilitated talkback and a reception with the artists. The exhibition and workshops take place Nov. 12-19 in the gallery. For tickets and more information, visit chutzpahfestival.com.
Left to right: Misha Kobiliansky (Luther), Matthew Bissett (Faustus) and Dylan Nouri (Hamlet) in United Players’ production of Wittenberg, which is at Jericho Arts Centre Nov. 11-Dec. 4. (photo by Nancy Caldwell)
The play Wittenberg tackles heady subjects – skepticism or faith? Divine plan or free will? – with fast-paced high- and low-brow humour, mixing the serious and the silly, an actual historical figure with characters from literature.
United Players brings David Davalos’s comedy to Jericho Arts Centre Nov. 11-Dec. 4. Directed by Jewish community member Adam Henderson, it also stars community member Misha Kobiliansky – as Martin Luther.
The play, described as a prequel to both Hamlet and Doctor Faustus, is set in the year 1517. Luther (whose writings would spark the Protestant Reformation but who also would become viciously antisemitic) teaches theology at the University of Wittenberg. His colleague is philosophy professor John Faustus (who has yet to make his deal with the devil for knowledge and pleasure, as he does in Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus). They debate each other and attempt to sway the views of one of their students, Hamlet (the indecisive Prince of Denmark penned by Shakespeare).
Hamlet has returned to school, in crisis after having studied Copernicus’s radical new theory of the universe, that the earth revolves around the sun. Meanwhile, as the play description explains, Faustus “has decided to make an honest woman of Helen, once ‘of Troy,’ aka ‘the Eternal Feminine,’ but she prefers her freedom” and Luther “is outraged at the abusive practices of the church to which he has sworn obedience.” In a college tennis tournament, Laertes (another character taken from Shakespeare’s Hamlet) competes against Hamlet for the championship title.
Wittenberg is Kobiliansky’s debut with United Players, but he is a veteran actor. When asked how he got into acting, he said, “That’s a nice story I like to tell. Back in the day, my mother worked as a piano player for the Moscow Art Theatre and she used to take me backstage with her when I was little. I remember watching a few plays from behind the scenes and watching actors go on and off stage – the atmosphere there was incredible! I was ‘scarred’ for life.
“A few years after, our family moved to Israel and somehow acting studies never came up, until I was in my early 20s. There were a few of us, theatre enthusiasts with no acting experience, and this very seasoned director who recently came to Israel from Ukraine. He wanted to find a young group of people and do some theatre together. He worked us through a pretty rigorous acting course for about a year and then we actually staged a few plays. Those were great times.”
Prior to winning the role of Luther, Kobiliansky was only minimally familiar with the historical figure on which his character is based.
“All I knew was that he led the Reformation and that the Lutheran Church is named after him,” said Kobiliansky.
While Luther’s antisemitism is a matter of historical record, with catastrophic consequences, of his concepts that a non-Christian might be sympathetic to, the actor said, “Well, Martin Luther’s relationship with God and his struggles with faith can apply pretty much to any religion, I think…. His anti-indulgence protest could be compared to any anti-corruption movement anywhere in the world, where those in power take advantage of their position for personal benefit, by pushing an ideological concept to an extreme.”
Limiting his comments to the character of Luther, as depicted in 1517, Kobiliansky said, “The thing I probably love the most about Martin Luther’s stance in this play – he stands for filling life with purpose as opposed to freedom and progress (represented by Faustus). Progress is a nice concept, but progress for a progress’s sake gets you nowhere.”
Wittenberg also stars Matthew Bissett (Faustus), Dylan Nouri (Hamlet), Deborah Vieyra (the Eternal Feminine) and Jake Anthony (Laertes). Running Nov. 11-Dec. 4, performances take place Thursday through Saturday, 8 p.m., and Sundays, 2 p.m., with talk backs Nov. 17 and 20. Tickets ($30, $26 seniors, $15 students) are available at unitedplayers.com or 604-224-8007, ext. 2.
Yukiko and Chiune Sugihara (photo from Firehall Arts Centre)
It is written in the Mishnah that, “If you save the life of one person, it is as if you save the entire world.” Chiune Sugihara saved 6,000 Jewish lives – 6,000 worlds – in the summer of 1940, despite the dangers of doing so to himself and his family.
A new play about Sugihara sees its world première at the Firehall Arts Centre this month. Written by Japanese-Canadian actor and playwright Manami Hara, Courage Now opens Nov. 19.
Contrary to his government’s strict instructions to not issue visas to Jewish refugees, Sugihara, the Japanese consul in Kaunas (Kovno), Lithuania, handwrote in a 30-day period more than 2,300 visas for Jews trying to escape from Europe via the Soviet Union to Japan. Sugihara was a husband, a father, a career diplomat, a linguist, but, above all, with his strict Samurai upbringing, he believed in respect for, and sanctity of, human life. As he said, “They were human beings and they needed help.”
Sugihara’s actions are responsible for more than 40,000 Jews being alive today. Yet, after the war, the Japanese government dismissed him from diplomatic service and treated him as a persona non grata. However, Israel has honoured his courage and his memory on three occasions – in 1985, by recognizing him as one of the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem; in 2016, by naming a street in Netanya after him; and, in October 2021, by dedicating Sugihara Square in Jerusalem.
In an interview with the Independent, playwright and actor Hara talked about the journey that led her to write Courage Now.
“About 12 years ago, my mentor from Studio 58, Jane Heyman, approached me and asked if I knew about Sugihara and I said that I did not. She told me his story, that her parents and uncle had been saved by him and that she would not be here if not for his actions. We talked about collaborating on a play. Her story and my being Japanese made it very personal for me, as I was very embarrassed by how the Japanese government treated him after 1945.”
Getting a play from conception to the stage is a long process.
“I heard that a Japanese playwright, Hiraishi Koichi, had written about Sugihara. I got a hold of his play, translated it into English and worked with Jane on it but it just did not seem dramatic enough,” said Hara. “I talked to Koichi and asked if I could adapt the play and he gave me permission. So, I researched the Jewish families who were Sugihara survivors and created more scenes. But it still did not seem to have the theatrical weight it needed to be a success so I put it away for a couple years, as I felt I had lost my vision.
“About five years ago, I traveled to Japan and had a chance to speak to Sugihara’s daughter-in-law and two of his grandchildren, which gave me a firsthand intimate look into his life and that of Yukiko, his wife. Then it dawned on me that the way to tell the story was from two female points of view, that of Yukiko and of a child survivor, Margaret. So, I went back to the story and after many years of writing drafts and workshopping, here we are.”
There are five characters in the play: Sugihara, Yukiko, a young Margaret, an adult Margaret (Jewish community member Advah Soudak) and young Margaret’s father (community member Amitai Marmorstein). Margaret is a fictional character, created from the stories of many survivors. Scenes are set up to move between the Lithuanian summer of 1940 and mid-1980s Vancouver, where an adult Margaret now lives.
Hara does double duty in this production, as the playwright and performing as Yukiko. “It is difficult to switch, wearing both hats, you feel like you have a split personality,” she acknowledged. “However, I take off my playwright hat and then I concentrate on my character in terms of what are her needs, where should I be focused and what is happening with the other characters. So, when I am on stage, I am the actor and I let the director take over from there. If he or the other actors see anything that needs tweaking or fixing, they will let me know. It is a very collaborative process. We are three weeks from opening and still finalizing many of the details.”
Hara sees her character as a spirited, stubborn, strong woman, not as stereotypically subservient, but rather as someone who also was idealistic and who was supportive of her husband in all that he did. “She knew the risk to her family and the sacrifice that would have to be made in carrying out her husband’s plan to save the Jewish refugees,” said Hara. “It is an amazing role and I am so honoured to be able to bring this story to Vancouver audiences. I hope the audience takes away that there is always hope, that there is always a way to find courage to walk towards that hope and one should never give up.”
Director Amiel Gladstone got involved in the project, having worked with Hara before.
“She was looking for the right kind of collaborative director for the show and she reached out to me because I work so much with new plays,” said Gladstone in a telephone interview with the Independent. “She told me that she had been hoping for a Jewish director…. I told her that my father was Jewish.”
As to the play, he said, “It is a memory play dealing with two women trying to piece together what happened to them years ago during those dark times. We had to create a space that includes both 1940 and present-day locations: a Japanese home and garden, a Jewish refugee apartment, the Kaunas consul office, a park, the train station, with all the locations in view at the same time. It becomes a dream world, where the actors move from set to set as they go back and forth in time. Itai Erdal’s lighting design will inform the audience as to the change in time and place.” (Erdal is also a member of the Jewish community.)
Soudack’s character, in her 50s, is going through a difficult separation and divorce. In an interview with the Independent, Soudack explained, “She realizes that she has a big hole in life, as she does not know what happened to her parents. She travels to Japan to seek out Sugihara and to ask about her father but learns that Sugihara is dead (he died in 1986) so she looks to Yukiko for answers. At the same time, Yukiko is also going back and remembering that time through her interaction with Margaret.”
Soudack had to grapple with capturing the essence of Margaret’s psychological issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder.
“She has broken pieces of memory that she wants to fit together. She has had a difficult life,” said Soudack. “It must have been terrifying to be leaving your family, everything you know and being put on a train and sent off on your own. She has a lot of anger, sadness and abandonment and betrayal issues. She does not form close loving relationships very easily, as she learned that people closest to her disappear. She has to work through all this as she seeks the truth.”
Working with Hara has been a treat, said Soudack. “It is fabulous with the playwright right there so, when a question comes up, she can give us the explanation. It is a beautiful sense of collaboration, respect, joy and appreciation of what she wrote and it is a gift to be right there with her working through this project.”
As to being a Jewish actor in this role, she said, “As a Jewish person, you grow up with the Holocaust and the plight of the Jews – it is so part of our DNA that, when you come across a story and people that you never heard of, it makes you have such gratitude and respect for these non-Jewish heroes who, in the face of so much antisemitism, still found the courage to do the right thing. If I could meet Mr. Sugihara, I would hug him, look him in his eyes and thank him for his bravery and courage.”
Courage Now runs to Dec. 4. For tickets, visit firehallartscentre.ca or call the box office, 604-689-0926.
Tova Kornfeldis a Vancouver freelance writer and lawyer.
Liz Glazer headlines the Nov. 24 Chutzpah! event Celebrating Queer Jewish Comedy. (photo from Chutzpah!)
Lawyer-turned-comedian Liz Glazer shares the Rothstein Theatre stage Nov. 24 with the Holy Sisters, Israeli drag queens Ziona Patriot and Talula Bonet, in the Chutzpah! Festival event Celebrating Queer Jewish Comedy. The evening is hosted by multidisciplinary artist and performer Yenta, whose alter ego is Stuart B. Meyers.
Based in New Jersey, Glazer is an award-winning comedian. Before taking to the stage as a career – and engaging in other creative endeavours, including acting and writing – she was a tenured law professor.
Of comedy, Glazer said, “I never intended to get into it. I had a crush on a woman who asked if I ever thought of doing comedy (no) and said she would put me on her show (to which I initially also said no, then realized she would probably be at her own show, so I said yes). I loved it so much from that first performance, and I think what I loved about it wasn’t even the laughs or attention or even that this woman I had a crush on was in the audience, though all of those things were nice, but that all I had to be to do it was me.
“I enjoyed teaching law, but there was always something about it where I had to fit what I wanted to say or write about into a framework of legal analysis. I had to have the topic of whatever I was saying or writing be the law, not just my own life, because there would eventually be something like a bar exam. When I did comedy, all I needed to talk about was myself. Though I should note: after all of my shows there are exams, so audience members should be prepared for that.”
Glazer’s first comedy performance was on March 5, 2013. She admitted to having been “a wreck.”
“I wrote stuff to say,” said Glazer, “but had the thankfully correct instinct that it wouldn’t connect with the audience or be funny or good, so I called a friend with experience performing comedy and she told me to just say something vulnerable to the audience at the beginning of my set.”
Thinking she got the message, she hung up before realizing she didn’t know how to be vulnerable.
“They don’t teach you how to do that in law school,” she said. “So, I paced around a bunch trying to think of something vulnerable to say, couldn’t really think of anything, then headed to my front door to leave for the show…. I see a package at my front door, and I hadn’t ordered anything.”
With time to spare before the show, Glazer brought the package inside. As she was about to open it, she said, “I realize[d] a trick to being vulnerable is not knowing the answer to something, and I didn’t know what was in the package, so perhaps the vulnerable thing I could do to start my set would be to open the package on stage. So I did.
“Turns out the package was from my mom, who had visited my apartment a couple weeks before and noticed that my white fluffy cat Mona – who would climb to the top of my closet – was shedding her white fluffy fur on my dark suits I would wear to teach class, making me look like a white fluffy law professor. My mom said I should buy vinyl suit covers … [but] knowing I wouldn’t, she ordered me three packs of six of them and sent them to me without my knowledge. So, my first set ever began with my opening this package on stage and explaining to the audience my relationship with my mother and my cat Mona, and how I’m a law professor who teaches class with white fluff all over my suits. And it worked! I think because, even though I had no idea how to do comedy, I couldn’t not be myself because I was genuinely reacting to what was in that package in the moment I opened it for the first time along with the audience. And/or because, as a rule, vinyl suit covers are very funny.”
Glazer no longer relies mainly on improvisation, but it still is an important part of her act.
“I do write a lot of jokes,” she said, “and much of my shows consist of prepared material but also improvising is everything, to quote the great Joan Rivers (in a very short interview I saw somewhere and am not sure where). Live comedy, whether it’s written down ahead of time or not is, by nature, dependent on interaction and connection with the audience which is, by nature, improvisational. So, to prepare for a show, I make sure I know what I want to say – sometimes a set of things and, more often, one big idea I want to get across – and I annoy my wife for a few hours repeating it aloud while she tries on clothes and asks me if I like them. And I try to meditate before [a show] because the key ingredient for me is clearing my focus so I can be present with the audience in the moment. That’s really the stuff. Connection and clarity.”
Glazer is married to Rabbi Karen Glazer Perolman, a spiritual leader at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in Short Hills, N.J.
“I was raised going to Orthodox Jewish day school, a Conservative synagogue, and I’m now married to a Reform rabbi, so I think that makes me Chassidic,” Glazer joked. “I do talk about being Jewish in my comedy, and I do comedy for Jewish organizations and synagogues frequently. I talk about being married to a rabbi and, when I do comedy for Jewish audiences, I talk more extensively about my upbringing and how I learned in school all of these rules about what not to do, then lived in a house where we ate pepperoni pizza on trayf silverware on Shabbos.
“At an even deeper level,” she said, “my lineage consists of four out of four grandparents who survived the Holocaust. Not to brag, but it’s true. And I think of them constantly when I do comedy, especially when it’s explicitly about being Jewish and especially now as antisemitism is on the rise, unfortunately. There’s always a fearful part of me that wonders how much to talk about being Jewish in situations where there might be antisemitic people in the audience or if I post a video that may spark antisemitic comments, but I think of my grandparents in those moments, too. I think, if they survived for me to not be loudly Jewish, what was the point?”
Glazer doesn’t shy away from who she is or what challenging circumstances she has faced.
“I’m recording an album soon called Still Born Sorry, about grief and trauma and stillbirth (and it’s funny!) that will be an audio album available wherever you get your music and such, and also part of a documentary film about how I was supposed to record an album and have a baby last year, and neither of those came to fruition when I thought they would. That prior album was supposed to be called Born Sorry, and was postponed due to a stillbirth, so this one (the album and the documentary) will be called Still Born Sorry, which may be the best pun I definitely did not intend.”
In addition to the Nov. 24 performance at Chutzpah!, Glazer will be leading a two-hour workshop on the afternoon of Nov. 25. Participants will explore their “personal experiences, opinions and overbearing family members to find funny material to bring to the stage,” as well as setting up a “punchline joke structure and what it means to find a comedic voice.”
For anyone a little nervous about trying to seek out that voice, Glazer said, “I adore nervous people, so I really encourage especially those who are, to come to the workshop.”
Glazer encouraged readers to check out her website, dearlizglazer.com, and send her “a nice email! I would love to hear from you!”
For tickets to Glazer’s workshop and any Chutzpah! performance, visit chutzpahfestival.com.
