2011-2012 SEASON

2012 MINNEAPOLIS JEWISH HUMOR FESTIVAL
January 14–28, 2012

Mark your calendars for our 3rd annual Minneapolis Jewish Humor Festival. Local and nationally known stand-up comedians join together with theatre and music performance, film, visual art, and workshops to celebrate the Jewish contribution to the world of humor. Opening night, January 14, features hysterical comedian and musician, Julie Goldman. Other featured performers include local star writer/performer, Amy Salloway, our favorite [inappropriate] Rabbi Sim Glaser, NYC-based stand-up comedian, Dave Goldstein, and more! The full schedule will be available in December – Reserve your tickets today by calling 952-381-3499.

Discovering the Jewish Tango
Mandrágora Tango Lecture & Concert

Mandrágora Tango is a vibrant collective of tango musicians based in Minneapolis, dedicated to preserving the nearly-lost musical forms of tango and translating them for today’s listeners and dancers. Tango music defies categorization, living somewhere between classical, jazz and world beat, with Jewish roots that not many know about. Mandrágora creates music that is fresh, engaging, danceable and nostalgic. Please join us for a night of dancing, learning, and fabulous music. Ticket includes light refreshments.

Kavanessence!

Escape the cold outside with the heat of Kavenessence! Kavanessence is a sparkling musical alliance featuring Venezuelan vocalist and our own JC Zumba instructor, Vanessa Dembo, and American musician/vocalist and JC Musical Minyan director, Mark Bloom. Kavanessence offers a tremendous diversity of styles, from Israeli and Yiddish favorites, to Venezuelan pop and jazz, to European, Latin and American songbook standards. Song lyrics are presented in bilingual fashion, energized by innovative rhythms and harmonies.

The Diary of Anne Frank
By Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett
Newly adapted by Wendy Kesselman
Directed by Anya Kremenetsky

In this transcendently powerful new adaptation by Wendy Kesselman, Anne Frank emerges from history a living, lyrical, intensely gifted young girl, who confronts her rapidly changing life and the increasing horror of her time with astonishing honesty, wit, and determination. An impassioned drama about the lives of eight people hiding from the Nazis in a concealed storage attic, The Diary of Anne Frank captures the claustrophobic realities of their daily existence—their fear, their hope, their laughter, their grief. Each day of these two dark years, Anne’s voice shines through: “When I write I shake off all my cares. But I want to achieve more than that. I want to be useful and bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death!”

Lori Cahan-Simon is a singer/folkorist and musical ethnographer from Cleveland and has been singing professionally since the age of 14.
Lori has performed children’s material, jingles, comedy, and Rock, R&B, Jazz, and Klezmer styles throughout the country and the world. She is also a vocalist with the Workmen’s Circle Klezmer Orchestra. Music from her Passover album “Songs My Bubble Should Have Taught Me” is used in the Menscher Brothers film “Seder!” She has taught Yiddish Culture and Language in Cleveland for the performing and culinary arts for the last decade.

2008/2009
SEASON