Three Yiddish plays about demons and saints is opening off-Broadway
Shane Baker stars in this production based on the stories of Nobel prize-winning author I. B. Singer
Shane Baker (right) and Miryem-Khaye Seigel in a production of the play in Stockholm, 2023 Photo by Magnus Swärd
By Forverts Staff December 4, 2024
A selection of three short plays serving up demons, saints and sinners is premiering off-Broadway this month.
The show, Bashevis’s Demons, is based on several short stories by Nobel prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer. It stars Yiddish actor and translator Shane Baker and singer-songwriter Miryem-Khaye Seigel, under the direction of Moshe Yassur, with Beate Hein Bennett.
The play is in Yiddish with English supertitles throughout the performance.
Bashevis’s Demons had its debut in Stockholm in December 2023 and has since been performed in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro. It will make its official Off-Broadway bow on Dec. 18 at Out of the Box Theatre in Manhattan, with performances beginning December 18th and running through January 5th.
Like much of Bashevis’s work, demons play a crucial role in this production. In one story, “The Mirror,” a young woman — who feels ignored by her husband, a traveling salesman — steps through a mirror into the world of evil spirits, hoping that at least there she could be the center of attention. In “The Last Demon,” a Jewish devil attempts to bring down his nemesis, a righteous rabbi.
Shane Baker has appeared in a number of theatrical productions, most notably his own Yiddish translation of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Referring to the Yiddish version of the play, a reviewer at The New Yorker stated that “Beckett’s play may finally have found its mother tongue.”
Miryem-Khaye Seigel is a Yiddish singer, songwriter and scholar in Yiddish culture who has performed internationally and is co-editor of the book Women on the Yiddish Stage and a member of the Digital Yiddish Theatre Project.
The production runs from Dec. 18 till Jan. 5. Click here to reserve tickets.
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