Winnipeg Jewish Theatre reveals all-Canadian lineup
Advertisement
Read this article for free:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Monthly Digital Subscription
$19 $0 for the first 4 weeks*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*No charge for 4 weeks then billed as $19 every four weeks (new subscribers and qualified returning subscribers only). Cancel anytime.
Read unlimited articles for free today:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/03/2019 (1834 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
In making the announcement for his fifth season of plays at Winnipeg Jewish Theatre, artistic director Ari Weinberg has been teasing for some time that significant changes were coming to the program.
Now it can be told: the season will consist of four works instead of the usual three. The newly announced season also sees an all-Canadian program of works, including two world premières.
And, oh yes, and there will be puppets.
“WJT used to do four-show seasons in the late ’90s, and with the response from the audience in the last two years, this seemed the time to go back to a four-show season,” Weinberg says. “It also seemed like the right time to do four Canadian works.”
The season consists of:
Bar Mitzvah Boy (Sept. 14-22)
British Columbia journalist-author Mark Leiren-Young tells the story of a lawyer in his 60s who belatedly decides he needs a bar mitzvah. Winner of the 2017 Jewish Plays Project, the comedy-drama follows the character’s late-life immersion in his faith.
“It’s wickedly funny at times and very moving in the end, and it seemed like a no-brainer,” Weinberg says. “It asks questions about why we believe in what we believe in.”
The Golem’s Mighty Swing (Nov. 16-24)
The first world première of the season is a puppet-enhanced adaptation (by Marcus Jamin) of a graphic novel by James Sturm about a barnstorming Jewish baseball team touring America in the 1920s. A co-production with Toronto’s Outside the March company, it’s something decidedly different for WJT, Weinberg admits, especially since it’s a rare WJT show that will travel beyond Winnipeg. (The show, which workshopped in Toronto, will go there after playing in Winnipeg.)
“We’re treading into exciting new territory,” Weinberg says.
Two Birds One Stone (Feb. 8-16, 2020)
Writer-performers Natasha Greenblatt and Rimah Jabr are, respectively, a Jewish Canadian and a Muslim Palestinian who met in Toronto and turned their friendship into an examination of that fraught relationship between Israel and Palestine.
“This is probably the most politically charged play of the season, but in a way, it’s not at all,” Weinberg says. “It’s just a play about conflict and how we choose to deal with it. (Natasha and Rimah) are friends and this is very much about how they negotiate their friendship.”
Narrow Bridge (March 28-April 5, 2020)
Winnipeg playwright Daniel Thau-Eleff, whose Moving Target Theatre production Deserter was a high point of last year’s theatre season, returns with a provocative world première drama in which a character has a vision of drifting through the mechitzah (the barrier separating men and women in Orthodox synagogues) and subsequently comes out both as transgender and an Orthodox Jew.
If it sounds like heavy slogging, the play is surprisingly funny, Weinberg says.
“Narrow Bridge is a warm-hearted, funny and deeply spiritual play about one person’s experience transitioning genders and religious practices,” Weinberg says. “And actually, humour is a part of all four of the shows. When you’re writing Jewish characters, it’s hard not to include that aspect of Jewish life.”
Subscriptions are currently on sale for the new season at wjt.ca. Single tickets for the season go on sale Aug. 1.
randall.king@freepress.mb.ca
Twitter: @FreepKing
Randall King
Reporter
In a way, Randall King was born into the entertainment beat.