, JEWISH COMMUNITY FOUNDATION
OF GREATER VANCOUVER
L'Shana Tova Tikkatevu
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^ \ perpetual, endowed gift to the Jewish Community Foundation translates a commitment, from one generation to the next, into a legacy that endures beyond ones lifetime.
As the promise of 5762 begins, help the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Vancouver sustain the values of Klal Israel, Tikkun Olam and Tzedakah by making a perpetual gift to its endowment program.
On behalf of the Jewish Community Foundation s Board of Trustees and staff, may the coming year for you and your family be sweet and prosperous, and may the Jewish people everywhere be blessed with shalom.
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WEst^jEWISH BULLh'lIN Say you saw it in Ihc Biillelin... Support \imv pjiprr b> Mipporliii^ our atUrrliscrs.
Jewish Women International of Canada
wishes you a year filled with peace, good health & happiness and prays for peace in our beloved Israel.
Paula Mittelman
National President
Penny Krowitz
Executive Director
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Perfoiming on the Fringe
Jewish actors provide a variety of entertainment.
This yeafs Vancouver Fringe Festival offers four widely diverse shows with Jewish actors or Jewish subject matter. Though the week of activities is coming to a close, there are still a few chances to catch these engaging performances. For ticket or other Fringe information, call 604-257-0366 or go to www.vancouverfringc.com.
34-hour time travel
My friends and I can barely decide where to go for dinner. I can't imagine writing an entire play with them - let alone doing it in less than two days. But this is what Schmigeggy does. The Toronto-based theatre company picks a theme, heads into a city and casts local actors who then have 34 hours to create a play, which they perform as soon as the clocks run out.
For this year's Vancouver Fringe Festival, director/producer Adam Lazarus chose travel as the theme. From this, actors Hart Massey, Toby Bemer, Tara Cheyenne, Emelia Symington Fedy and Daniel Mate created several skits, through which a time traveller storyline runs, linking them all together.
As with any performance, Schmigeggy: Travel has its ups and downs. There are many laugh-aloud parts, such as a news conference that enters the fourth dimension and a character k la Fran Drcscher's The Nanny (though much less annoying). And there are other parts that seem more awkward - a scene with a derelict in a train boxcar, for example, has a serious tone that does not match the levity of the rest of the play.
The actors, however, arc great, without exception. For a newly formed group, they work together very well. It will be interesting to see another performance of Schmigeggy because the play will no doubt evolve as the actors become more comfortable with the strong material and revise the few weaker parts.
Schmigeggy: TrnvePs three remaining shows are at the False Creek Community Centre on Granville Island, 1318 Cart-wright St., Sept. 13,11:15 p.m., Sept. 15,4:45 p.m., and Sept. 16, 6:45 p.m. Tickets are $10 in ad-vancc/$8 at the door.
- Cynthia Ramsay
Typical relationship?
Have you ever been with someone — a partner, a lover, a spouse - who says something you think is stupid, and you look at them like you're seeing them for the first time, thinking, "What am I doing with this person? Am I really in love with someone who would say something like that?
Why didn't I notice this before?"
That look. That exact look drew peals of laughter from the audience watching the Fringe play Leah and Paul, for Example on Granville Island last weekend. That moment, along with dozens of others in the play, hit home with almost eveiy member of the audience who has been in any type of close relationship at some point in their lives.
The success of the play is due both to the insi^tilil content and the great acting by Anna Chat-terton and Chad Hershler, two members of the Jewish community in Toronto who have brought their two-person production to the Fringe.
Hysterically and depressing-ly, Chatterton and Hershler have been able to compress into one quickly paced hour, the typical example of a relationship. All the excitement of the first encounter, the first flirt, the first touch, as well as the highs of moving in together, travelling together and planning a life together mingle with all the lows of disillusionment, disappointment, resentment and loss of love to create a performance that is almost too close for comfort.
The play is based on a short story by Monique Proulx. Chatterton and Hershler tell the tale in the third person, moving back and forth in time, covering a six-year period and introducing each scene with a date. This movement chronologically gets a little confusing and it's hard to follow the events that actually lead to the break-up of the relationship. (No secrets given away here; that scene is set at the beginning of the play.) But at the same time, the temporal movement brings home the point that it doesn't really matter which low points came first and how many high points there were; in the end, some relationships just run their course.
You may not glean any brilliant insights from watching this performance, but the acting is tremendous and the way the two leads interpret, through dance, their first sexual encounter, is worth the ticket price alone.
Leah and Paul, for Example runs at Performance Works on Granville Island, 1218 Cartwright St., Sept. 14, 3:45 p.m., Sept. 15 at midnight, and Sept. 16,4 p.m.. Tickets arc $11 and $9.
- Baila Lazarus