Past seasons:

2003-2004  This Night

2004-2005 The Chosen  The Sisters Rosensweig

2006 THE HOME OF THE BRAVE THE TENTH MAN

2007 THE LAST NIGHT OF BALLYHOO THE GOD OF ISAAC

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2007-2008

 

Conversations With My Father

a Dramatic Comedy by Herb Gardner

Directed by Ari Weisberg

Stage Manager Kivi Shapiro

November 21 to December 2, 2007

From the award winning author of I'M Not Rappaport and A Thousand Clowns comes a powerful and funny play about three generations of a Jewish family on NY’s Lower East Side, featuring a large cast. 

"A sweeping and anguished epic with jolts of aching laughter." N.Y. Magazine. "Funny and moving, poetic and tough.... It's wonderful!" WNYW TV. "Best American play of the year." Wall Street Journal. "Gardner cuts deeper and darker than he's done before ... without relinquishing his status as a comic writer." Newsweek. "Powerful, pungent and deeply felt. Gardner's best play!" N.Y. Post. "A distinguished play with a shattering emotional range." UPI. "Totally satisfying theatre." New Yorker. "Splendid!" Time Magazine.

For Cast bios, click here  

Blue (Allan Soberman) Eddie (Arnie Zweig) Nick (Philip Soiffer), Finney The Book (Julian Nicholson) and Jimmy Scalso (David Rego) at a stand off in Ed’s Golden door bar in TEATRON Theatre’s production of Conversations With My Father

 Click here to see more photos from the production

 

Chaim’s Love Song
 

a Comedy by Marvin Chernoff

Directed by Ari Weisberg

February 27 to March 9, 2008

Chaim Shotsky, a retired mailman in Brooklyn, is an American Tevye. His exotic tale is rich with vitality. His friends include a philosophical baker, his son and daughter, a matchmaker to end all matchmakers, movie star pigeons and a host of Israelis. "Genuinely touching.... Sold out for weeks to come." L.A. Times.

"Rich and affecting.... A funny, philosophical, lovely evening." N.Y. Times. "A lilting family drama." Entertainment Weekly. "A work brimming with rich ethnic humor." Suburban Town News. "Will touch everyone's heart." Long Beach Press Telegram.

Featuring an excellent cast of nine, led by our veteran actor, Irving Dobbs (THIS NIGHT, THE TENTH MAN and THE LAST NIGHT OF BALLYHOO), TEATRON Theatre veterans, Jack Berke (THE CHOSEN, THE TENTH MAN), Reva Lawry* (LAST NIGHT OF BALLYHOO) and Andria Siegler (THE GOD OF ISAAC) as well as Julie Holdsworth*, Kivi Shapiro, Leah Chwaiewsky, Andrea Helfant (Andy) and Carmi Sienna in their début appearances with TEATRON Theatre. Read more

Click here for actor’s biographies

 

2007

THE LAST NIGHT OF BALLYHOO

 

                                                                                               

THE LAST NIGHT OF BALLYHOO Winner, Tony Award for Best Play a comedy

by Alfred Uhry, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Driving Miss Daisy

Directed by Ari Weisberg

January 24 – 28, 2007

The Last Night of Ballyhoo is a bittersweet comedy set in Atlanta during the Christmas of 1939. Gone With the Wind is having its world premiere and Hitler is invading Poland. Meanwhile, Atlanta’s elitist German Jews are more concerned with finding the best dates and dresses for Ballyhoo, the social event of the season. Hidden prejudices, family secrets and a longing for their roots make this romantic comedy a hit.

 "Everything falls into place in this… wonderfully crafted script." — Variety.

 Cast in Order of Appearance:

Lala Levy - Vanessa Kobran, Reba Freitag - Reva Lawry*, Beulah "Boo" Levy - Candi Zell, Adolph Freitag - Irving Dobbs, Joe Farkas - Lorn Eisen. Sunny Freitag - Jenna Harris, Peachy Weil -Daniel Sadavoy     

  • Appears with the permission of Canada Actors' Equity Association.

THE GOD OF ISAAC

 

                                                                   Photos by Neil Siegler © 

THE GOD OF ISAAC review  View more photos 

a comedy by James Sherman the author of Beau Jest and many other favorites

Directed by Ari Weisberg

March 21 - 25, 2007

At the Leah Posluns Theatre – Main Stage

This heart-warming comedy tells the story of a young man in search of spiritual identity. Isaac begins by informing the audience that "things may go a little differently tonight because my mother is in the audience" and, from the audience, his mother becomes a persistent presence in the play. Isaac tells how he learned about the threatened Neo Nazi demonstration in Skokie, Illinois, and he wonders how, and if, this incident should concern him as an American Jew. Various characters that he encounters in funny and touching scenes offer a confounding array of possible positions to adopt while two women, his wife and his childhood best friend, significantly affect the path of his journey.

"Hilarious, shrewd and touching." Chicago Sun Times. "A warm, enjoyable search for roots, a search everyone in this society can identify with." The Reader.

Cast in Order of Appearance:

Isaac Adams – Lorn Eisen. Mrs. Joseph Adams - Andria Siegler. Actress I - Limor Markovzki. Actress II - Erin Tancock. Actor I – (Hasid I, Steiger, The Tailor, Lion, Rabbi Blumstein, Pickering and Dad) - Miles Cohen. Actor II – (Hasid II, Huck, The J.D.L., Brando, Tin Man, Higgins and Tom Joad) - Sam Walters.

 

2006

 

THE HOME OF THE BRAVE

 

  

A fast-paced drama dealing with anti-Semitism in the U.S. Army during World War II.

When a group of soldiers volunteer for a dangerous mission to a Japanese-occupied island, prejudice, fear and friendships are exposed and tested.

“HOME OF THE BRAVE is a riveting action-filled, thought-provoking drama that will keep the audiences on the edge of their seats.”

January 10 to 15, 2006 AT THE Leah Posluns theatre Main Stage,

 BJCC – 4588 Bathurst St, Toronto

 

 

 

 

THE TENTH MAN

 

Click here or on photo for more photos http://flickr.com/photos/teatron/sets/72157601724563832/

A drama comedy by Paddy Chayefsky

March 8-12,2006

Directed by

Ari Weisberg

Featuring:

Mark Albert, Jack Berke, Marvin Blier, Norman Bornstein, Philip Chudnofsky, Irving Dobbs, Rein Kartna, Paul Mineo,  S. Jonah Pressman, Shira Schwartz, Jonathan Siegal, Allan Soberman, and Arnie Zweig..

A dramatic comedy about love, friendship and the supernatural that will bring you laughter and tears.

In an old inner-city synagogue, a group of old friends meet for their regular minyan on a winter morning. They are not all devout; one is a comic atheist who says he only comes to keep warm, and another is a young agnostic lawyer brought in from the street to complete the required quorum of ten men. It all changes when one of the men brings his granddaughter, who he believes is possessed by a spirit, a dybbuk. While the men try to arrange for an exorcism, their own true beliefs, life stories and problems come to the forefront, culminating in a surprising ending.

 

"An enchanting play… thoroughly original.... comic dialogue." N.Y. Times

 

 

2004-2005

THE CHOSEN

The Chosen has been a great success, running from November 27 to December 12, 2004. At the Leah Posluns Studio Theatre, 4588 Bathurst St, Toronto.  Look at the reviews

,                                                                                              

 Herb Goldstein as Reb Saunders, Benjamin Blais as Danny and, Neil Steen as Young Reuven at TEATRON’s latest production of THE CHOSEN.

Photo: John Patric Price

Herb Goldstein as Reb Saunders, Neil Steen as Young Reuven at TEATRON’s latest production of THE CHOSEN.

Photo: John Patric Price

 

The Sisters Rosensweig

by

Wendy Wasserstein

March 10 to 19, 2005, at the Fairview Library in association with Amicus Productions.

Three very different sisters get together for the eldest’s 54th birthday. Unexpected romance, recriminations, reconciliations and acceptance occur in this hilarious and thought provoking comedy.

 

The Sisters Rosensweig review

 

 

2003-2004

THIS NIGHT

Hamilton ON 2003

                                               

Berkeley Theatre 2004

 

 

 

 

Photos by Gabriel Cropley

 

 

 

 

This Night

by Robert Majzels   

 

Winner of the Canadian Jewish Playwrighting Competition and the Dorothy Silver Awards (Cleveland Ohio, USA), the play This Night takes place in the home of the Hellmans over a single night. David Hellman, after years of failed struggle as a political and union activist, has come home in defeat and humiliation. His older brother Benny, who stayed home and dedicated himself to building a successful business, is all that remains of the family. Although it is David's first night back in the family home, the two brothers' rapidly conflict over their opposing visions. When the spirit of their dead father is raised, Benny and David engage in a no-holds-barred battle over the truth of his life. They cannot even agree on the facts, and the audience is confronted with very different enactments of the past. During this night, the Hellmans' common Jewish heritage becomes the site of a struggle for meaning. Which brother has been true to their father's experience as a survivor of the Holocaust? Which has betrayed the legacy?

In This Night, past and present conflate, history and imagination are blurred. On one level, this play explores the dilemma of the children of the Holocaust, saddled with a memory they can never entirely call their own. It is also a call to make the past serve in our struggle to survive the present, and, perhaps even to forge a future.

“This Night is not just about the dilemma of Jewish children of the Holocaust,” says Robert Majzels, himself the son of survivors. “We are all survivors of the Holocaust. What happened to the twentieth century, the failure of Western civilization, is a legacy we have to contend with. And yet, on a day to day level, we go ahead with our lives, making decisions based on our immediate needs, whether material or psychological.”

Majzels’ play takes as a given the fact that the most advanced bastion of Western civilization turned into a nation of mass murderers. There are no Gestapo torturers, no cruel German guards in his play. He is more interested in how the victims behaved toward each other, and how the survivors can go on living after the event. “After more than half a century,” says Majzels, “it’s no longer enough to say ‘Never forget so that it should never happen again.’ We need to think and talk about what exactly we are supposed to remember. We have to make the problem actual and real. Imagine if our lives were in fact the dream of a prisoner still in that concentration camp.”

This Night is an attempt to return the events of the Holocaust to the level of a mystery of biblical proportions. As in the ancient texts of the Talmud, Majzels presents a dialogue of differing possibilities, a relentless search for the truth in the knowledge of the impossibility of ever entirely attaining that goal. That he succeeds in doing this with dramatic tension and even occasional doses of humour constitutes a major achievement.

PRODUCTION HISTORY – World Premier

TEATRON first presented two dramatic readings of This Night in the summer of 2002 and a workshop production of the play in the spring of 2003 at the Theatre Aquarius Studio in Hamilton: directed and designed by Ari Weisberg, stage-managed by Gabriel Cropley and featured Gary Graham as Benny, Michael Posthumus as David and Irving Dobbs as Hellman.

 

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Updated March 13, 2008