Joanna was chosen to perform an excerpt of Total Verrückt! at the Association of Jewish Theatre International Conference in Los Angeles on February 5, 2012 at the Santa Monica Playhouse.
If you are in the LA area and would like to attend the performance, please contact Joanna for more information.
Joanna Caplan blends movement and text in a striking tribute to Jews in the Westerbork concentration camp during WW2, where numerous cabaret performers were interned before their deaths. After the performance, Caplan reemerges for a discussion and requests audience feedback. The work already makes a strong emotional impact; future incarnations hold much promise.
NNN (Debbie Fein-Goldbach)
Ted Fox interviews Joanna Caplan and Matthew Glassman (Co-Creator, Core actor and Co-Director of Double Edge Theatre) about Total Verrückt!, the creative process and Double Edge Theatre.
Created by Joanna Caplan
Developed in association with Double Edge Theatre Residency Program
Have you heard that old story about the German diseuse? The one where she wanders around the camp singing her arias in order to try to escape the gas chamber? Total Verrückt! tells her story with inspiration from the work of the Jewish Dutch poet Etty Hillesum, Jewish German cabaret stars Max Erlich, Willy Rosen and Dora Gerson. Taking its name from the 1944 production performed by inmates from Westerbork transit camp, Total Verrückt! translates as “completely crazy”. In this ghostly cabaret, watch this imprisoned actress sing and dance to prove that she exists.
Photo Jon Bremner
Joanna Caplan has been developing Total Verrückt! over the past seven months whilst based at Double Edge Theatre’s Farm Center, in Ashfield Massachusetts. Her process combines an exploration of Double Edge’s movement-based improvisation methodology as well as a journey into the ancestral memory of her cultural heritage and rich legacy of Jewish artists. Total Verrückt! weaves together Jewish myth and memory, asking questions about the necessity of art as a means of survival and an act of resistance.
Performances:
The Annex Theatre - 730 Bathurst Street
Fri., July 8 - 8:45pm - 9:45pm
Sat., July 9 - 3:30pm - 4:30pm Sun., July 10 - 10:30pm - 11:30pm Tues., July 12 - 3:00pm - 4:00pm
Wed., July 13 - 1:45pm - 2:45pm
Thurs., July 14 - 7:30pm - 8:30pm
Sat., July 16 - 9:45pm - 10:45pm
Tickets are $10, available online: www.fringetoronto.com , by phone 416.966.1062 or in person at the Fringe Box Office l(581 Bloor St. West)
For media information please contact:
XOPS PR - Piera Savage - 647-880-1091 piera@xops.ca
Fringe Publicity - Heather Ervin - 416-966-1062 media@fringetoronto.com
The beginning of spring marks the end of winter. It is a time of renewal, re-birth, growth and transformation. In Ashfield, the change of seasons is palpable. Living in the country is clear and spacious and I have access to things I wouldn’t have in the city.
As I shake off the winter frost I shake off old patterns.
Let this spring be transformative. Let negative habits melt away. Let me find the strength and courage to be present in my life, my work and in my relationships and to practice loving-kindness with myself and with others.
At Double Edge we Train, daily. Training is often highly physical and involves working with music, voice, breath, costumes, objects and design elements, among other things.
What is Training to me, today?
A Practice that enables me to tap into my potential and explode my “limitations”.
A Practice that propels me into a creative space, fueled by imagination.
A Practice that takes me out of the daily and into the immediate, the imaginary; a world of desire and impulse and primal urges.
A Practice that is visceral, not intellectual.
A time to experience, rather than think.
A Search
A Journey
A Question
A way for me to go beyond myself
A way to dialogue with others, objects, the space, the music and myself.
Oh Paul, you’re such a mensch.
Edward Bond is a radical and controversial English playwright, theatre director, theorist, poet. The production of his play Saved (1965) is considered to be responsible for abolishing theatre censorship in the UK.
This is where I am going on Monday. I will live at The Farm until the beginning of July and then go back to Toronto to perform my show at the Fringe. Double Edge is a magical place. I always feel most alive when I am there. Think heightened everything.
I am an actress and theatre artist currently living in residence at Double Edge Theatre - The Farm - in Ashfield, Massachusetts.
