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THE SEGAL CENTRE FOR PERFORMING ARTS
in partnership with the City of Montreal

IS PROUD TO PRESENT

THE MONTREAL INTERNATIONAL YIDDISH THEATRE FESTIVAL

Yiddishpiel was founded with one mission in mind: to preserve the Yiddish language which almost disappeared from the world. On the stage of the Yiddishpiel Theatre, the 1000-year-old Yiddish language again comes to life, full of the wisdom of those who are no longer with us.

The veteran Yiddish actors who performed from its inception were joined over the years by younger cast members — Israeli born and new immigrants. The young ensemble is made of professional actors in their twenties and thirties who study Yiddish as a language and culture at universities and in the Theatre itself.

Several of the most important Hebrew writers wrote especially for the Yiddishpiel Theatre: Yehusha Sobol, Aaron Meged, Joseph Ben-Joseph, Ephraim Kishon and others. At the Yiddishpiel, the audiences can meet, sometimes for the first time in their lives, the works of Shai Agnon, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Sholem Aleichem, Itzik Manger, Sholem Asch and others.

Yiddishpiel continues its effort to expose the treasures of Yiddish culture and to break the stigma that stands as a partition between the Israeli young audience and the Yiddish speakers. High school students watch at least one play in Yiddish during their studies as part of a "search for roots" trip either to Poland or as part of the Cultural Education Program at school. Students who major in Yiddish are regulars at the Theatre. The Theatre also prides itself on its performances at many senior residences and long-term facilities, bringing joy and memories to its residents and in absorption centres for new immigrants.

Yiddishpiel is celebrating its twentieth anniversary and during these years has won prizes for its work, including the Itzik Manger Prize, the Klor Prize and the Israel Theatre Prize.

Shmuel Atzmon-Wirzer
Artistic Director, Yiddishspiel

MAYBE SHE WAS NOT EVEN HERE AT ALL

SUNDAY JUNE 21 AT 8 PM

by Blanka Metzner and Dan Wollman, directed by Michal Vered
Starring Anat Atzmon

Ten minutes inside a woman's psyche. Yazja is arriving to celebrate the wedding of Orna, a girl she looked after since Yazja's emigration to Israel - from the place where " people did not live on the earth, only beneath it - from the land of the Holocaust." The music of the band, the dancing wedding guests and the food cast her back into a whirlwind of memories about Orna's childhood. These memories get mixed up with images from Yazja's own childhood, vignettes of fear, anguish, trauma and unforgettable moments of kindness.

All these characters emerge from the heart and lips of a single actress.

Maybe She Was Not Even Here At All stars the incomparable Anat Atzmon, a well-known Israeli actor of stage, television and films for which she received the Kinor David Prize. She is a singer with three albums to her credit.

Anat Atzmon writes:

"When I met Blanka Metzner, I was a little girl. Through her beautiful eyes, I felt the compassion and love inside her, flowing out to me and empowering me. I was the daughter she always wanted but never had. Unfortunately I did not get to see the play inspired by her own life that she wrote with Danny Wollman in the 1980s. When I received the play, I felt it was a bequest from her to me. At a special moment about two years, I introduced my long time friend, Michal Vered, to this play and we decided to bring it to the stage. Like a chain of souls, we are closely linked together through the past: Blanka as a child survivor of the Holocaust and Michal and I as the second generation of the Holocaust; through survival, through family relationships and through acting as a way of life. We are here and "She was Never Here" is still here amongst us and with us."

LAST LOVE BY ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER	MONDAY, JUNE 22, 8 PM &
	TUESDAY, JUNE 23, 2 PM

Nobel Prize laureate for Yiddish literature, Issac Bashevis Singer explores not only human loneliness but also the human comedy. In Last Love, Singer opens up the varieties of wisdom gained with age and especially those that teach us how to love....the love that matures...just like old wine tasting even better day by day, year after year and tear after tear. Thus he celebrates the dignity, mastery and unexpected joy of living.

Last Love stars Yiddishspiel Artistic Director, Shmuel Atzmon and Yaakov Bodo, both winners of lifetime achievement awards.