July 6-15, 2018: BarnArts Residency (Bass Harbor, MN)

I am so excited to go to Barnarts to work on a new performance, Бабишка | BAb(oo)shka, an interdisciplinary performance that begins with my grandmother (babushka) and another elderly charismatic Jew from the Soviet Union telling a true story—chosen by them—in Russian onstage. Their humorous anecdotes about Jewish oppression are then contemporaneously translated into English (by me), into music (by a Yiddish Klezmer band), and into a puppet melodrama (by a group of physical theater performers). These retellings weave together to create a meta-conversation on the act of translation and historicization, exposing the realities of  Jewish life in the Soviet Union and how those experiences transform across generations and migrations.

Performance July 14, 2018 at.5:00pm