Tag: dystopia

Will you help or hide?

Bema Productions’ The Last Yiddish Speaker cast, director and crew: standing, left to right, Tess Nolan, Kevin McKendrick, Andrea Eggenberger, Nolan McConnell-Fidyk and Ian Case; seated, Siobhan Davies, left, and Zelda Dean. The play imagines a world in which the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol in Washington, DC, was successful and Christian nationalists have taken over the United States. (photo by Peter Nadler)

Victoria’s Bema Productions is staging the international premiere of Deborah Laufer’s The Last Yiddish Speaker at Congregation Emanu-El’s Black Box Theatre June 18-29.

The drama imagines a dystopian world in which the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol in Washington, DC, was successful and Christian nationalists have taken over the United States. In the play, a Jewish father and daughter must be careful and cunning, as any deviation from the norm could be deadly. When an aged Yiddish-speaking woman lands on their doorstep, they must decide whether to take the risk of helping the woman or focus on saving themselves.

Laufer has numerous full-length plays to her credit, as well as dozens of short plays and even musicals (written with composer Daniel Green). Her plays have been produced around the world and she has been recognized with numerous awards.

While The Last Yiddish Speaker focuses on Judaism and the right for Jews to exist, the play could be about any marginalized group, in any country.

“Although the play is set in the USA, the theme is universal: the struggle of good over evil,” Zelda Dean, founder and managing artistic director of Bema, told the Independent. “In this play, Canada is still a safe place for Jews.” 

That said, it has a message for Canadian audiences, as well, Dean said. “It is very important that we address social and political issues, particularly with the huge increase in antisemitism in Canada. The play is entertaining, engaging and enlightening. It takes place in 2029, when the fascists have taken over the USA. It is timely and powerful.”

Directed by Kevin McKendrick, The Last Yiddish Speaker features Ian Case, Siobhan Davies, Nolan McConnell-Fidyk and Dean.

McKendrick is an award-winning director, notably being recognized by the Alberta Theatre Projects for significant contributions to theatre in Calgary. Case, a veteran stage actor on Vancouver Island, is also a director and arts advocate. Davies, meanwhile, is a stage and cinematic performer – she will be appearing in the upcoming film Allure, shot in Victoria. McConnell-Fidyk is a local actor who appeared in Survivors, a play aimed at spreading information about the Holocaust to audiences from Grade 6 and up. (See jewishindependent.ca/theatre-that-educates and jewishindependent.ca/survivors-play-brings-tears.)

Before the November 2024 presidential elections, Laufer told Philadelphia public radio station WHYY about her reasons for writing the play, including that she was deeply disturbed by the events of Jan. 6. “I thought, ‘Is this the end? Is our democracy completely ended?’” she said.

“The play reminds us there are times in history when we have the choice to speak out against oppression or choose to remain silent. You get the government you deserve,” McKendrick told the Independent. “How will you respond when faced with outright injustice?”

Tickets for The Last Yiddish Speaker can be purchased at ticketowl.io/lastyiddishspeaker. 

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

The gift of innocence?

The Innocence Treatment by Ari Goelman is a psychological thriller set in 2031 America. 

Looking for a smart, tense, psychological thriller for your teenage reader? Ari Goelman’s The Innocence Treatment (Roaring Brook Press, 2017) would fit the bill. Though, if you’re unsure, you can ask the author himself. Goelman will be doing a reading and book-signing on Nov. 21, 7 p.m., at Book Warehouse on Main Street. He will also be at the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival on Nov. 27, 6:30 p.m.

Goelman is originally from Philadelphia. “I moved around the U.S. a bunch before ending up in Vancouver, living mostly in New York City and Boston before I came here,” he told the Independent. “I came to Vancouver gradually, a few months here (1995), a few years here (1997-1999), until finally settling here in 2006. I wanted to make sure I waited until I definitely couldn’t afford to buy a house in the city. As for why, I had family in Vancouver, so, when I was looking into grad schools, I knew it was a fun (and back then) affordable place to live.”

The Innocence Treatment is Goelman’s second book. His first, The Path of Names, for middle-grade readers, received many literary awards and nominations. He also writes short stories and is on the faculty of Kwantlen Polytechnic University. His undergraduate degree in economics is from New College of Florida, he has an MSc in planning from University of British Columbia and a PhD in urban studies from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

photo - Ari Goelman
Ari Goelman (photo by John Goldsmith Photography)

“One of the first bits of paid writing I ever did was for this very newspaper, when I first came to Vancouver in 1995,” he shared. “True story. A once-off article about Kidsbooks.” True, indeed. The story, “No kidding around,” was published on Sept. 29, 1995, in the Jewish Western Bulletin, the Independent’s predecessor. But back to the present … well, the future.

Goelman sets The Innocence Treatment in his home country in 2031, when “the United States was still enjoying the lull between the first and second uprisings. A drought was drying out the last of the great western forests, but it would be another two years before the massive wildfires that left millions homeless and sparked the second uprising.”

His main character, 16-year-old Lauren was once so innocent that she had to be watched at all times so that no harm would come to her. At first, she is “super-excited” to be undergoing a medical procedure to “fix” her, because then she “won’t be stupid anymore.” But, afterward, she discovers that understanding people and their motivations doesn’t necessarily lead to happier or better outcomes and, more than once, the “new” Lauren must use her ample self-defence skills and literally kick some butts.

“Lauren’s kick-ass qualities naturally emerged from her character,” said Goelman about his strong female lead. “I started with the idea of a character who had spent her whole life very naive and very protected, and I imagined she’d be furious once the veil was lifted and she started to experience the world as it really was. I figured, as well, that after spending her whole life being unavoidably passive, she would be thrilled by her new ability to act and would make the most of those abilities.”

The problem becomes one of self-restraint, which Goelman explicitly explores in a chapter involving an experiment while Lauren is in custody, which I personally found somewhat out of place, or forced.

“What I was trying to do in that chapter was to show Lauren’s inability to control herself, even when she genuinely wants to, both for her own self-interest and to spite Dr. Corbin,” explained Goelman. “That’s what Corbin is really measuring – not Lauren’s fighting ability, but her paranoia and anger. It was a fun chapter to write, because it’s from Lauren’s perspective and she’s aware of the challenge that she’s failing, even as she fails it.”

Overall, The Innocence Treatment is a fun book to read. To use an apt cliché, it is a page-turner. It is also a little scary in its seeming prescience, having been written before the election of Donald Trump and the apparent descent of America.

“Yes, The Innocence Treatment does feel a bit unfortunately prescient at this point,” agreed Goelman. “I’m glad it was published this year, or it would have started seeming less like a near future world and more like the past.”

As for what he thinks the future might hold in reality, Goelman said, “I think the most we can hope for is to slow climate change and deal with its consequences in a fair way that limits human suffering. I’m not real optimistic about our near-term prospects, as I think that nothing good will happen as long as so much of the world’s resources are controlled by so few individuals and families.

“The world of The Innocence Treatment is very much formed by the combination of climate change disaster and the unequal distribution of wealth. And,” said Goelman, “while the election of Donald Trump in the U.S. is the latest and maybe the best example of how these two trends come together, we don’t have to look so far from home. The B.C. Liberals ran this province for 16 years, defunding public education and subsidizing the fossil fuel industry, at the behest of their very wealthy (and largely unregulated) donors.

“On the upside,” he said, “it’s not like the solutions are so complicated – if we get money out of politics, I believe humans can be really brilliant at solving problems collaboratively. So, while I’m pretty pessimistic about any major improvement in the near term, I think it’s very possible to change things for the better – it just requires the political will. There’s a part of The Innocence Treatment where Lauren’s older sister describes the family’s life right after the ‘Emergency’ era permanently reshaped the U.S., and one of the things she remembers is it wasn’t so bad being without power, as people came together to help each other. I think there’s a lot of truth to that. Given the chance, humans are really good at working together. They’re also really good at struggling for dominance and to monopolize scarce resources. It’s anyone’s guess which direction we’re going.”

For the full schedule of the Jewish Book Festival, which runs Nov. 25-30, visit jewishbookfestival.ca.