Chutzpah! Festival's Jessica Mann Gutteridge finds new ways to guide viewers through both virtual and live performances
New artistic managing director helms a reimagined event, with a comedian who hosts every show
Jessica Mann Gutteridge. Photo by Tallulah
JESSICA MANN Gutteridge had just been transitioning into her new role as artistic managing director of the Chutzpah! Festival in early March when… Well, you know.
“Poof! The next thing I knew I was on a laptop at my kitchen table, looking at how to keep live performance going in a new environment,” she tells Stir.
It speaks to Gutteridge’s varied background and adaptability that she was able to forge a new kind of festival against the odds.
She was, after all, a trademark and advertising lawyer for two decades before switching gears to pursue her love of theatre. She graduated from Yale School of Drama's Department of Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism and also studied directing at Wesleyan University. Moving to Vancouver, she’s worked with the theatre company Boca del Lupo, managing Performance Works on Granville Island; before that, she was managing director and education manager at Carousel Theatre for Young People, where she was dramaturge for new plays for young audiences and playwrights.
In other words, the pandemic-era catchphrase of “pivoting” is nothing new to this New York-born-and-bred artist.
For her first rendition of Chutzpah!, the annual celebration of Jewish culture that was previously helmed by Mary-Louise Albert, she’s brought together a program that features a host, comedian Iris Bahr, guiding audiences through eight days of programming in everything from dance to music. She’s also put a new eye on theatre, her passion.
“I have found it both challenging and liberating in a sense, because in having to reinvent how we do a festival, I’ve got a lot more freedom to do it in a new way,” an energized and upbeat Gutteridge explains. “So the outcome, I hope, will be a joyful experience for everyone--but it will be different from what we've experienced in past festivals.”
Celebrating its 20th milestone this year, Chutzpah! has made its name by bringing in performers from across Canada and the globe. With travel bans, that clearly was not an option anymore--at least not in person. The fest had scheduled Toronto klezmer-inspired musician and theatre artist Ben Caplan (whose Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story was at the last PuSh International Performing Arts Festival) to fly out, but with heightened restrictions coming down on November 7, he will now appear here virtually with his opening-night show November 21.
Israeli dance sensation Idan Cohen, who now calls Vancouver home, will still stage his company Ne. Sans opera and dance's world premiere Hourglass at the socially distanced Norman Rothstein Theatre on November 25; it’s livestreamed as well. “It’s a world premiere for two dancers who are partners offstage as well as on,” Gutteridge explains, referring to performers Brandon Alley (who’s back with Ballet BC this year) and Racheal Prince (an alumna of the same company).
Iris Bahr
The other live performance, the Closing Night Comedy gala, is still scheduled with safety protocols at the theatre on November 28, as well. It features The El-Salomons, a Jewish-Palestinian couple who “tell jokes about one another, in front each other”, livestreaming in from Brooklyn while three local comedians (Kyle Berger, Julie Kom, and Joey Commisso) perform at the Rothstein. (The El-Salomons livestream onto the movie screen at the theatre for those attending in person).
Livestreams include Israeli pianist and composer Guy Mintus, a culture-crossing jazz artist, on November 24, and choreographer Ella Rothschild’s dinner-table-set dance piece Pigulim on November 23.
“My thinking was that this is a transition year anyway, so why not join together artists who have been brought in in the past as well as new artists who excite me a lot?” Gutteridge explains.
Bahr, one of those faces familiar to fest-goers, is a key ingredient to Gutteridge’s vision. The comedian is also a writer, actor, director, producer, and host of the hit podcast X-RAE, and her solo show DAI (enough), was featured at last year’s live fest. She’s probably best known for her recurring role as Rachel Heinemann, the woman who’d rather jump off a ski lift than sit next to Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm.
“She will beam herself in from LA every day of the fest--well, she and her alter egos,” Gutteridge says with a laugh, referring to the fact that Bahr hosts her podcast as Rae Lynn Caspar White, a “Southern intellectual, professional baby surrogate, and sexpert”. “Iris will be our guide through the festival and is planning some exciting conversations with all the artists and facilitating questions and answers, as well as performing her own show, which she calls ‘interactive comedy-therapy session’.”
Bahr seemed a natural fit to navigate the new era of virtual performance, Gutteridge adds. “Iris was one of the people who I knew had a very active online performing life during the time of the pandemic,” she says. “She's a really brilliant podcaster and interviewer, and I thought, ‘Why not start there? She has been streaming beautiful work online.’”
In the theatre realm, Gutteridge switched gears to stream works-in-progress by up-and-coming artists--plays she hopes to bring back, fully realized, when the pandemic ends and the festival is back to live performances from travelling companies again. Offerings include New York-based Rokhl Kafrissen's new work-in-progress Shtumer Shabes (Silent Sabbath), about the discovery of a lost Yiddish play that scandalized Warsaw in 1938; and London-based returning festival artist Tamara Micner's (Holocaust Brunch, What You're Missing) new solo show Old Friends, about the ongoing legacy of Simon & Garfunkel. (Both stream on November 22.)
“I thought it would be great for audiences to see new plays as they are being made, to see ‘how the sausage gets made,’” Gutteridge explains. “I’m a dramaturge and I’m a believer in opening up the creative process to audiences so they can witness that, and building relationships between audiences and creators.
“I hope audiences feel like they have a stake in these works as they develop.”
In future years, Gutteridge also hopes to boost theatre for young audiences and families in the programming, another passion of hers.
Meanwhile, she hopes to make the Chutzpah! Festival, online or not, a vibrant home for Vancouver’s Jewish community--as it was for her as a newcomer.
“I’m a Jewish New Yorker who came to Vancouver without a strong connection to the local Jewish community, and I was happy to find such a well-established, high-calibre festival of Jewish arts in this city,” she says, stressing: “I'm also looking forward to the exchange between Jewish and non-Jewish artists--and that they can share stories that resonate.”
As you look across the vast programming in different disciplines, she adds: “I’m really hoping the fest can meet people where they are and where they want to be. And let Iris be your guide.”
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