All About Jewish Theatre - A rich harvest of new theatre in Europe

LENA STANLEY-CLAMP is the founder Director of the European Association for Jewish Culture, London, which commissions and promotes new work in the performing and visual arts in Europe. She is also Director for Public Activities at the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR). Born in Prague, she was educated in Warsaw and graduated in History and Slavonic Languages from Brussels University. She has been a contributor to Jewish Renaissance and Encyclopaedia Judaica Yearbooks and is editor of EAJC Review. She programmed and organized a number of international conferences Planning for the Future of European Jewry, Prague 1995; Strengthening Jewish Life in Europe, Strasbourg 1997; Jewish Culture for the 21st Century, Paris 1999; Jewish Identities in post-Communist Europe, Budapest 2000; Jewish Spaces in European Theatre, Prague 2003. She collaborated on The Future of Jewish Heritage in Europe conference, 2004. She is a Council Member of the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies, Oxford and a member of the International Council on Museums, UK She is also a member of the All About Jewish Theatre Editorial Board .Web: www.jewishcultureineurope.org Web: www.jpr.org.uk E-mail lstanley-clamp@jpr.org.uk

Jonah comes to Tuscany

Yonah, is a production of Officine della Cultura, Arezzo, directed by Maria Erica Pacileo. Original music by A Bigazzi, E Fink and G.R. Gagliano who perform with Amit Arieli (clarinet), Stefano Bartolini (sax) and Alessandro Francolini (guitar).Yonah, a play by Enrico Fink was performed at Teatro Verdi, Monte San Savino and Teatro Puccini, Florence in 2002. It toured Arezzo, Torino and Montevarchi in 2003.

Jews were expelled from the small Tuscan town of Monte San Savino in 1799 during the French occupation, but the town’s official website claims that its continuing artistic and commercial vitality are the legacy of the enterprising spirit of the Jewish community once established there. At present only the remains of a synagogue tucked away in a back alley testify to a Jewish presence. However, for two nights in October 2002, a play based on Giacoma Limentani’s Giona e il Levitano brought the prophet Jonah and a number of Jewish visitors from Rome, Florence and London to town.

The playwright Enrico Fink, a young musician, actor and writer from Ferrara, whose one-man show Patrilineare has toured all over Italy and was recorded on CD as Lokshen. This is Enrico’s first full-scale play: ‘I was captivated by Limentani’s imaginative reading of the Book of Jonah. It is full of adventure and humour. Every image, every bit of dialogue is derived from the many midrashim around Jonah and around Leviathan, who is absent in the original story, but provides an amazing counterpart here to the distraught prophet.’ The play is greatly enhanced by the inclusion of liturgical music based on old Italian Jewish musical traditions and sung by Enrico Fink accompanied by four musicians.

Fink plays Yonah as a pathetic character, a prophet fearing human contact who runs away from God, responsibility, and from himself, but who is later transformed and redeemed by his encounter with the Big Fish or the Other (l’Altro). He is beautifully seconded by the actress Amina Kovacevich, who plays the Other with much brio and humour. She takes control of the action and puts Yonah through his paces. The life-affirming ending restores Yonah’s and our faith in humanity, freedom and redemption.

Back stage after the performance, Enrico remarked that in his previous shows he had always had to explain Judaism and his own Jewishness to Italian audiences, but with Yonah he has found the confidence to present a Jewish text, language and music without compromise. ‘Let them make what they will of it.’ Judging by the reaction in Monte San Savino, they met him more than half-way.

Enrico Fink’s latest play, Umbri (Shadows), was awarded the prestigious Jury Prize of the 2003 Riccione Festival . His new CD, The jazz singer’s return to faith, includes songs from Yonah and there are plans to publish extracts from the play on a CD-Rom.

Crossing Jerusalem: a difficult journey

Crossing Jerusalem, a new play by Julia Pascal, which explores the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians, played to full houses at the Tricycle Theatre in London throughout March and April 2003. The play was directed by Jack Gold and the sets were designed by Pamela Howard. The EAJC grant awarded to Pascal was generously sponsored by Mrs Barbara Sieratzki.

The action takes place over twenty-four hours as an Israeli family gather for a birthday celebration and make the hazardous journey across Jerusalem for a meal at a restaurant owned by a Christian Arab.

The young Palestinian waiter, Yusuf, played by Nabil Elouahabi, interrupts the meal to demand compensation for his father, who used to work for the family. An argument ensues between him, the hard-nosed estate agent Varda (Suzanne Bertish), and her children and daughter-in-law. The play ends with Varda’s refusnik son being killed by a suicide bomber who turns out to be Yusuf’s brother (Dan Ben-Zenou). The bereaved young widow Yael and Yusuf sit together in the hospital waiting room, each consumed by their grief.

The set revolves between a bedroom, an office, a restaurant and a hospital waiting room. With each scene change there are sounds of helicopters, tanks and gunfire, thereby intertwining the domestic with the political and making clear the context within which the characters are trying to live their lives.

Crossing Jerusalem was the hardest play I ever wrote’ said Julia Pascal. ‘I did a lot of research and tried to get things right, but my play is not a documentary account of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’. However, the news story about Netanyahu’s nephew becoming a conscientious objector, which came out only a few days before the play opened, gave it an almost documentary feel.

Speaking to fellow playwrights and directors at the EAJC European Theatre Forum in Prague in 2003, Julia explained ‘Trying to address the balance of mistrust and hatred between Israelis and Arabs made me push the characters to their limits and reach some hard conclusions. I was glad that audiences came out of the performances talking avidly and with many preconceptions broken. A Palestinian family came up after one performance to tell me this should be seen in Israel and in Palestine. A greater compliment I could not have.’

‘The success of the play changed my professional life: I have been able found new opportunities to devote myself to writing rather than directing.’ Julia Pascal has been commissioned by The Bush Theatre to write a play about second generation Muslim immigrants in the north of England, where her family first settled. She is currently working on a new play for The Tricycle Theatre about a group of Irgun fighters set in London in the winter of 1946/7.

Puppet theatre touches a chord with schoolchildren and older people

Jaap den Hertog is puppet-maker, actor and founder of Teater Fusentast in Trondheim, Norway, which specializes in performances for young people. Den Hertog’s theatre has performed in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, France, Russia, Lithuania and the Netherlands. He gives workshops and lectures in puppet-making and puppet theatre-related themes. He joined forces with Lasse Aakerlund, a Swedish actor, playwright and director at Teater Fusentast to create Sand Between Your Toes, a play based on the experiences of Jaap’s mother’s family in Holland before, during and after the Second World War. The play received a standing ovation at the Trondheim Jewish Museum in February 2004 where it played to young and adult audiences. Press reviews described it as ‘funny, touching and inventive’ and ‘life changing theatre’ (the weekly Dag og Tid). The play was also performed in Oslo, at the Porsgrunn International Theatre Festival and at the international puppetbuskers festival in Gent, Belgium.

The Demon from Tishevitz

Isaac Bashevis Singer’s story, adapted for the stage and directed by Olek Mincer, played for a week at the Meta Teatro in Rome with Mincer in the title role, accompanied by Massimo Coen (violin) and Gabriele Coen (clarinet), with additional electronic music by Claudio Mapelli. The sets and costumes were designed by Lillo Bartoloni and Luisa Taravella. The play was also performed in Turin (Teatro Espace), Trieste (Teatro Miele) and at Teatro Goldoni in Venice on the occasion of the Holocaust Memorial Day with the City’s Mayor and representatives of the Jewish community among the capacity audience

Mayse Tishevitz - The Last Demon, one of Singer’s most powerful stories, relates the destruction of Polish Jewry from the point of view of a supernatural character, a demon from a small Jewish town of Tishevitz. The Demon is clearly Singer’s alter ego: grieving for the lost world he knew and facing the life of a survivor whose only sustenance is the Hebrew alphabet. As a director, Mincer follows in the tradition of Tadeusz Kantor, the Polish avant-garde stage director, set designer and writer. The play is hard-hitting, sometimes brutal. There is no room for sentimentality or nostalgia; moments of comedy and songs serve to emphasize the tragic theme.

In his formative years, Olek Mincer trained at the Yiddish Theatre in Warsaw and toured Italy with the phenomenally successful Moni Ovadia’s theatre company. His adaptation moves with ease from Italian to Yiddish and back again. The narrative format does justice to the original story written in the form of a monologue.

‘I have always been fascinated by this novella of Singer, which I first read in the Italian translation, says Olek Mincer. ‘The humanity of the demon moved me deeply and I identified with a creature which defined himself as the last of his species… After reading the story again in Yiddish I discovered that in the original version, Singer left the door open to hope. I chose to interpret his words as “remember, but do not forget that you must go on living”.

The play was also performed in Turin (Teatro Espace), Trieste (Teatro Miele) and at Teatro Goldoni in Venice on the occasion of the Holocaust Memorial Day with the City’s Mayor and representatives of the Jewish community among the capacity audience.

Olek (Aleksander) Mincer (born in 1957 in Lvov, USSR) is an actor, director and writer. From 1975-1984 he was a member of the Yiddish State Theatre in Warsaw. After moving to Rome, he worked with Moni Ovadia and other theatre directors. Ovadia directed him among others in the one-man show Der meshugener batlen by I.L. Peretz. Mincer has directed six productions, including Purimshpil. His film work includes The Ballad of the Window Watchers (Venice Film Festival 1998); Modi, (Franco Brogi Taviani,1987); Rothschild’s Violin (Ewa Bilinska, 1987); Austeria (Jerzy Kawalerowicz, 1983), The Passion of the Christ (Mel Gibson, 2004). His autobiography for children Varsavia, Viale Gerusalemme 45 was published in 1999 and a book of interviews I am the Jew of The Passion was published in Warsaw in 2004.

Source: European Association for Jewish Culture
Website: http://www.jewishcultureineurope.org