Calendar

We invite you to join us on Friday, Dec. 30, to welcome Shabbat, spread the light of the Chanukah candles, and share our feelings, fears, and hopes for the difficult times we are facing as a country. For those of us who came together on the Sunday after the election, it was a powerful expression of community, and there have been requests to identify some next steps. It continues to feel premature to launch a specific action plan. Instead, it seems more appropriate to gather in community, listen to how we are doing, and continue conversations about our hopes and fears about areas such as immigrants and refugees, poverty and homelessness, climate change, equity, and gun control.

We will begin by lighting the Chanukah and Shabbat candles, sing some songs, and then spend our time talking and listening. There will not be a formal Friday night service.

Please RSVP here.

IMAGE: “Shylock and Jessica” by Maurice Gottlieb (1876). A Maiden of Venice will be performed Aug. 6.

Portland Shakespeare Project and Proscenium Journal, in association with Artists Repertory Theatre, present the third annual Proscenium Live Festival of New Work. All performances are free and begin at 7:30pm on Artists Rep’s Alder Stage.

The 2017 festival will offer new plays each night featuring five outstanding playwrights. Full-length plays will be presented on Friday, Aug. 4 and Saturday, Aug. 5; three short plays commissioned by Portland Shakes and Proscenium Journal will be offered on Sunday, Aug. 6.

The Sunday performance will begin with “A Maiden of Venice,” an adaptation of Shakespeare’s most controversial play, told from the point of view of the Shylock’s daughter, Jessica.

The three-night festival features new plays written by award-winning playwrights Steve Rathje, C.S. Whitcomb, Aleks Merilo, Susan Mach and Patrick Wohlmut and are performed in a staged reading format featuring more than a dozen of Portland’s most talented actors on Artists Rep’s Alder Stage.

SCHEDULE

Aug. 4, 7:30pm: Artists Repertory Theatre’s Table|Room|Stage Oregon Play Prize Winner “Signs” by Steve Rathje; Directed by Michael Mendelson.

“Signs” is a surrealistic comedy about love, purpose and the little things that seem to matter so much to us. April reads horoscopes. Lydia writes horoscopes. April reads them devoutly, using them to guide her life choices. Lydia just makes them up, using the money she makes from them to support herself while she completes her novel. When April comes in contact with Lydia, the all-too-familiar force who has been transcribing April’s fate through her horoscopes all along, the story turns upside down.

Steve’s recent play Signs is winner of the $10,000 Oregon New Play Prize and is being developed and produced at Artists Repertory Theatre. ”Signs” was also a finalist for the National Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference.

Aug. 5, 7:30 pm: “Santos” by C.S. Whitcomb; Directed by Michael Mendelson

“Santos” is a new play set in Pasadena, California, circa 1968.  Rafael Santos, in his heart, is Don Quixote, but in the real world is just trying to get cast as a bandito bit player while teaching high school drama and keeping his family together.  A comedy with a side of tango.

Aug. 6, 7:30 pm: Three new plays, commissioned by Portland Shakes and Proscenium Journal.

“A Maiden of Venice” by Aleks Merilo, directed by Josh Rippy: In the walled Jewish Ghetto of Venice, a girl comes of age with only her money-lender father to guide her. When her father lashes back at men who have persecuted him, she is forced to choose between love, faith, and the debts we owe to family. An adaptation of Shakespeare’s most controversial play, it is told from the point of view of the Shylock’s daughter, Jessica.

“Coyote Play” by Susan Mach, Directed by Josh Rippy: “Coyote Play” (working title) is a contemporary re-imagining of the French-Romanian playwright Eugene Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros,” an absurdist piece which examines the normalization of Fascism.

“Patchwork Dreams” by Patrick Wohlmut, Directed by Brenda Hubbard: Penny is a Patchwork: an automated, obedient servant created from the bodies of deceased people. But when an accident results in the development of consciousness, Penny becomes something much more complex, problematic and potentially terrifying – not just to others, but to herself.

The festival is supported in part by an Ozy Genius Award, awarded to Steve Rathje by Ozy Media, and by Portland Shakespeare Project.

Portland Shakes is a nonprofit theatre company in residence at Artists Repertory Theatre dedicated to educating, enriching and entertaining audiences by producing classical works and contemporary works associated with classical material. Since its founding in 2010 by Michael Mendelson and Karen Rathje, more than 4,500 people have enjoyed the company’s productions of William Shakespeare’s As You Like It, King Lear, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, Twelfth Night and The Turn of the Screw, as well as a many audience enrichment and education events. More information at portlandshakes.org.

Proscenium is the first free literary journal dedicated to publishing plays. Proscenium publications are free of charge and readily accessible online, allowing playwrights to share their work with a large, web-based audience. Proscenium Journal‘s mission is to support emerging playwrights, make new plays easier to discover, and make theatre easily accessible to new and wider audiences. Proscenium Journal: Supporting playwrights. Encouraging discovery. Making theatre accessible. More information at prosceniumjournal.com.

Event page     |   Download Full Event Flyer

What: A screening of the restored silent film “Hungry Hearts” (1922) preceded by a reception with a choice of three parallel 20-min lectures. Q&A with the composer, David Spear, to follow.
When: Sunday, November 5, 2017 | 5:30pm to 9:30pm
Where: Lincoln Recital Hall (LH 75) | Pocket Lectures in LH 75, LH 21, and LH 37
Cost: Free and open to the public. RSVP requested, but not required.
Contact: Stacey Johnston | judaicst@pdx.edu | 503-725-8449

Join the Harold Schnitzer Family Program in Judaic Studies for the Portland premiere of the recently restored and rescored silent film “Hungry Hearts” (1922), filmed on location on New York’s Lower East Side. Based on the short stories of Anzia Yezierska, one of the first immigrant authors to write about American Jewish women for a mainstream audience, the film focuses on the members of the Levin family who emigrate from Eastern Europe to New York City and captures the hopes and hardships of Jewish immigrants in the New World.

The National Center for Jewish Film at Brandeis restored Goldwyn’s original print, and with generous support from the Casden Institute, a new score was composed and produced by David Spear in collaboration with his students from the USC Thornton School of Music. The new score for “Hungry Hearts” premiered at the 2007 New York Jewish Film Festival in Lincoln Center.

The event will begin at 5:30pm with a “Feast for the Senses and the Mind.” You are invited to sample hors d’oeuvres alongside three “pocket lectures” (20 minutes each) on various aspects of the film’s cultural and historical context. The film will begin at 7:00pm and will be followed by a conversation and Q&A with the lead composer, David Spear, about the process of scoring a historic silent film and breathing new life into “old art”. (Full Schedule Below)

• 5:30 pm      Welcome Reception with Food
  
• 6:00 pm      Choose your own mini-lecture!
  • LH 75 – Marat Grinberg, Reed College
    • “At the Intersection of Screen and Text: American Jewish Culture Before the War”
  • LH 37 – Joseph Butwin, University of Washington
    • “Exile and Return: Anzia Yezierska Finds her Vocation”
  • LH 21 – Amy Borden, PSU School of Film
    
    • “Immigration and Nativism in New York’s Nickelodeon’s”
• 7:00 pm      Hungry Hearts Film Screening
• 8:45 pm      Q&A with David Spear
  • Soundtrack Producer & 2017 Artist-in-Residence

This is the first half of the 2017 Levy Event, which focuses on the nexus between East European Jewish immigrants to the U.S. and twentieth-century American film and music. For information about the second half of the 2017 Levy Event, visit the event page.

This event is sponsored by the Harold Schnitzer Family Program in Judaic Studies thanks to the generous support of Larry Levy and Pamela Lindholm-Levy. Cosponsored by the PSU School of Music + Theater and the Northwest Film Center.

LeRonn Brooks, an assistant professor of African and African American Studies at Lehman College of the City University of New York, will deliver an illustrated lecture on the theme of social justice in modern and contemporary art on Sept. 29 at 5 pm. Admission  is complementary.

The lecture is in conjunction with the exhibit “Witness: Themes of Social Justice in Contemporary Printmaking and Photography from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation.” The exhibit is up Sept. 15 through Dec. 20 in the Melvin Henderson-Rubio Gallery and the Maribeth Collins Lobby of the The Hallie Ford Museum of Art in Salem.

Drawn from one of the legendary contemporary print collections in the United States, “Witness” explores issues of race, identity and social justice in contemporary printmaking and photography. The exhibition has been organized by Portland art historian and scholar Elizabeth Bilyeu and explores four thematic sections: Stories and Histories, Pressures of Pop Culture, Challenging Expectations of Place and Unconventional Portraits. The exhibition features 82 prints by 40 nationally and internationally recognized artists, including Enrique Chagoya, Lalla Essaydi, Mildred Howard, Hung Liu, Nicola Lopez, Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooka), Roger Shimomura, Kara Walker and Marie Watt (Seneca).

Kol Shabbat – Voice of Shabbat

Friday, March 20,  7:15pm

Friday, April 17, 7:15pm

A lay-led, voices-only Erev Shabbat Service. All ages and stages welcome.

Questions?  Please contact Naomi Leavitt: naomileavitt@gmail.com

Kol Shabbat – Voice of Shabbat

Friday, March 20,  7:15pm

Friday, April 17, 7:15pm

A lay-led, voices-only Erev Shabbat Service. All ages and stages welcome.

Questions?  Please contact Naomi Leavitt: naomileavitt@gmail.com