Arne Larsen as Tevye and Ruth Kult as Golde in Gallery 7 Theatre’s production of Fiddler on the Roof. (photo by Dianna Lewis)
Growing up in a Jewish home, I always cherished Fiddler on the Roof and its Sholem Aleichem inspiration. I had a copy of the film in the entertainment room, but the recent Gallery 7 Theatre production was only the second time I have seen this classic as a live play, the first time being in high school.
Gallery 7 did an amazing job highlighting Jewish culture and tradition to audiences last month in Abbotsford, an area that is sparsely Jewish. The company’s executive and artistic director, Ken Hildebrandt, noted that all of the artists and technicians pursued the project with the utmost “passion, dedication and love,” and it showed.
Set in the fictional shtetl of Anatevka in czarist Russia, the musical’s subject matter isn’t for the faint-hearted. Tevye, Golde, their daughters and the other villagers experience the trauma of pogroms, the beauty of love and the strength of faith, offering lessons relevant to us even now.
What word best describes the play? Triumph. Triumph over poverty (the daughters married who they wish despite the lack of dowry) and adversity (antisemitism), and the triumph of women (including in the cast, as the fiddler was played by Abigail Curwen) and tradition (adapting to modernity).
Tevye is played with realism by Arne Larsen. Outside of the occasional accent slip, Larsen plays the role as if he were living in czarist Russia himself. He sings with honesty, and truly seems to wrestle with the Divine to honor his faith. Tevye is the papa, the one to be obeyed, but, as the play develops, he shows a remarkable love for his daughters, allowing them to marry who they wish – as long as they are Jewish. Even in the case of Chava (Anastasia McIntosh), who is “dead to him” because she marries Sasha (Sheldon Jeans), a non-Jew, Tevye wishes, “May G-d be with you.” Then there is Perchik (Kevin Hegeman), who turns everything into a political statement. At one point, he compares the biblical Laban to a modern employer in the socialist sense, one of the play’s many comedic moments.
The shtetl world was brought to life by the costume and set design of Rafaella Rabinovich, who has a BA from the Rafeket Levy Design School for the Performing Arts in Tel Aviv. She told the Independent that it was both a great privilege and a wonderful challenge to put together. (For a profile of Rabinovich, see the article “Relishing theatre life.”)
The play’s one main set, simple by theatre standards, was a very colorful depiction of a village house. The costumes accented some of the characters’ meanings. For example, the police outfits were distinguished for their detail and, when they appeared, one knew trouble was to follow. Tevye was costumed with tzizit and hat, which was used to great purpose at the end of the play when he notes that perhaps Jews wear hats because they are forced to move so often.
The rabbi in the play, however, more resembled a modern non-Orthodox rabbi in appearance with his clean shave and, at one point, he is caught drinking rather than praying. This bit of artistic licence contributed to Walt Derksen’s performance seeming less believable from a historical perspective. The play could have also used more attention to lighting.
While it wasn’t Broadway, Gallery 7’s Fiddler was a believable drama about triumph over adversity, and the strength of love. Many audience members were visibly moved. And, for this reviewer at least, the play brought a little welcome Yiddishkeit to his neighborhood.
Gil Lavieis a freelance correspondent, with articles published in the Jerusalem Post, Shalom Toronto and Tazpit News Agency. He has a master’s of global affairs from the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.
Allan Zinyk as Patrice, left, and David Adams as Bryan in Elbow Room Café: The Musical (Phase 1). (photo by Emily Cooper)
Allan Zinyk and David Adams are veritable doppelgangers for Patrice (Patrick) Savoie and Bryan Searle, who started the Elbow Room Café on Jervis Street in 1983. While the restaurant moved to Davie Street in 1996 and the couple has since taken on another business partner, the heart of the café is Savoie and Searle, and, for many people, “home” is wherever they are.
Elbow Room Café: The Musical (Phase 1) really captures the depth and warmth of their relationship with each other, as well as with their staff and customers. It is a fitting and well-deserved homage to two men who have not only built a successful business, but a community, not to mention raising tens of thousands of dollars over the years for the charity A Loving Spoonful.
The Studio 58 and Zee Zee Theatre collaboration is a work in progress, but its Phase 1 opening on March 21 was a pretty polished effort. It will be interesting to see what changes on the path to its final form. Already, the musical – book and lyrics by Dave Deveau, music and lyrics by Anton Lipovetsky, directed by Cameron Mackenzie – arouses a range of emotions, from belly laughter to touching sentimentality. The songs are catchy and singable, the characters are memorable and relatable, the choreography is appropriately silly and sexy.
Mama Sutra and Earla are among the customers who witness all the drama at the café. (photo by Emily Cooper)
Led by professional actors Zinyk and Adams, the Studio 58 cast was top-notch. The audience gets lost in the life dramas that take place at the café: Tim and Tabby, a tourist couple from Kansas who stop in for a bite to eat on their way to Stanley Park, and are introduced to a whole new world; will Jackie and Jill, broken up for 253 days, get back together, despite all they’ve said to each other and what has happened since their breakup?; will the shy girl (aka Menu) find love at the café?; and Amanda, who finds out as her bachelorette party comes to an end that her wedding won’t take place as planned. Then there’s Patrice and Bryan, both getting older and a little slower – what’s to become of the café once they are no longer able to run it?
These main storylines are all played out in front of an odd, and endearing, assortment of other customers. One of the many notable aspects of this musical is how the supporting cast reacts to what’s going on around them. The full-cast musical numbers are big and bold, and there are some unique roles, such as Autograph, who takes on the personas of various celebrities who have eaten at the café, Tom Selleck and Sharon Stone, for example.
Since the musical is only in the first of a planned three phases, it is likely that the stories, dialogue and/or music will change. Considering who’s involved in the production, however, it should only get better. Then maybe afterward they can start on Jewish Independent: The Musical.
Elbow Room Café is at Studio 58 until March 29. As the musical’s program notes, there is “coarse language and immature content.” For tickets and information, visit studio58.ca.
Serge Bennathan with Erin Drumheller in Monsieur Auburtin, which is at the Dance Centre March 26-28. (photo by Michael Slobodian)
Serge Bennathan’s Monsieur Auburtin is an autobiographical work, which promises to offer “audiences a keyhole through which to rediscover their own childhood dreams, splendidly realized or forgotten through the passage of time.”
Co-presented by the Scotiabank Dance Centre and Chutzpah!Plus March 26-28, Monsieur Auburtin spans Bennathan’s decades-long career, from France to Canada, from student to company artistic director. In addition to being a dancer and choreographer, Bennathan is also a writer and artist. He is known for his collaborations with opera companies, and the projects of the company he founded in Vancouver, Les Productions Figlio, “encompass dance, theatre, music, multi-media, visual art and literary works.”
Among multiple other honors, Bennathan was awarded the 2014 Canada Council Jacqueline Lemieux Prize because of his innumerable “contributions to Canadian dance through his creation work, his performance, his work as a mentor, [and] for his leadership within and beyond his company work. He inspires creativity among those he works with and his impact has been felt in multiple geographical centres and multiple generations.”
JI: Throughout your career, you’ve created personal works, why an autobiographical one at this point?
SB: It came quite organically as a response to a cancer that I was fighting. It made me think about what I love in my life, what made me, the gratitude to be an artist in this world. And how there are a lot of dance works but how we speak rarely about dance with the audience. So, I decided to be a storyteller and talk about how I came to dance and use my life as an artist in dance to talk about other artists that I love and admired. For this, on stage in Monsieur Auburtin, there are with me two dancers, Erin Drumheller and Kim Stevenson, and the composer playing live, Bertrand Chénier.
JI: The last time we spoke was in 2003, about The Invisible Life of Joseph Finch. There, you described your creative process as including up to a year and a half of research before starting to work with the dancers and creative team. How does your process differ, if at all, for a work such as Monsieur Auburtin?
SB: It does not really. It is the same process. I spent a year writing the text for the piece, then another working with the composer Bertrand Chénier. Just talking about life in dance, not talking about choreography but about the essence of dance. Now, here we are, in the studio with two dancers, me and the composer that will be live on stage. The time before is important to create enough stratum, subtext and be able to let go.
JI: From where do you garner the strength/courage to share so much of yourself in your choreography? Does the vulnerability ever scare you? If so, how do you overcome that fear?
SB: We live only once. It is important for me right now to talk to people, and even more important to me in the world we live in, to talk poetically to the audience, through words, movement and music. We all have in us fear, but we also have courage and strength. Doubts are not there to stop us, they are here to make us think deeper. We have to embrace fear to say our truth. And even more when we know that this life is not a dress rehearsal.
JI: [From 1990-2006], you were with Dancemakers in Toronto. What brought you to Vancouver, and how did Les Productions Figlio come to be created?
SB: In 2006, when I stepped down as artistic director of Dancemakers, it was very natural for me to come back to Vancouver. The time that I lived in Vancouver the first time, 1987, ’88, ’89, ’90, defined me as an artist. The people I met at that time became longtime collaborators that continued to work with me through my time at Dancemakers. I loved passionately this community. It is my home in Canada. I created Les Productions Figlio, a production company, to help me create the work I want to create, that is not always dance. I had just come out of 16 years with a dance company and wanted to be lighter as a structure. I create dance, but also theatre and maybe more.
JI: You are also a writer, painter and illustrator. Have you always been interested in these pursuits? What does a typical day or week look like for you, or is there such a thing?
SB: Dance introduced me to these other artistic expressions very organically and I love it. Everything feeds everything. I get up, meditate, write for two hours, paint, continue the day in the studio or the work that I have to do for a creation. Might come back to painting, read, cook, think, dream.
***
Monsieur Auburtin is at the Dance Centre, 677 Davie St., March 26-28, 8 p.m. For tickets ($29/$25/$20), visit thedancecentre.ca or chutzpahfestival.com, or call 604-257-5145.
It’s 50 years in the future. You’re in your landspeeder, zipping along the desert horizon to the Langara oasis for the opening production of Studio 58’s 2065 season! It features the usual outstanding student acting and production talent, plus a very special guest sponsored by the Studio 58 Legacy Fund, which you helped start back in 2015. “Who’d they bring in this year?” you wonder, doing a portal scan through the virtual implants in your right eye. “Ah, they’ve got Antony Holland again. Bravo!”
Holland founded Studio 58 in 1965 (at 94, he is Canada’s oldest working actor) and the Studio 58 Legacy Fund was created to celebrate the school’s 50th anniversary and help carry on its tradition of excellence. The fund will help expand the scope of Studio 58’s productions by providing exceptional practical learning opportunities not otherwise available within the program’s regular operating budget, allowing the hiring of guest artists to work on productions, and permitting the program to offer special workshops, mentorships, etc.
The fundraiser’s goal? To establish an endowment of at least $250,000 – and Langara College will match every dollar raised before March 31, 2015.
Performances play a crucial part within the total program. In the past – through special grant funding or partnerships with outside agencies and companies – Studio 58 was able to enhance the student experience through co-productions, special workshops and mentorships. Sadly, the financial landscape has changed hugely since 1965, which is why the school is now reaching out for help.
Studio 58 has never done anything like this, and is unlikely to again. Donors will receive a charitable tax receipt for any donation, whether made online at langara.bc.ca/studio-58/learn-about-us/legacy-fund.html or by cheque to Langara College Foundation, 100 West 49th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., V5Y 2Z6. Please specify Studio 58 Legacy Fund with your donation.
Left to right, Carl Kennedy, Tom Pickett and Giovanni Mocibob hold a seder in The Whipping Man. The symbolism of Passover is an integral part of Matthew Lopez’s play. (photo by Emily Cooper)
On April 9, 1865, the day before erev Passover, General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Confederate troops to the Union Army’s General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Va., ending the four-year American Civil War and setting the stage for the emancipation of African Americans. This intersection of events forms the backdrop of award-winning playwright Matthew Lopez’s powerful three-person drama The Whipping Man, currently at Pacific Theatre. The play, now one of the most produced dramas in America, is a searing exploration of family, friends, faith and freedom.
There were approximately 50,000 Jews in the South at the beginning of the Civil War. Their sons fought for the confederacy. Many of the families were successful and owned slaves. The Whipping Man is the story of one such family, the DeLeons of Richmond, Va.
The play opens on a stormy night with scion Caleb DeLeon (Giovanni Mocibob) returning in defeat from war to find his family’s mansion ransacked and all the slaves gone except for faithful old retainer Simon (Tom Pickett), who has remained to protect the premises and await the return of his wife and daughter. Another slave returns that night, John (Carl Kennedy), who was raised with Caleb – they are like “two peas in a pod,” according to Simon.
John has been on one of his forays, “liberating” food, utensils and other items from abandoned mansions in the area. He returns to find an injured Caleb, whose gangrenous leg needs to be amputated below the knee. Caleb’s refusal to go to the hospital means that Simon, aided by John, must perform the operation. Especially in the intimate space of Pacific Theatre, the intense, bloody scene, where the protagonists are fueled by whiskey and courage, is not for the faint-hearted, even though a judicious lighting cue takes some sting out of the visceral moment.
It was common for slaves to take the religion of their owners and to learn the customs and the rituals of their adopted faith, so, for Passover, Simon decides they need to have a seder. He sets about to find appropriate items for the seder plate from what little is left after the war: collard greens instead of bitter herbs, small squares of hardtack military ration as matzah, and the shank bone of Caleb’s dead horse, all to be accompanied by the requisite cups of (stolen) wine.
As the three sit among the ruins of the home that connects them, the words and songs of the Haggadah, celebrating the delivery of the Jews from bondage in Egypt, take on new meaning. Simon and John are now no longer slaves; Caleb is not anyone’s master. All three men are presumably equal and the interpersonal dynamics shift. Simon declares to Caleb at one point, “You don’t tell me what to do anymore, you ask me.” Each character must grapple with the upheaval of their world and the new freedom and responsibilities that it brings. As they work through their angst, secrets are disclosed that will forever change their lives.
The acting in this production is sublime. All three men give riveting performances, along with respectable southern accents.
Mocibob, who spends most of the time immobilized under a blanket on the stage – his leg having been amputated – peels away at the layers of his character, who has lost his faith, both literally and figuratively, during the years of war and who faces a moral conundrum regarding his family’s ownership of slaves, which, of course, affects his relationships to John and to Simon and his family.
Kennedy hits the right balance of pathos and anger in his portrayal of the young self-educated slave John, his experiences with the whipping man (a white man to whom Caleb’s father and other slave owners would send their slaves to be punished with lashings from a bull whip) and his slow acceptance of the reality of a crime he has committed.
But it is Pickett who really shines, as the wise old man who has seen it all and yet somehow remains unjaded. He infuses a majestic calmness into the role of Simon. We hear the heartbreaking recollection of Simon’s own whippings and the physical and emotional scars they left behind. We witness his stoicism when he receives news of the death of beloved “Father Abraham” (Abraham Lincoln, the “American Moses”) and hears of the fate of his family.
The set of The Whipping Man is appropriately dark and ominous. Fallen bricks and broken floorboards are set off with shadowy blue lighting and the glow of candlelight; the sound design is a mournful mix of rain and thunder. The shabby costumes add to the grit and desperation of the story. Together, the visual and audio serve as metaphors for the postwar devastation and confusion.
The play, while set more than 150 years ago, is still vitally relevant for contemporary audiences. Slavery, sadly, still exists and The Whipping Man program contains some data on modern-day slavery; hopefully, the play will encourage discussion about and involvement in combating it.
Theatre does not get much better than this – our attention is completely absorbed and we are transported to another time and place, yet by material that speaks to issues with which we still wrestle. There are Jessies on the horizon for this production.
Tickets for The Whipping Man, which runs until March 21, are available at pacifictheatre.org and 604-731-5518. The show is not suitable for children.
Tova Kornfeldis a Vancouver freelance writer and lawyer.
Caitlin McCarthy and Amitai Marmorstein co-star in What You’re Missing by Tamara Micner, which is at Chutzpah! March 10-15. (photo by Tim Matheson)
Playwright Tamara Micner returns to Vancouver in March for the North American première at Chutzpah! of What You’re Missing, a play based on her family’s stories, but in which we will all, no doubt, see aspects of our own experience.
Tamara Micner returns to Vancouver for the North American première at Chutzpah! of What You’re Missing, a play based on her family’s stories. (photo from Tamara Micner)
Micner left Vancouver in 2003 for Yale, where she earned her bachelor of arts in English literature. She worked with Google for a few years, which took her to San Francisco and Toronto, then studied at Cambridge, receiving her master’s of philosophy in 2011. When she last spoke with the Independent, she was on her way to London, England, because, as she told the JI, “for plays, London is the best city in the world.” There, she has continued learning and working, not only in theatre, but also as a journalist and copywriter. The JI caught up with Micner earlier this month.
JI: When the JI last spoke with you, Fantasmagoriana was at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and you also had two new plays in the works, one of which was called Highlight. Could you share some aspects of its development, from its première at Cambridge in 2011 as Highlight to its run last year as What You’re Missing at King’s Head Theatre in London, to its upcoming production at Chutzpah?
TM: What You’re Missing has been in the works for four years, and hopefully it will continue to live after Chutzpah as well.
We started developing the play during my master’s degree at Cambridge, with a rehearsed reading and a run at the main student theatre. I then left it for awhile and worked on other projects, and gave myself time to come back to it with greater distance and a clearer head.
In 2013, I did more rewrites and started submitting it to theatres in London, including the King’s Head, which accepted it for final development. By the time we performed it last year, it was pretty well “finished.”
It’s gone through many rounds of changes. It started out more purely comedic and, over time, it’s gotten more political and more serious, alongside the comedy that (hopefully) pervades the piece.
JI: You described Highlight in the 2011 JI interview as being based on the beginning of your parents’ relationship, and as “a dysfunctional family comedy.” In general, what has been the reaction of family (and friends) to the plays in which they see themselves represented? Do you have any advice for aspiring writers as to how to use family/friend elements without causing (too many) hard feelings?
TM: My sense is that my relatives who inspired the characters in What You’re Missing have enjoyed seeing versions of themselves and their experiences represented onstage. (Or they’ve just been polite.) The play is critical and truthful, but it’s also a dramatization, and it’s written from a place of love and affection, which I think comes through. I wasn’t alive in the 1970s, when this play is set, so it’s drawing from elements of my family’s stories – from a specific time, place and set of experiences – to explore broader questions about family, love, politics, religion, gender and so on.
When we debuted the play in London, people of different nationalities, religions and backgrounds said that they related to the story and characters, and saw themselves or their lives reflected in the piece in some way. That response really pleased me (and was a relief!) because that was my hope. I see theatre as, among other things, a way to bring people together and remind us of the things we share.
I think artists need to share their truths, and personal experience is where a lot of our truths come from. That might cause hard feelings. But, if we’re honest and nuanced, rather than heavy-handed, people will respond and connect to the work, and the truth in it will come through.
JI: In 2011, you said that you chose to move to London for its theatre presence and because you loved the city. Has the city lived up to your expectations? Do you plan on staying for the foreseeable future?
TM: I’m very happy living in London. I’ve found a neighborhood and communities that I feel at home in, including easy access to pita, dates and baklava, and I’m still discovering more of the city and the country. I was approved for Polish citizenship last year, so assuming the U.K. doesn’t vote to leave the EU, I plan to stay here indefinitely.
JI: Will you be coming to Vancouver for the Chutzpah shows? If so, how much input, if any, will you have into this production? Did you have any hand in casting?
TM: Yes, I will be in Vancouver for the run. I’ve met with the director, John Cooper, in person and on Skype, and we’ve talked about the origins and development of the play and his vision for the production. He oversaw the casting, and I trust his instincts and judgment. It’s exciting to see how other people interpret your work and bring it to life, sometimes in surprising ways.
JI: Are there any projects you have currently on the go, or that you’re considering undertaking, that you would like to share with JI readers?
TM: I’m developing a new show, Wink the Other Eye, with two actors and a musician. It’s about music hall, a major genre of British entertainment from the mid-19th century until about the ’20s (when ragtime and revue, and radio, started taking over). For example, if you know the song “Daisy Bell,” that’s actually from music hall.
The show is devised – collaboratively created and written – which is a new style of working for me. We plan to do some showings of the piece in the spring, working toward a production later this year. We’ve been approved for funding from Arts Council England to finish development, which is a big help and a stamp of credibility.
Our show looks at Marie Lloyd, one of the most famous performers of her day, who toured the British Empire (South Africa, Australia, North America) and sang from the age of 15 until she died aged 52. She had a story similar to Whitney Houston’s, Judy Garland’s: an insatiable entertainer who lived to perform and had a pretty awful life offstage (including domestic abuse and alcoholism). The show combines live performances of her songs with important moments from her private life, and the actor who plays her is related to her. (We’ve put some of the music and comedy from the show online: soundcloud.com/winktheothereye.)
What You’re Missing is at the Rothstein Theatre from March 10-15. The other theatre offering is Kafka and Son, performed by Alon Nashman, on March 2. Visit chutzpahfestival.com for more information on these and other productions.
Rafaella Rabinovich’s designs from Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Jersey Lily directed by William B. Davis at the Jericho Arts Centre. (photo by Steven Hooper)
Rafaella Rabinovich always knew that she wanted to be a theatrical designer, and she became one – and a successful one at that, without many detours or hiccups.
“When I was 12, my father gave me a camera,” she said. “I photographed lots of shows and I knew I wanted to frame the stage myself.”
Rafaella Rabinovich’s costumes sing on stage. (photo from Rafaella Rabinovich)
After graduating from a high school for the arts in Israel and the mandatory army service, she enrolled in the set and costume design program at Rakefet Levy Design School for the Performing Arts in Tel Aviv. Upon finishing the program in 2010, she came to British Columbia. Today, she is a respected local set and costume designer, doing what she loves and living in a place she adores.
Of course, nothing was as easy or simple as it seems from a brief review of her resumé. “I wanted to make sets. I didn’t care about costumes,” she admitted, “but the design school where I studied only offered a combined program, so I took both. Now, I do more costumes than sets; it’s easier for me as a woman, but I still love doing sets.”
When she first came to British Columbia, she didn’t plan on staying. It helped that she was born in Canada and had Canadian citizenship. “I did have a Canadian passport so I wanted to look around and then travel to Africa,” she recalled. “I loved it here so I stayed. I still haven’t gotten to Africa, but it’s in my plans.”
To justify staying, she applied for a job, with Cirque du Soleil, no less. “I didn’t expect to be hired,” she said laughing, “but they got back to me. I ended up doing two jobs for them. After adding that to my resumé, it was easier to look for design jobs here. In the beginning, I worked as a waitress a lot. Now, I sustain myself with theatrical designs. I feel lucky.”
Unlike many costume designers, she doesn’t wish and never did wish to work in fashion. “I interned with a fashion firm and I learned a lot from them, but fashion doesn’t make my heart sing the way theatre does.”
She enjoys the variety her chosen profession offers, and she doesn’t shy from the smallest jobs. Circus and movies, commercials and theatre – they are all significant to her. From a couple costumes for a display at Science World to the set and costumes for the cast of 27 for her latest production, Fiddler on the Roof at Abbotsford’s Gallery 7, she has done it all. In the five years since she settled in Canada, she has worked on about 20 projects and, she is actively seeking more.
Rabinovich said she relishes every aspect of her work, from research to the final audience applause.
When she does her research for a show, she reads a lot. “For historical shows, classical paintings are great references. And, of course, I do a lot of research online,” she said. “I also read the plays. I need to know the story, the characters. We might have two stories set at the same time, but if the stories are different, the costumes and sets are different too. Think Oliver Twist and Napoleonic France: about the same time, but different places and different stories, different characters. I always need to know the character. Who she is, why she is wearing this hat, this dress. The costume has to complement her personality.”
One of Rabinovich’s past projects was a play that took place at the end of the 19th century, the same time period as Fiddler. “For that project, we wanted the costumes to be true to the times. But for Fiddler, I chose Marc Chagall as my inspiration.”
At times, she has collaborated with a director in her artistic decisions. “If he has a vision of the show, I would respect it,” she said. “He might say: ‘I want it sad’ or ‘It should be happy,’ and I would accommodate his suggestions in my designs.”
The sources of the costume materials and sets she creates vary greatly. Some pieces she buys in thrift or regular stores, others she designs from scratch or rents. “I’m not a seamstress but I know how to sew. Sometimes, if the project is on a low budget, I can sew the costumes myself, but usually, I have a seamstress. I know which vintage store in B.C. would be likely to have a fur coat of a certain color or a special type of curtains.”
She makes all her designs by hand, not on computer like some of her contemporaries. “I’m old- fashioned,” she joked. “I like feeling the fabrics, the textures.” She also likes incorporating lighting into her designs.
Each project she works on presents a different challenge, she explained, but all of them embrace their own rewards. “Seeing your vision come to life, take shape on stage, is wonderful. When you hit the right note, when you think, ‘Yes, that’s it!’ its feels good. And of course I love it when the audience applauds, when the actors wearing my costumes are happy. I’m behind the stage, invisible to the public, and I like it that way, but I’m part of it. They applaud my costumes, too.”
Gallery 7 Theatre’s performance of Fiddler on the Roof is on stage March 13- 21 at the Abbotsford Arts Centre. For more information, visit gallery7theatre.com.
Olga Livshinis a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
Heather Hermant in ribcage, which will be at the Firehall Arts Centre March 3-8. (photo by Tim Matheson)
As a graduate student, Toronto spoken word artist Heather Hermant took a workshop taught by Diane Roberts, a former artistic director of Vancouver’s urban ink productions. Roberts asked her students to research and embody an ancestor, and Hermant chose her great-great-grandmother Riva. The process eventually led to the multimedia theatrical project ribcage: this wide passage, which comes to Vancouver’s Firehall Arts Centre next month.
ribcage centres on Esther Brandeau, a Jewish woman who, posing as Jacques La Farge, a male Christian laborer, came to Canada from France in 1738. Said to be the first Jew to ever set foot in Canada, she was discovered, interrogated and later deported when she wouldn’t convert to Catholicism. Writes Hermant in a 2013 Canadian Theatre Review article, “Riva stepped aside as I followed an archival labyrinth – in Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City, and in every place that Brandeau was purported to have worked as a young man over five years across France.”
The 2005 workshop was Hermant’s introduction to Roberts’ Personal Legacy process and, writes Hermant in the CTR, it is “the first performance to move from idea to production through the Personal Legacy process. It was workshopped and presented in Vancouver as part of the 2010 Tremors Festival. The full production premièred at Le MAI in Montreal in October 2010.” A French version of the performance has also been created: thorax: une cage en éclats, translated by Quebec performer and scholar Nadine Desrochers.
“I began as a spoken word performer, and thought I would approach this performance as a series of spoken word pieces. In other words, what I usually did but longer, more material,” said Hermant, who is now a performer across several genres, as well as being a curator, scholar and educator. “When I began to work, I discovered that spoken word poetry as I knew it would not do it with this story. Partly, this had to do with language. I was working with French language archives and yet I write in English. On top of or because of that, a lot of the material I was creating was physical – gesture, movement. A lot of it was video. These were things that were unexpected and new for me since what I thought I was aiming for was spoken word poetry. So, it was a bit scary.
“But, in studio work with Diane Roberts, who directs the show and who has been there from the beginning of its creation, this is where you start. Starting with movement, for example, is a key to storytelling. According to Diane, working from the body first forces a kind of honesty that is difficult to achieve when using language. Luckily, it was in a performance class with Diane where I first discovered the story of Esther Brandeau. Words came late, which is odd for a poet, but in a way this was part of the story. It was as if an impossibility to fully know stood at the centre, and required all sorts of different approaches to do just that: to approach the story, which demanded its own form.”
As her research continued, Hermant realized the production would need a musical dimension. “I began to hear live fiddle and see live mixed video installation. When we came together in collaboration with composer/fiddle player Jaron Freeman-Fox, he composed most of the material in studio (as in dance/theatre studio) with me, working from my movement and the rhythms of some of my text.”
The video in the production, she explained, derives from her research in various countries, “often collected as a way of journaling” her work. “A bunch of the video material is from site-specific reenactments filmed by Melina Young. VJ Kaija Siirala and I worked in studio together to make all this eclectic rich footage into a mixed installation concept…. The video installations operate as a kind of memory space, their own kind of eye on what’s transpiring. Interdisciplinarity in this piece allows for different witness positions to come through, I think. Different ways of looking.”
Hermant doesn’t consider ribcage a play. “It is somewhere between spoken word and storytelling, physical theatre, a series of interdisciplinary tableaux, a performance installation, all of it in a theatre. I just understand it all as poetry, regardless of whether words are involved or not.”
As diverse as are the performance aspects, so too are ribcage’s themes: identity and sexuality, belonging and personal history, established roles and genders as well as rebellion against them. “Thematically,” explained Hermant, “ribcage is a confrontation with the meaning of history and how we know the past. It is about how we work and translate across languages, eras and bodies. It confronts holes and gaps and unknowns in any written record, and works from a place of longing, desire to know and to feel belonging and to understand the present moment. I created this piece because I was compelled by the personal resonances I found with the story of Esther Brandeau…. My show is about my own ancestral and personal histories, and the journey of my research, as much as it is about the story of Esther Brandeau/Jacques La Fargue. All of these stories enter into ribcage: this wide passage, through the different media and forms that I integrate.”
Heather Hermant in ribcage (photo by Tim Matheson)
Hermant noted that women passing as men, “especially in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries … was far more common than the exceptional cases seem to suggest. In addition to the most popular assumption and representations – that the primary motive for women who passed as men was to follow their male lovers, which circulates through pop culture across many eras, and of which there are indeed many documented historical examples – there were many cases of passers who did so out of economic necessity, there were many cases of passers who did so in order to partner with women, or a combination of these.”
For Hermant, the historical record must be regarded with care. “The important thing to me is to ask how a story is recorded, how it comes to us, what are the stakes for the person outed. In other words, it is vital to read askance and to distrust the document, even as the document gives us the story.
“What is particularly interesting for me in this case,” she continued, “is this is purportedly a case of a female passing as a male and a Jewish person passing as a Christian. I like to call this person a multicrosser. I find we need to challenge the assumption that passing is simply a ruse. Classical literature is full of titillating stories of passers, titillating primarily for straight male audiences. My queer positionality perhaps makes more available to me a knowledge that changing gender can be a profoundly sacred process, that sexuality may or may not have anything to do with it, and that queerness as many of us know ourselves today has history. This doesn’t mean sameness across time. That last sentence is vital. In other words, how people understand themselves today and the terms through which they do so are not the same as how people understood themselves 200 or 300 years ago. This is an inherent challenge to reading, understanding and representing things as they were long ago. It’s partly why I have not chosen to create a work that takes place only contained in a long ago era.”
Describing ribcage as “a midrash on the archive,” Hermant explained, “It’s a meditation, a questioning, a digging in deep into the idea of archive, into archives themselves, into memory and telling, loss, desire, the written word and its troubles, a need to understand belonging, compelled by questioning and not by a need or a belief in the possibility or utility of resolution. In fact, to me, such a stance is an ethical stance, and some might say a profoundly Jewish one – though of course not exclusively so – i.e. the imperative of the question. So, yes, of course, my Jew-ish-ness (hyphenation intentional) is important to me and to my show. ‘Jewishness,’ however defined … and a grappling thereof, informs the piece profoundly. As does my non-Jew-ish-ness, my queerness, my experiences of gender, my feminist leanings, my francophone ancestry, my being a settler ally working with an aboriginal and intercultural theatre company on unceded Coast Salish territory, my work as a scholar in gender studies, colonial history and historiography, my teaching, my concern for land and water…. The list goes on. It is all important to me, all profoundly inform the show, and none of these is mutually exclusive!”
And these are not the only aspects informing the show. “Dealing with difficult histories does not preclude humor, playfulness or joy. In fact,” said Hermant, “these are essential precisely for dealing with difficult histories. I choose the topics I choose – or they choose me – because I feel a responsibility and a call to do so. And because, very simply, they compel me.”
ribcage, produced by urban ink productions, will be at the Firehall Arts Centre March 3-8. Freeman-Fox’s original music will be performed by Vancouver musician Elliot Vaughan.
Olga Livshinis a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
Maria Kong opens this year’s Chutzpah! festival on Feb. 19. (photo by Guy Prives)
The 15th season of Chutzpah! kicks off Feb. 19 with Tel Aviv-based dance troupe Maria Kong. Founded in 2008 by former Batsheva Dance Co. members, Maria Kong combines dance with art, sound, light, visual effects and technology. And, for the opening of Chutzpah! they take their performance off the stage and into the audience – or, rather, they bring the audience “backstage.”
The JI spoke with Israel’s Talia Landa, Maria Kong performer, artistic director and co-founder (with Anderson Braz from Brazil), in anticipation of the presentation in Vancouver of Backstage, which will take place at Red Room Ultra Bar.
JI: From where does the name Maria Kong come? What is its significance?
TL: We are “Virgin Marias” and “King Kongs” (not necessarily defined by gender). Together, we make Maria Kong.
JI: There is so much innovative dance coming from Israel. What makes the dance scene so “fertile” there?
TL: There could be many reasons why that happens; some more obvious than others. Israel is a great place where people from all over the world meet, connect and meld their talents in order to create magic. It’s a place where creativity and innovation are a driving force in our lives, hearts and souls. We have our fair share of challenges, so we are pushed to approach them with unique solutions. It’s no secret that Israel is the land of high-tech and start-ups; it only makes sense that this creative research and innovation would spread to the world of dance. We have a drive to do things passionately and intuitively, triggered by an inner impulse to never stop moving.
JI: Your vision centres on teamwork. How does Maria Kong’s creative process work in general? How is it decided what ends up in a performance? As artistic director, do you have “final” say?
TL: Maria Kong’s creative process works like this:
1) An idea is born.
2) The idea is placed on the table.
3) The team members from all of the different divisions (dance, music, light, sound and technology) come together to share their unique input and express their particular perspective.
4) The idea transforms from a 2-D piece of paper on the table, to a three-dimensional creation, which we continue to develop together.
Yes, perhaps I have the “final” say, but each creation undergoes many stages of dialogue before the concluding decision is made.
JI: The show planned for Chutzpah!, Backstage, is choreographed for “off the dancer’s stage,” so to speak. In what ways, if any, is the performers’ (and technical crew’s) preparation different for this type of show from that for a stage-based performance? And is there anything the audience should do to prepare?
TL:Backstage is unique in the way that it takes any given space and transforms it into a stage, but not in the conventional manner where the performers are on stage and the audience takes their seats. In Backstage, the members of the audience can grab a beer, join friends at the opposite end of the venue, change views, and experience the performance from a number of different angles.
The audience, time and space are a fundamental element of Backstage. Every venue has its unique infrastructure and particular vibe. In order to prepare for our performance for Chutzpah!, we inserted the Red Room Ultra Bar’s measurements and properties into our computer programs, as we aim to ensure that the graphics and choreography fit the venue and our energies can dance with the people of Vancouver. We reshape our bodies, mind and soul in order to create a tailor-made unique experience in each performance.
Should the audience do anything to prepare? Bring an open heart and wear comfortable shoes.
JI:Backstage, and other Maria Kong pieces, have featured live musical performances, including known vocalists. Will the Vancouver show feature live vocals? If so, can you share from whom?
TL: We are very lucky to have great friends with great talents who are happy to join us on our journey to this great festival. I don’t want to give it all away, but I will share that one of the special guests we are bringing is very close to my heart, and happens to have Canadian roots.
JI: For the simple fact of being an Israel-based group of artists, there was a call by some in India to boycott your performance there in November. How do you respond to such efforts?
TL: Maria Kong is a team of artists with a shared vision: a vision of common values. Our artistic creations are a result of open dialogue and passionate collaboration between the Israeli, French, Brazilian, Russian and Japanese members. We strongly believe in the language of movement: a language that knows no border and holds no passport. It is boundless, endless, holds no limits – a language of human connection, a language of physical and spiritual communication, traveling through all forms of artistic creation. Think of yourself, right now, as you read this text. You are probably in a room, inside a building, within a city, territorially bound by a country, on this wild earth that contains us all. As you continue going through this text, our wonderful earth is dancing in perfect synchronization with our sun, infinitely spinning within our endless universe. The beautiful language of movement is our core – it is fundamental to our survival, and an inseparable element of our existence.
JI: If there is anything else you’d like to add, please do.
TL: I would just like to say that the artistic director of Chutzpah!, Mary-Louise [Albert], along with her team, are the coolest people ever to have believed in us and chosen us to come and share our magic in Vancouver. We are really looking forward to it. So thank you, and see you soon!
Backstage will be at Red Room Ultra Bar Feb. 19, 21 and 22, 8 p.m., and Feb. 22, 4 p.m. Tickets are $29/$25/$20. By way of dance, Chutzpah! 2015 will also feature Shay Kuebler Radical System Art, Idan Sharabi and Dancers with Vanessa Goodman, Bodytraffic, ’Namgis T’sasala Cultural Group and, in Chutzpah!Plus, Serge Bannathan/Les Productions Figlio. For the full schedule of performances, tickets and other information, visit chutzpahfestival.com.
Left to right: Andrew McNee as Francis and Martin Happer as Stanley Stubbers in One Man, Two Guvnors at the Arts Club Stanley Theatre. (photo by David Cooper)
It’s always disconcerting when sitting in a theatre listening to everyone laughing while thinking, “What’s so funny?”
That was my experience at the media opening of One Man, Two Guvnors Jan. 28. I’m thinking, therefore, that this review is going to be controversial. Judging by the audience response to the play, I was, with the dozen or so others who left at intermission, clearly in the minority.
Perhaps the problem was that reading the name of the play and about its background, and having been to British period comedies in the past, I had high expectations. I anticipated caustic wit and clever verbal jousting; instead, I was witness to very lame jokes and antiquated slapstick comedy.
Slapstick? Really?
For much of Guvnors, I felt as though I was in a studio audience watching a bad sitcom. It hearkened back to when, as a child, I watched my parents roll in laughter at the likes of Wayne and Schuster’s antics – certainly performances that would draw yawns today.
Now, just in case I’m coming across as a humorless Scrooge who wouldn’t release a guffaw unless I was on laughing gas, let me remind readers of previous reviews. I have snickered at the wit in The Philanderer, joined the multitudes who guffawed to The Producers and fell off my seat convulsing in laughter during Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. But those plays were smart. Witty.
Guvnors seems to play to the lowest common denominator of predictable, parochial humor at the level of arm-pit noises and fart jokes. The main character Francis is compared by the director to Will Ferrell. ‘Nuf said.
Now, before I continue on my rant, let me delve into the plot for some context. The play takes place in 1963 in England, starting in London where Pauline and Allan are preparing for a marriage that looks like it’s going to be thwarted: Pauline’s former fiancé, Roscoe, appears to have come back from the dead. It turns out that Roscoe is, in fact, Rachel, Roscoe’s twin sister, who must keep up the sham that Roscoe is alive until she can collect on the 6,000 pounds Pauline’s father is supposed to give him/her, at which point Rachel plans to run away to Australia with her lover Stanley, who is actually Roscoe’s murderer. Rachel and Stanley become the two “guvnors” to Francis, a poor sod who’s either starving for food or starving for love.
The story picks up in Brighton where the farce of mistaken identities really takes off. Francis, who is the consistent backbone to the plot, finds himself serving both guvnors in one hotel, trying to keep them apart, not knowing their hidden connections. In the end, there is a “happy” ending, with two avoided suicides and three marriages.
In an unusual twist, the performance is introduced by a quartet of musicians, a guitarist, a banjo player, stand-up bass and washboard – the first I’ve seen at the Stanley – that introduces the first and second acts and intersperses the play with fun tunes and singing.
As well, during the show, a few audience members are coerced to come on stage and be part of the performance. (Don’t worry, it’s all part of the act.)
At intermission, I was told by friends enjoying the performance that it is supposed to be silly. Indeed, the director’s notes state that it pays tribute to the vaudeville era of entertainment, the play itself being an adaptation of the beloved 18th-century Italian playwright Carlo Osvaldo Goldoni’s A Servant of Two Masters, which itself is based on the commedia dell’arte of the 16th century.
But so what? In a play where the comedy is predictable, does it really matter if it’s due to bad actors doing a bad job versus good actors intentionally doing a bad job? What’s the difference between a show that recreates outdated theatrics well and one that is simply outdated?
In fact, the play itself suggests there is no difference. In one conversation one character asks, “Does he smell of horses or does he smell like horses?” Suggesting the difference is that a man who smells of horses might have been riding them and, therefore, comes from good stock; whereas a man who smells like horses just smells bad.
His counterpart responds, “Well, it’s all the same in the end, isn’t it?”
Quite so.
Guvnors runs until Feb. 22 at the Stanley Theatre. The Jewish community’s multitalented Anton Lipovetsky is not only the musical director and lead-guitar player in the quartet but also has a small part in the play. Another bright community talent, Ryan Beil, plays the love-struck Allan Dangle. Israeli Vancouverite Amir Ofek designed the sets that hearken back to the Stanley’s original life as a vaudeville house.
Baila Lazarus is a freelance writer, painter and photographer. Her work can be seen at orchiddesigns.net.
