When I was cast as the Jewish mother in The Finkelsteins are Coming to Dinner, I did a little swallow. Me. Jewish. Mother. Since I had spent so much of my time being unJewish it was a good excuse to take a deeper, more personal look at this whole Jewish thing again. And since the other cast members were not Jewish I ended up divulging more about being Jewish, and Judaism, then I even knew I remembered. Some of it was lovely, some of it made me feel uneasy and some of it was quite funny. It was particularly close to the bone when my own mother died while we were rehearsing and I ended up participating in the rituals I had been speaking about.
One would have thought that that was it really, but I was also working on another project, with a delicious, now Joburg based actress, Chantal Stanfield. Chantal approached me to direct her upcoming one woman show, From Koe’siestes to Kneidlach, the journey into marriage of a brownish coloured girl from Cape Town to a Jew-ish boy from Joburg.
We had an amazing incubation session here, in Cape Town, where the ideas, stories and themes emerged, and Chantal has written a warm, funny, fabulous and absurd look at our cultural differences and similarities.
And, just like that, it is almost time to do the show. We will be opening in Jozi on 28 February at my favourite Auto & General Theatre on the Square, and bookings will soon be open. This is me, announcing the show, but I will let you know more about it as our journey grows and continues. Otherwise, leave comments, questions and recipe suggestions below.
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