Chutzpah Festival's Jessica Gutteridge aims for joy in a full live-and-livestream hybrid
A Night at the Opera’s Marx Brothers opener November 4 sets the tone for a playful lineup
Jessica Gutteridge
The Chutzpah Festival runs from November 4 to 24 online and at the Norman & Annette Rothstein Theatre. A Night at the Opera happens November 4 at the Rothstein at 7 pm.
FOR AN INDICATION of the mood artistic managing director Jessica Gutteridge wants to create at this year’s Chutzpah Festival, look no further than the opening night. At Thursday’s themed opening party, City Opera’s Megan Latham and Martin Renner Wallace will perform lively arias, followed by one of the goofiest satires of the art form ever made—the Marx Brothers’ black-and-white classic A Night at the Opera.
The Marx Brothers in the comedy classic A Night at the Opera.
“For me, the number one feeling I wanted to have was joy,” Gutteridge explains to Stir. “I wanted celebration and I wanted the joy of coming back together, and I don't think it gets more joyful or Jewish-joyful than the Marx Brothers.
“City Opera is so spectacular at making opera not just enjoyable but accessible and interactive,” she continues. “That led me to want to create a feeling of celebration and dressup and silliness that we all want in our lives—and to transform the theatre into a 1930s cinema where everybody feels like a VIP on the red carpet.”
Not everything at this year’s annual ode to Jewish culture will be quite as wacky as its opening draw. But at the helm of her second festival, Gutteridge recognizes the need for release after 18 months of pandemic shutdowns. In her inaugural year in 2020, she steered the event into the uncharted territory of an all-online lineup—to surprising success.
Driven by that, Chutzpah is one of the few organizations in town to go full-bore both live and online: it will welcome audiences back into its Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre, where a brand-new, fully outfitted livestreaming suite with three cameras will live-capture performances for those who choose to remain home. Iris Bahr, the comedian who hosted last year’s activities and, according to Gutteridge, was the key to its online success (“she made sure audience members felt like someone was talking directly to them”), is back for half the fest, with other hosts playing a similar role at the rest of the shows.
Joy, as Gutteridge says, is a throughline at the 2021 event, obvious everywhere from the swinging Gershwin songs of the Guy Mintus Trio (November 24) to the warm, inviting storytelling event The Flame (November 17).
Jazz favourite Guy Mintus playfully dives into the music of Gershwin at this year’s Chutzpah Festival. Photo by Ella Barak
Even the more serious fare has an adventurous artistic energy, Gutteridge says. A Timed Speed-Read of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Trial Transcript with Additional Notes’s immersive theatre piece finds its cast racing against time to tell the true story of a 1911 fire that devastated Jewish and Italian immigrant communities in New York. “It uses low-tech theatre magic to really engage and absorb audience members,” Gutteridge says of the play by Halifax-based Surplus Production Unit. “So even when talking about serious things the shows are using magic of performing arts to engage.”
Still, beyond the opening night, the biggest laughs this year may come from the strong standup-comedy lineup, which, beyond Bahr (who performs her own standup November 23), includes comic-storyteller-radio-host Ophira Eisenberg (November 10) and Israeli-American Avi Liberman (November 20). With this programming, Gutteridge is tapping a tradition that goes right back to those Marx Brothers, after all.
“Jewish comedy is world-renowned for a reason,” Gutteridge says. “And we all need a laugh right now.”
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