Chutzpah! Festival gives audiences a rare look at playwrights' creative process
Two theatre works in progress by leading talents are streaming as part of the festival’s 20th anniversary
Drag queen Shane Baker plays a 90-something diva in Rokhl Kafrissen's new work-in-progress Shtumer Shabes at the 2020 Chutzpah! Festival.
As the Chutzpah! Festival celebrates its milestone 20th anniversary this year, it’s presenting critically acclaimed artists from around the world—with all performances available online. The fest is rising to the challenge of pandemic-era programming with a dynamic, exciting lineup spanning music to comedy to dance. On the theatre front, Chutzpah! shines the spotlight on two fierce talents who will stream compelling works in progress.
Award-winning playwright and returning festival favourite Tamara Micner (Holocaust Brunch, What You're Missing) presents Old Friends, a new solo show inspired by the relationship of Simon & Garfunkel. In September 1981, half a million people came out to see a "neighbourhood concert" that went down in history: Simon & Garfunkel’s Concert in Central Park. After splitting up more than a decade earlier, two beloved Jewish artists reunited for a single night, their fans entranced. Born in Vancouver and based in London, England, Micner finds some of the themes in the pair’s harmonies—isolation, loneliness, the need for connection, and hope—more relevant than ever. The work explores the things we can't get over and ways we can move on.
Whether it’s the pre-gentrified East End of London or the Second World War, Micner has a way of looking at the past in new ways through her work, finding healing and joy along the way.
New York-based playwright Rokhl Kafrissen's new work-in-progress Shtumer Shabes (Silent Sabbath) is about the discovery' of a “lost” avant-garde Yiddish play that caused a riot the one night it ran in Warsaw in 1938. Grad student Jess Berman is on the verge of being kicked out of school when she meets 90-something Yiddish theatre diva Sonja Szajnfeld. Suspecting that Sonja possesses the original script, Jess believes she can rewrite history if she can just convince Sonja to share it with her. Playing the nonagenarian diva is drag performer Shane Baker, a leading performer and creator on the modern Yiddish stage.
Kafrissen, whose work on Yiddish culture, feminism, and contemporary Jewish life has appeared in publications all over the world, will talk about the development of the play during the streaming.
By streaming these works-in-progress, Chutzpah! is providing a way for people to see how plays are made, opening up the creative process to audiences near and far.
The hope is that both plays will return to Chutzpah next year in their fully realized forms.
Single tickets start at $18 (plus applicable fees and service charges) and are available online at www.chutzpahfestival.com or by phone at 604.257.5145.
Rokhl Kafrissen.
Tamara Micner.
This post was sponsored by the Chutzpah! Festival: The Lisa Nemetz Festival of International Jewish Performing Arts