Chorus of voices defines WJT’s upcoming season

A drama about circumcision, a Tony-winning musical and an abbreviated history of the Jewish people from the pen of a Manitoban performing arts legend are being served up next season by the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre, artistic director Dan Petrenko announced Wednesday.

Now in his fifth season at the helm of the WJT, the 28-year-old Petrenko has steered the company out of a pandemic-imposed deficit during his four years of program control, making decisions — a minimal two-show season in 2024, leaning into co-productions and favouring smaller casts — that have enabled the theatre to expand its reach.

The announcement of the company’s 39th season lineup comes just over two months before the WJT partners with Rainbow Stage to bring Fiddler on the Roof to Kildonan Park in September.

Since the Israeli-born, Toronto-raised artist took over for former artistic director Ari Weinberg — now the casting director for the Stratford Festival — in 2022, Petrenko has been tasked with revitalizing the company by incorporating younger theatre-going audiences while remaining faithful to the stock of productions that keep the WJT’s established subscriber base engaged.

From the outset, Petrenko has said that his aim was to create bridges to new audiences — both Jewish and non-Jewish — through programming that challenges binary thinking and monolithic estimations.

“We’re in a time when Jewish stories are too often oversimplified and misunderstood,” says Petrenko, who has programmed such challenging fare as Max Wolf Friedlich’s psychodrama Job and Kathrine Kressmann Taylor’s epistolary warning call Address Unknown.

It’s the company’s responsibility to showcase Jewish life not as one voice, “but as a chorus of voices,” he says.

In recent seasons, that’s been best exemplified through the WJT’s leanings into musical theatre, a form that Petrenko knew would be key to reaching across the aisle to draw audiences; recent successes include extended runs of both The Band’s Visit and Ride, a dynamic tandem performance about women’s independence.

This season, the company is producing the longest run in its post-pandemic era with a three-week stand of Dear Evan Hansen (March 30-April 18, 2027) — the first professional local production of the six-time Tony winner in Manitoba.

With a book by Steven Levenson and music and lyrics by La La Land’s Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the musical will be presented by Rainbow Stage, continuing the companies’ fruitful partnership.

That show is the buzziest on offer next season, but hardly the most cutting.

From Toronto writer Jordi Mand, The Cut is a two-hander about a couple in their unborn child’s room whose discussion about circumcision opens up deeper, challenging conversations about religious differences and fundamental values. A co-production with Toronto’s Harold Green Jewish Theatre, the season-opening production (Oct. 15-25) will be directed by Philip Akin.

Can the Jewish story be summarized in an hour or less? Steven Schipper was intrigued to try. The playwright and director has been at work on The History of the Jewish People … in 54 Minutes since leaving his post as the artistic director of the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre in 2018.

Relying on three actors to trace the complex arc of the narrative — all the way from Abraham’s open tent to Zabar’s tantalizing deli counter — History… has been workshopped twice in the past year and audience-tested with high school students in Toronto, Petrenko says.

“This is really a way for Stephen to say that Jewish artists should tell our own stories before somebody tells them for us,” the artistic director says of the show, which will run Dec. 10-13.

Petrenko’s own creative contribution to the season is an experiment in audio immersion called Anne’s Attic.

Using binaural sound technology, Petrenko — who conceived of the idea, but will partner with Tracey Erin Smith on the writing — says the show will take place completely in the dark, with audience members sitting among the onstage actors as they recreate the hidden domestic experiences of the Frank family as they hope to evade discovery by the Nazis.

“We thought, Anne’s story has been told so many times, and now we’re asking to experience her world in a totally different way,” Petrenko says.

Closing out the season is a staged reading of a more contemporary drama of human conflict.

Developed by Tel Aviv LGBTTQ+ theatre HaMeshulash (the Triangle), Border is a story told entirely through messages exchanged on the dating app Grindr between two men — one an Israeli soldier and the other a man living in Lebanon amid ongoing international trauma.

“I programmed this because it’s important that the Jewish theatre shares Israeli stories in all their complexity,” says Petrenko, who saw a staging by HaMeshulash director Nimrod Danishman in November in Tel Aviv.

The staged reading will be directed by Winnipeg’s Chase Winnicky, who will also direct the world première of Ottawa playwright Lawrence Aronovitch’s Dancing With the Past — a queer drama reflecting on the campaign to “clean up” gay bars and bathhouses ahead of the 1976 Montreal Olympics — in October at the Gargoyle Theatre in association with International Day of Pink.

For more information on the upcoming WJT season, visit wjt.ca.

winnipegfreepress.com/benwaldman

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