Now Available Online - CTR 153 / Winter 2013 "Jewish Performance"

[Greenwood, Audrey]

Now Available online
CTR 153 / Winter 2013
Jewish Performance<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/l176h4n001t3/>
This is the first issue of CTR to address the development and production of performances in Canada that are rooted in the Jewish experience. Artists and scholars re-imagine traditional representations of Jewish culture, history, and ritual and highlight the diverse forms that Jewish performance has taken in contemporary Canadian contexts: from plays on Jewish themes, to site-specific Jewish theatre, to Yiddish parades, to queer re-stagings of religious practice, to intermedia installations of mythic Jewish spaces. Many contributors explore Jewish identity as a performance that takes place both on and offstage; in so doing, they resist fixed understandings of what it means to be Jewish, and explore Jewish identity as it is formed through multiple affiliations, alliances, and communities. In narrating questions of self-definition, they ask how Jewish performance intersects with other diasporic communities to create new intercultural forms, and they investigate the importance of Jewish performance practices that actively negotiate cultural inequities and socio-political realities.
The script, Corpus by Darrah Teitel, is the winner of the Calgary Peace Play Competition and Canadian Jewish Playwriting Competition. It explores a Canadian scholar's obsession with the Holocaust and the problems of sensationalizing traumatic history and memory. CTR Online also offers a new slideshow feature, which displays an array of images from a half-century of productions at The Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre, one of Montreal's cultural treasures.

This issue contains:
Jewish Performance in Canada<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/h35402233x167744/?p=038e2505d5a34960a5d4031efe2aeb03&pi=0>
Belarie Zatzman and Laura Levin
DOI:10.3138/CTR.153.001
Between Biblical Tradition and Contemporary Audiences: Jewish Theatre Practice in Toronto<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/1k682500120633un/?p=038e2505d5a34960a5d4031efe2aeb03&pi=1>
Joel Benabu and Barry Freeman
Abstract

Joel Benabu and Barry Freeman in conversation with four Toronto-based Jewish Canadian theatre playwrights and producers: Esther Arbeid (Theatre/Film Programmer at the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre), Hannah Moscovitch (Playwright), Avery Saltzman (Co-Artistic Director of the Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company), and Julie Tepperman (Playwright, Actor, and Co-Artistic Director of Convergence Theatre). Topics discussed include Jewish sub-communities in Toronto, audiences to Jewish plays, the challenge of producing politically or artistically provocative work, and the relationship between Jewish ritual and performance traditions. The article is an edited version of a two-hour conversation held at the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre in Toronto, 23 December 2011.
DOI:10.3138/CTR.153.002
In the Mosaic: Jewish Identities in Canadian Performance and Installation Art<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/951p434x362151r8/?p=038e2505d5a34960a5d4031efe2aeb03&pi=2>
Carol Zemel
Abstract

This essay considers contemporary Jewish installation and performance art in Canada. With an emphasis on diasporic and identity issues in Canada's multicultural mosaic, the article focuses on works by Vera Frenkel, Melissa Schiff, and Tobaron Waxman, and explores their treatment of place and home, gender, and ritual.
DOI:10.3138/CTR.153.003
The YICHUD Room: Performing Jewish Spaces<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/h73hw6j10n6l2427/?p=038e2505d5a34960a5d4031efe2aeb03&pi=3>
Shira Schwartz, Julie Tepperman and Aaron Willis
Abstract

"The YICHUDRoom: Performing Jewish Spaces" explores the similarities between theatrical and ritual practices as exemplified in the Theatre Passe Muraille/Convergence Theatre production of YICHUD (Seclusion) by Julie Tepperman. The efficacy of both ritual and theatre lie in the strength and specificity of the intention(s) they communicate to their participants/audience, and the way in which they sanctify or sacralise space. YICHUD (Seclusion) offers a particularly interesting example of how ritual and theatre dovetail with each other as the play itself is set in the religiously observant world of orthodox Judaism. An examination of this play in performance, a play centred on Jewish wedding rituals, demonstrates the creation of a highly charged atmosphere that immerses the audience in an event that is religiously authentic and dramatically truthful.
DOI:10.3138/CTR.153.004
My Life in Jewish Theatre: A Coming-Out Story<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/953625t061r5k322/?p=038e2505d5a34960a5d4031efe2aeb03&pi=4>
Kayla Gordon
Abstract

Kayla Gordon looks back at almost 15 years of working in Jewish Theatre. She discusses her involvement with the Governor General's Award-winning play Tangled Souls, a theatre piece developed with young people from Winnipeg and Norway House. She also reflects on her work as Artistic Director of the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre, Executive Director of the Association for Jewish Theatre, and her more recent role as Artistic Director of Winnipeg Studio Theatre. Along the way, she considers the future of Jewish theatre in Canada and the importance of reaching new audiences.
DOI:10.3138/CTR.153.005
Jewish Theatre in Vancouver Has Chutzpah!<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/91413110283730u1/?p=038e2505d5a34960a5d4031efe2aeb03&pi=5>
Amanda Lockitch
Abstract

This article illustrates diverse Jewish Canadian theatrical experiences showcased at the Chutzpah! Festival by discussing two cutting edge productions: Kendra Fanconi's The One That Got Away (2002) and Itai Erdal's How to Disappear Completely. These productions demonstrate the growth of the Chutzpah! Festival from its 2001 inception to its current place as a leading annual arts festival in Vancouver. There is no distinguishable group that solely presents Jewish theatre in Vancouver, but its vibrant theatre community includes many individuals who create or participate in work that explores Jewish themes and material whether or not they themselves, or their collaborators, are Jewish.
DOI:10.3138/CTR.153.006
Yiddish Theatre beyond Montreal: Die Folkshpieler in Ottawa<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/9p271t66770m2739/?p=038e2505d5a34960a5d4031efe2aeb03&pi=6>
Rebecca Margolis
Abstract

Yiddish theatre in Canada and abroad consists primarily of amateur community groups. One of these groups, Die Folkshpieler (the People's Players, founded 2002) is housed in Canada's capital city. Although most of the group's members and audiences are not fluent Yiddish speakers, these events have come to occupy an important role in the cultural life of the local Jewish community. This study examines the production of Yiddish theatre in Ottawa through the lens of "postvernacular Yiddish," where the symbolic value of the language exceeds its communicative functions. The performativity of Yiddish theatre allows for participants to engage with a language that resonates deeply with them as well as to explore new parts of themselves. Using interviews with Die Folkshpieler writer-director, Shirley Steinberg, and one of its long-time participants and occasional writer, Rubin Friedman, the study suggests that Yiddish theatre functions as a means of negotiating Canadian Jewish identity.
DOI:10.3138/CTR.153.007
Becoming Archive ribcage: this wide passage<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/94447725w1p67254/?p=038e2505d5a34960a5d4031efe2aeb03&pi=7>
Heather Hermant
Abstract

Hermant describes ribcage: this wide passage (dir. Diane Roberts), which weaves together the story of "multi-crosser" Esther Brandeau ("first Jewish person in Canada") with Hermant's archival search for this individual and with her own queer settler histories. This assemblage takes the form of what Hermant calls "ceremonial archival performance." Photos demonstrate ribcage's interdisciplinarity, featuring physical theatre, spoken word, video, and live fiddle.
DOI:10.3138/CTR.153.008
What Comes First, Being a Playwright or Being a Jew?: Snapshots of Seven Canadian Writers<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/k638t15278816103/?p=038e2505d5a34960a5d4031efe2aeb03&pi=8>
Lynn Slotkin
Abstract

Seven Canadian Jewish Playwrights-Daniel Karasik, Hannah Moscovitch, Michael Nathanson, Adam Pettle, Alex Poch-Goldin, Michael Rubenfeld, and Emil Sher-comment on how their being Jewish has informed their work and influenced how they write and what they write about.
DOI:10.3138/CTR.153.009
Studio 180's Political Engagements: Finding the Jewish Soul in Canadian Theatre<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/4l4148j62530413h/?p=038e2505d5a34960a5d4031efe2aeb03&pi=9>
Laura Levin, Belarie Zatzman and Joel Greenberg
Abstract

Laura Levin and Belarie Zatzman converse with Studio 180's Artistic Director Joel Greenberg about Jewish theatre as an art of social justice. They discuss Studio 180 Theatre's political mandate, its aim to provoke public discourse, and previous productions that have served as a form of community engagement. They also explore Studio 180's staging of plays with intercultural themes, histories of racial conflict, and the oppression of minority groups. Studio 180 productions discussed here include: The Laramie Project, The Arab-Israeli Cookbook, Parade, Our Class, The Normal Heart, and Clybourne Park.
DOI:10.3138/CTR.153.010
Script
Corpus<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/5tj8426kquuu20q1/?p=d96566359f69406b9761174869fe9486&pi=10>
Darrah Teitel
DOI:10.3138/CTR.153.011
Views and Reviews<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/dl164n7718rj271j/?p=d96566359f69406b9761174869fe9486&pi=11>
DOI:10.3138/ctr.153.012



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