By Sandi Masori in San Diego
In case you missed the memo, JFEST is happening now. If you have never heard of JFEST before, it’s a multi-disciplinary arts festival featuring theater, music, dance, and food. Since the rest of the world may not care about our Jewish arts, it’s incumbent on us to support it. Use it or lose it if you will.
In that spirit I was disappointed to see that the recent performance of Samuel, His Widow, and the Whispering Flowers had many open seats. Perhaps some of the confusion was that it’s by Teatro Punta Y Coma and people thought that the show might be in Spanish, but fear not, it was all in English.
The story, concept and narration, are by David Chait. He’s a gifted storyteller, and I enjoyed hearing him spin his tale. There were also dances and musical performances punctuating the storytelling. Monica Bauer Federman worked on the performance adaptation.
The costumes designed by David Chait, Sarita Feldman, Aaron Zaidman, and Christine Nievergelt were beautiful and well done.
The basic story, set in an Eastern European shtetl, is about the disappearance of the dye-maker Samuel. Samuel has a special technique for extracting dye from the flowers, and that is by listening to the flowers, letting them live their lives, and then picking them only when they’ve died.
Word spreads to the duke that Samuel has the best dyes in town and the duke wants Samuel to make some blankets for his daughters, so he has Samuel kidnapped and puts him in the dungeon behind bars until he makes the blankets for the duke’s daughters. But, it’s winter, so there are no flowers. So, the duke keeps him imprisoned for an entire year.
The problem is that Samuel’s wife Sorele doesn’t know what’s happened to him, and because he has been gone a year, the Rabbi wants to declare her a widow. But she is adamant that she is NOT a widow and that her husband is still alive.
Teatro Punto Y Coma is the theater division of the Ken Jewish Community. The musical arrangements were done by multiple people, but primarily David Chait and Andrew Mayer. The choreography also was community driven, with dances choreographed by Chait, Sara Zetune, Bertha Fridman, Christine Nievergelt, Faith Jensen Ismay, and Bruno Bousardi.
Though this was a one-time performance, Teatro Punto Y Coma meets every week to write, rehearse and socialize, so there’s always something happening. And they have a performance every JFest as well, so be on the lookout for next year’s schedule.
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Associate Editor Sandi Masori is a theater and food reviewer for San Diego Jewish World
You did a great job of summarizing David Chait’s charming story and giving credit to all who helped create the engaging music and dance-filled play.