THE SEGAL CENTRE
FOR PERFORMING ARTS
in partnership with the City of Montreal
IS PROUD TO PRESENT
THE MONTREAL INTERNATIONAL YIDDISH THEATRE FESTIVAL
THE NEW YIDDISH REP
At the Workmen's Circle, New York, USA
Hundreds of thousands of people who don't speak French go to see movies in French. Why? Because the movies themselves interest them. Well, why not theatre in Yiddish?
After all, back in the day, lots of people who couldn't speak Yiddish used to go to Yiddish theatre — because they knew they would see something exciting. And they didn't have the supertitle translations that we use today.
Yiddish theatre back then was the cutting edge. More great directors, great designers, and great actors came from Yiddish theatre than you can possibly imagine. Its influence on other theatre, especially in America, has been gigantic.
And like the late Joseph Papp said, "Yiddish is the perfect language for theatre; its expressiveness is theatrical. There is something about the sound of Yiddish... it's the perfect music to accompany a Jewish story."
The New Yiddish Rep believes that it is still possible to reinvigorate Yiddish theatre, provided we do it now. But it must be exciting theatre. We must present theatre That Happens to Be In Yiddish, not Yiddish That Happens to Be Onstage. We must challenge and excite them if we are to get them to come. The shows we present must be Stimulating. Witty. Daring. Theatrical. Newsworthy.
The New Yiddish Rep is a small but dedicated group of theatre professionals, all fluent in Yiddish and with extensive credits in Yiddish theatre. We also have backgrounds in experimental theatre, magic, comedy, and music. We've acted and directed on Broadway and in Paris, in Romania and Israel, all over the U.S. and Canada and Germany and Spain, in English and Russian and Danish and Romanian and lots and lots of times in Yiddish.
So far we have presented a handful of very small shows and the response has been very encouraging. We have much more challenging plans in the works and experiments with theatre styles that have never been done in Yiddish.
David Mandelbaum Founder/Artistic Director , Amy Coleman Founder/Producing Director Allen Lewis Rickman, Executive Director ,Shane Baker, Producing Director Moshe Yassur, Producing Director
| YOSL RAKOVER SPEAKS TO G-D BY ZVI KOLITZ | THURSDAY JUNE 18, 2 PM |
Adapted for the stage and performed by David Mandelbaum
In the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto, among heaps of charred rubbish, there was found, packed tightly into a small bottle, the following testament, written during the ghetto's last hours by a Jew named Yosl Rakover.
For twenty years the story of Yosl Rakover was believed to be an eyewitness account of the ghetto's last hours, and the true story of a pious Jew whose fate it was to die fighting the beasts that destroyed his world. In the hours before his death he reconsiders his relationship with G-d and concludes that although his relationship with G-d has changed, his faith in Him remains, and his love for Him burns as strongly as ever.
The story was actually written in 1946, by Zvi Kolitz, a young Jew living in Palestine who, as a delegate to the World Zionist Congress, traveled extensively to speak on behalf of the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine. His clandestine purpose was to recruit fighters for the Irgun, of which he was a member. While in Argentina, he was asked to write an article for a Yiddish paper in Buenos Aires for their special Yom Kippur edition. The result was Yosl Rakover Speaks to G-d. Through a set of bizzare circumstances, the story was republished in an Israeli Yiddish journal without his name on it, and was assumed to be real. It has since been recognized as one of the classics of Holocaust literature, been translated into many languages, and been the subject of essays by theologians and philosophers. It makes for powerful and compelling theatre.
In Yiddish with English supertitles.