Current Season 2011-2012



WAY TO HEAVEN by Juan Mayorga

Translated by David Johnston

CANADIAN PREMIERE
October 26 - November 6, 2011, Berney Theatre
Directed by Michael Nathanson

Set and Costume Designer: Janelle Regalbuto
Lighting Designer: Larry Isacoff
Stage Manager: Carolyn Kutchyera

Assistant Director: Rachel Smith

FEATURING

Graham Ashmore

Gwendolyn Collins

Tom Keenan

Arne MacPherson

Jordan Pettle

Andraea Sartison

WITH

Becky Frohlinger

Bennett Garber

Raphael Hoult

Elliot Lazar

Noah Lieberman

William Pitch

Way To Heaven by award-winning Spanish playwright Juan Mayorga is inspired by the true story of the elaborate deception that took place at the Theresienstadt concentration camp, where the Nazis constructed a fake village to fool international inspectors and quell extermination rumors. 

Perception, the power of images, rhetoric and Theatre itself are among Mayorga's themes.  Also, perhaps most significantly, the play asks how much courage is required to take responsibility for what one sees.

"This spare, eloquent work has been a hit in Europe and South America... it's a powerful illustration of how theatrical artifice can be pressed into the service of atrocity." -  New York Times (Critics' Pick)

"A smart, riveting, and immensely powerful and important play."  - NYTheatre.com (Reviewers' Pick)

"A compelling, cunningly constructed play...shows us how good theatre can nail down the symbolic and immoral emptiness of bad." - The Independent (London)

TRIBEFEST: GENESIS

A Celebration of Theatre, Jewish Theatre and, yes, even Non-denominational Theatre.  All at The Berney Theatre. 

Week One:  

The Unauthorized Master Jewish Playwrights Jubilee as Improvised by

The National Theatre of the World.

Wednesday, January 25 @ 8 PM

Thursday, January 26@ 8 PM

Friday, January 27 @ 8 PM

Saturday, January 28@ 8 PM

Sunday, January 29 @ 8 PM

All tickets $12.

Week Two:  

Thursday, February 9 @ 8 PM

Panel Discussion  "What is Jewish Theatre?"

Moderated by WJT Artistic Producer, Michael Nathanson.  Panelists to be annoucned soon.

A Pay-What-You-Can Event

Friday, February 10 @ 7 PM

New Play Readings

The Rest is Commentary by Bruce Sarbit

Good Intentions by Ginny Collins

This event is free admission.

Saturday, February 11 @ 8 PM

"Neurotica"

An Evening of Short Plays based on the dual themes of Something Jewish and Somethings Eros.

Featuring pieces by Laurie Block, Per Brask, Theatre Incarnate, Krista Jackson and Tricia Cooper, One Trunk Collective, and Michael Nathanson.

A Pay-What-You-Can Event

ANGELS IN AMERICA: MILLENNIUM APPROACHES by Tony Kushner

March 21 - April 1, 2012 Berney Theatre
Directed by Christopher Brauer

FEATURING

Mariam Bernstein

Marina Stephenson Kerr

Tracy Michailidis

Ryan Miller

Nicholas Rice

Jamie Robinson

Michael Rubenfeld

Jeremy Walmsley

Winner of four Tony Awards including Best Play, the Pulitzer Prize in Drama, five Drama Desk Awards, and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award.  

Hailed by Newsweek as "one of the broadest, deepest, most searching...play(s) of our time."

Considered one of the greatest plays of the Twentieth Century.

The classic comes to WJT. 

Tony Kushner's epic plays bring together a young gay man with AIDS and his frightened, unfaithful lover; a closeted Mormon lawyer and his Valium-addicted wife; the infamous New York lawyer Roy Cohn; an African-American male nurse; a Mormon housewife from Utah; and a steel-winged, prophecy-bearing angel; as well as the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg, an ancient rabbi, the world's oldest living Bolshevik and a Reagan administration functionary, among many others -- all played by a company of eight actors.  Ranging from earth to heaven, from the political to the intimate to the visionary and supernatural, Angels in America is an epic exploration of love, justice, identity and theology, of the difficulty, terror and necessity of change.