BASHEVIS'S DEMONS To Be Presented At Out of the Box Theatre

BASHEVIS'S DEMONS, which debuted in Stockholm in December 2023, will make its official Off-Broadway bow at Out of the Box Theatre, 154 Christopher Street (between Greenwich & Washington Streets), with performances beginning December 18th and running through January 5th.

BASHEVIS'S DEMONS comprises three short stories by legendary Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer and will be presented Off-Broadway direct from engagements in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro.

The tales featured in BASHEVIS'S DEMONS serve up demons, saints, sinners, hope, despair, and at least two chickens, all in Isaac Bashevis Singer's original Yiddish with full English supertitles projected overhead. In The Mirror, a young woman – ignored by her husband the traveling salesman – steps through a mirror into the world of demons, where she can at last be the center of attention. In The Last Demon, a Jewish demon fails to bring down a shtetl rabbi. Exiled to the small town as Satan's punishment, he witnesses the destruction of the Jewish community, including his nemesis the rabbi, by forces far crueler than his own and remains stuck there for eternity with nothing but the Yiddish word to console him. Lastly, in Kukeriku (yes, that's how a c*ckcrows in Yiddish!), we hear a rooster's tale of hope on the eve of a great slaughter.

Starring Shane Baker and Miryem-Khaye Seigel, BASHEVIS'S DEMONS is directed by Moshe Yassur with Beate Hein Bennett.

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1903 – 1991) was a Polish-born Jewish-American author of short stories, novels, essays, cultural criticism, memoirs, plays, and stories for children. His career spanned nearly seven decades of literary production, writing in Yiddish and translating his work into English with collaborators and editors. Singer published widely during his lifetime, including nearly 60 stories in The New Yorker, and received numerous awards and prizes, including two Newberry Honor Book Awards, two National Book Awards, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978. Singer was also an accomplished playwright and his plays, including Yentl; Enemies, A Love Story; Gimpel the Fool; Shlemiel the First; Teibele and Her Demon; and Zlateh the Goat were all adapted by Singer from his own fiction. Known for works that portrayed 19th century Polish Jewry, modern Jewish life before and after the Second World War, as well as supernatural tales that combined Jewish mysticism with demonology, Singer was a master storyteller whose sights were set squarely on the tension between human nature and the human spirit. 

 

Shane Baker appeared Off-Broadway in Tevye Served Raw, Everett Quinton's staging of Charles Ludlam's Conquest of the Universe or When Queens Collide, in his solo show The Big Bupkis! A Complete Gentile's Guide to Yiddish Vaudeville, God of Vengeance, The Adventures of Hershele Ostropolyer, The Megile of Itzik Manger, and in his own Yiddish translation of Beckett's Waiting for Godot for the play's Yiddish world premiere, two Off-Broadway runs, and tours to Stockholm, Paris and Enniskillen, Ireland. The New Yorker said of his translation that “Beckett's play may finally have found its mother tongue.” Miryem-Khaye Seigel is a Yiddish singer, songwriter, actor, recording artist, and scholar in Yiddish music and culture who “exemplifies the attempt to bring a centuries-old language and culture into the contemporary world” (The New York Times). She has performed internationally and released her first CD of original and adapted songs Toyznt tamen = A thousand flavors in 2015. Miryem-Khaye is co-editor (with Alyssa Quint) of Women on the Yiddish Stage and a member of the Digital Yiddish Theatre Project.

A veteran of both the Yiddish and modern theatre, director Moshe Yassur, who was born in Iassy, Romania (the cradle of the Yiddish theatre), worked for several years with Jean-Marie Serreau at the Théatre de Babylone in Paris, taking part often as assistant director in several first productions of Beckett and Ionesco. In New York Yassur was a protege of Woody King Jr., directing at the New Federal Theatre, and has more recently helmed acclaimed Yiddish productions of Death of a Salesman and Waiting for Godot. Beate Hein Bennett holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and served as Production Dramaturg and designer for the Yiddish Waiting for Godot and Death of a Salesman.

Performances of BASHEVIS'S DEMONS will be Tuesday through Saturday evenings at 7:30 pm, and Sundays at 2:30 pm. Tickets are $50 and are available through www.congressforjewishculture.org.

BASHEVIS'S DEMONS will be presented by the Congress for Jewish Culture in association with ChaShaMa and Out of the Box Theatrics. Founded in 1948, the Congress for Jewish Culture is a secular organization based in New York City dedicated to enriching Yiddish culture worldwide.