Weekend January 26/27, 2019 — Bēma Production’s next venture is an exciting weekend of Reader’s Theatre in January 2019. The festival will run in the now familiar Bēma “black box” which we create in Congregation Emanu-El‘s social hall. This style of theatre allows the audience to imagine the action from hearing the script read aloud without sets, costumes or props. The readers of the three festival plays have been carefully chosen through auditions from inside and outside the Congregation Emanu-El community. It will be a weekend filled with laughter, sadness and challenges. Please come and enjoy one play, or even all three. Tickets are now available at https://www.ticketrocket.co/event/season/346
TICKETS $15.00, or $40.00 for all three, available online at http://www.ticketrocket.co or at 101-804 Blanshard Street
Saturday, January 26, 7:30 pm, Exquisite Potential by Stephen Kaplan.
It’s 1979, and the Zuckermans are visiting their Rabbi to discuss the naming service for the new child they’re expecting. However, Alan surprisingly announces that he thinks their 3-year old son is the Messiah. Flash forward to 2009—the son is now grown up—was he right? Exquisite Potential tells the story of parental expectations, hopes, dreams, and our own desires and fears about reaching our potential.
Sunday, January 27, 3:00 pm, And a Child Shall Lead by Michael Slade.
And a Child Shall Lead is the heroic and true story of children coming of age in Terezin, the combination ghetto and concentration camp established by the Nazis near Prague as a way station before the death camps. In the face of unspeakable horror, these children use their determination and creativity to build lives filled with hope and beauty. Their actual poems and stories are woven into a fast-paced drama, evoking the universality of children caught in the insanity of war.
Sunday, January 27, 7:30 pm, Sperm Count by Stephen Orlov
Sperm Count tells the story of a Jewish writer who seeks help from a Palestinian doctor to solve his infertility problem. And of course, David Stein’s burned-out wife, his Holocaust-survivor father, and an imaginary sperm all come along for a roller coaster ride into the bizarre world of reproductive technology.
Born during Congregation Emanu-El’s 2013 Arts Festival, Bēma Productions is now in its fifth successful season. Winner of the Best Drama Award at Victoria’s 2016 Fringe Festival, Bema helps to support other non-profit organizations by offering productions of its main stage play each year in support of their fundraising efforts.
