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TribeFest

Winnipeg Jewish Theatre presents TribeFest, a celebration of Jewish theatre and theatre in general.
   
The mid-season festival kicked off Jan. 25 with five straight nights of Toronto-based improv troupe The National Theatre of the World. Week 2 begins tonight (Feb. 9) with a panel discussion featuring past WJT artistic directors Mariam Bernstein and Kayla Gordon, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre artistic director Steven Schipper and Winnipeg stage veteran Harry Nelken. The conversation, moderated by WJT artistic director Michael Nathanson, will focus on the question: "What is Jewish theatre?"
   
"We’ll gather these people on a stage and talk to them about what (Jewish theatre) means for them, what WJT means to them and what their own work means to them," Nathanson says. "We also want to hear from our audience because, at times, what we’ve programmed has not been popular with some of the older patrons of WJT. They’ve had trouble with shows like The Russian Play by Hannah Moscovitch, which they didn’t necessarily see as being Jewish, and I think that’s a dialogue well worth having."
   
TribeFest continues Friday with public readings of two new plays by local playwrights Bruce Sarbit and Ginny Collins. Sarbit’s The Rest is Commentary deals with right-to-life issues while Collins’ Good Intentions is inspired by her time living in Africa.
   
"Essentially, I just wanted to explore the idea of ethics and how people from different cultures will see the same thing in an entirely different way," says Collins, 28.
   
"If you have a discussion with people who have been raised in an entirely different setting with an entirely different value system, both of you will believe you are saying the right thing. You have the best intentions in the situation but your ideas can be completely opposite and conflict with each other. The play came from the relationships I had overseas and being fascinated by that dynamic."
  The festival wraps up Saturday with Neurotica, an evening of short plays based on the themes "something Jewish" or "something Eros."
   
"It’s going to be all over the map," Nathanson says. "I wrote a 10-minute very traditional sex comedy for it. Two university students are acting out a short piece by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Donald Margulies. The One Trunk Collective is doing Hamlet as Told on the Street, an adaptation of a Shel Silverstein poem which will apparently feature more blood on our stage than we’ve ever seen."
   
Neurotica looks to be a fun evening, an event that isn’t afraid to poke fun at Jewish theatre itself. Directed by zone41 theatre’s Krista Jackson, The Mamet Women takes the piss out of a certain celebrated Jewish playwright.
   
"It’s Frederick Stroppel’s spoof on David Mamet," says Jackson, 37.
   
"My whole thing about Mamet is, although he’s a great writer, he can only write for men. His women characters are just not as good as his men. When I heard this playwright had spoofed Mamet, basically having two women speak like Mamet’s men do when they’re negotiating their deals, I just thought that would be really fun to play around with."
 

TribeFest
Winnipeg Jewish Theatre
Feb. 9, 8 p.m.; Feb. 10, 7 p.m.; Feb. 11, 8 p.m., The Berney Theatre