Bashert brings Blessing here

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

Bashert, destiny, seems to have brought together composer Andy Teirstein, author Joseph Skibell, and artistic and managing director Mary-Louise Albert. The result: the world première of A Blessing on the Moon: The Color of Poison Berries will open Chutzpah! The Lisa Nemetz Showcase of Jewish Performing Arts on Feb. 11 at the Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre.

The music-theatre show is based on Skibell’s first novel, A Blessing on the Moon, which was published in 1997. A work of fiction that examines the Holocaust, it “is the surreal and magical tale of Chaim Skibelski. It follows Chaim’s wandering search for an afterlife following his violent death at the hands of a German soldier in wartime Poland. On his travels, he is sometimes accompanied by his rabbi, who is now a crow.”

“I walked into a bookstore one day, looking for something to read,” Teirstein told the Independent of how he came to compose the music and co-write the libretto for the production. “I gravitated toward the title and, right there in the bookstore, reading the first few pages of Joseph’s novel, I thought, ‘This language is so musical, and the characters are larger-than-life and also so real ... this could be an opera!’ This was around 2000. I wrote to the publisher, and received a response from the author. He said he’d always thought that it might make a good opera. He asked me to send him some music. I did, and he gave me the green light to try some scenes. Of course, I asked him if he would be the librettist. He said his mind was on the next novel, and he couldn’t see going back.”

Teirstein said he tried to write the libretto himself; when that failed, he tried to find another librettist. He and Skibell kept in touch though and, in 2010, they found time to write the libretto together, “almost entirely drawn from the language of the novel, but selectively edited for singing and staging.”

Earlier, in 2007, at Skibell’s request, Teirstein composed music for a dance/theatre piece created by choreographers Rebecca Salzer and Rebbeca Novick for a workshop at the Brave New Works Festival in Atlanta, under the aegis of Emory University, where Skibell teaches, explained Teirstein. Some of that music has survived to the present version of the show, he said.

In addition to concert projects and performances, Teirstein is a full-time associate professor at New York University. “Last year,” he said, “in a wonderful example of divine serendipity, the mother of one of the dancers I teach at NYU happened to be Mary-Louise Albert of the Chutzpah! Festival. When it became apparent that I had a real opportunity to present the piece in a beautiful theatre, with the support of this exciting festival, Joseph and I were able to move forward. It was like the piece just needed that door to open to spring forward. Creatively, it’s been pouring out of me ever since that moment. The piece really does write itself, and I have a difficult time keeping up with it.”

One of the parts of the Emory version that has been kept, said Teirstein, “is an old Yiddish song written by Aliza Greenblatt, who happens to have been the mother-in-law of American folk balladeer Woody Guthrie. I’ve discovered that the juxtaposition of seemingly opposite forces is great for this piece – for instance, sweet, lyrical Yiddish folksong and the more abstract tones of new ‘classical’ music. Also, the imaginative comedic sensibility in the book would seem to go against the dark post-Holocaust subject matter, but it just deepens it. In fact, the whole musical concept of this piece is a cultural collision between folk music and opera, classical and roots, dark and light.

“Once I recognized this idea, I hit on the thought of inviting an existing band to function as the opera ‘orchestra.’ I reached out to my friend Frank London of the Klezmatics, and we tried to make it work schedule-wise. In the end, it was the Warsaw Village Band that clicked with the project. Here was a story set in the forest by a 1940s Polish village close to Warsaw, and the band, which consists of non-Jewish musicians, were drawn creatively to the concept. They wanted to learn more about Jewish people and music. I think it’s becoming apparent to Joseph and me that we are making a kind of tikkun here; a little connective tissue between cultures is being drawn together over a deep wound.”

Acts I and II of A Blessing have been completed and the third act is nearly finished, said Teirstein. It is the first two acts that will open the Chutzpah! Festival, and Teirstein expressed the hope of finding a producer for the piece so that the three-act opera eventually can be presented about a year from now, “and perhaps a return to Chutzpah!”

Along the creative journey, Teirstein has drawn on various sources of inspiration.

“The book resonates for me on so many levels,” he said. “Although they emigrated at the turn of the 20th century and so were spared, all of my family roots are in eastern Europe. But I also am drawn to journey stories, and this one has all the stark imagery of Waiting for Godot, but with the added element of cultural and historical context that Beckett was missing. There’s also a metaphysical aspect at work here that I find completely astonishing, even after all this time working on it. Chaim is dead, but he and the village are walking around, somewhere between worlds, in some altered time-scape. It’s as though we get a detailed description of a post-death existence. But, on the other hand, it seems to come from his mind, as though the whole story is something the narrator is telling a child.

“Another thing that speaks to me is the way that Joseph has extended a kind of empathy to each character without exonerating anyone. Even the soldier who has killed Chaim is reaching out to the reader and is, indeed, humanized. We hate him, but we begin to get a glimpse of where he is coming from.

“But also, the confluences are very strange,” he added. “My father, Dr. Alvin Teirstein, passed away a year ago, so I have been poring over this work while saying Kaddish. Also, a rabbi at the shul I attend is teaching a class on the Jewish afterlife. So, yesterday, I listened to the cast working through a section where the village walks through the woods singing ‘The Olam Haba’ (‘The World to Come’) and then, after rehearsal, I rushed over to Rabbi Bellio’s class, in which we discussed talmudic takes on just what the ‘World to Come’ might mean.”

Teirstein’s PhD thesis was on the storytelling aspects of music, focusing on theatre without words (pantomime), but he is also a musician, who plays many different instruments and is part of the Vanaver Caravan, a folk music and dance troupe. “All of this enters into the work on A Blessing on the Moon,” he said. “I draw on folk rhythms, evoke Yiddish melodic styles, modal melody lines and harmonies. The final catalyst in all this folk influence has been the Warsaw Village Band. Somehow, I have to find a way to have this chromatic and wild new music mix with the Polish folk styles, complete with their Polish fiddles, tsimble (hammered dulcimer) and baraban (bass drum). It’s a wonderful challenge.”

Teirstein praised director Jim Calder, who he knows from previous work. “Jim is assigning the actors little presentations, which have been influencing the process,” explained Teirstein. “For instance, Suzanne Kantorski, who will be singing the role of a Polish wife (among other things), gave us a presentation on the history of the Yiddish language. Jonathan Estabrooks presented on Polish food in 1940. Zachary James, who plays the village rebbe and a German soldier, told us about wolf and crow sounds. Will Erat, who will play the lead role of Chaim, will present about the meeting place of Aggada and halachah in the Talmud (a huge subject in brief!). All of these things have their place in the show. The challenge has been that everyone is stretching themselves in this project, including myself. It is tremendously ambitious. It’s been hard to meet the budget. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in a long time. If I weren’t having so much fun, it would be a problem. As far as what is rewarding, you can’t imagine how it feels for a composer to hear music being worked over and carved into its interpretive and dramatic new form. It is beyond thrilling.”

Chutzpah! will feature three performances of A Blessing on the Moon: The Color of Poison Berries: Feb. 11 and 13, 8 p.m.; and Feb. 12, 2 p.m. Tickets are available from Chutzpah! (chutzpahfestival.com, 604-257-5145 or the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver) and Tickets Tonight (ticketstonight.ca or 604-684-2787).

More theatre shows

In addition to A Blessing on the Moon, there are a few other theatre offerings at this year’s Chutzpah! Festival. Actor and dancer Larry Blum is bringing his one-man show, Blink & You Might Miss Me, to the River Rock Show Theatre Feb. 22-26, in which he “shares engaging stories along with rare clips and photos from his long and wide-ranging career in TV and film, and reflects on the unique opportunity he has had to experience celebrity up close and personal.”

King Matt the First, based on the 1923 novel by Polish author Janusz Korczak, “follows the adventures of young Matt, who is catapulted to the throne by the sudden death of his father, and sets about reforming his kingdom according to his own ideas, dreams and priorities.... Matt has many adventures, fights battles, braves the jungle and crosses the desert – but perhaps the most life-altering thing of all is that the lonely boy-king finds true friends.” Performances of King Matt will take place at the Rothstein Theatre Feb. 29-March 4.

Finally, after the main festival, from March 6-11 at the Firehall Arts Centre, Goodness, by Michael Redhill, “takes the audience on a gripping and at times darkly funny journey through the life of a recently divorced writer (coincidentally named Michael Redhill). He wrestles with a failed marriage, his family’s Holocaust history and the story of a much more recent atrocity told to him by Althea, a mysterious woman with a chilling secret.”

For ticket information on all of these presentations, visit chutzpahfestival.com.

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