32 July 4 • 2019
jn
theater
arts&life
C
anadian writer Hannah
Moscovitch transplants her
roots — with modifications —
for theater audiences.
This season at the Shaw Festival in
Ontario, her Eastern European heri-
tage, passed down through her father,
comes across in The Russian Play. A
lunchtime one-act that tells the story
of a 1920s flower girl falling
in love with a gravedigger,
the production has updated
sequences.
Moscovitch, while explor-
ing the thrills and dangers
of love, has invented a way
to tell timely political jokes
as the production continues
through Oct. 12.
“The play has tropes and
stereotypes, and those have
changed dramatically in the
last 10 or 15 years,
” says the
playwright, who also devotes
her creativity to television
scripts and opera librettos.
“There’
s a whole new
relationship that America
has with Russia, so I updat-
ed some of the references.
Sonya, the flower girl, exists
in the [past] but talks to the
audience as though she’
s in
the modern era.
“If I were to talk about
the Jewish sensibility of the
piece, I would say that it’
s
funny. I like to make jokes
about dark topics. Tragedy and come-
dy have a mix in life.
”
A special bonus in the playwright’
s
first experience with the Shaw Festival
is working with director Diana
Donnelly, who, like Moscovitch, has
Romanian Jewish ancestry. The two
are close friends.
“I met Diana when we were
attending the National Theatre
School of Canada,” says the play-
wright, entering her 40s. “We grew
up as artists together, and she spent
most of her career as a performer at
Shaw. She performed in one of my
first plays, East of Berlin [about the
life of a Nazi war criminal’
s son].”
Although starting college with
the idea of becoming an actress,
Moscovitch soon found a better fit
with writing. She majored in English
at the University of Toronto before
graduating from the National Theatre
School.
“I’
ve recently done projects very
explicitly about Judaism,
” says
Moscovitch, who had a bat mitzvah,
went on a March of the Living trip and
spent time on a kibbutz when she was
18. “I did Old Stock: A Refugee Love
Story about my grandparents coming
to Canada as refugees from Romania
in 1908.
”
A very new initiative is The Secret
Life of a Mother.
“It’
s a confessional piece
about pregnancy, miscar-
riage, labor and parenting,”
she says. “It’
s my story, the
most experimental piece
I’
ve done, and I talk about
being Jewish quite a bit.
One of the more moving
parts of doing all this was
that my dear friend Maev
Beaty plays me.
“Maev is mostly at
Stratford, but she took a
break to play me. I talk about
her in the show in the third
person, and it forces her
to reveal some of her own
secrets. There’
s a part where
Elijah, my son, has just been
born, and I sing the ‘
Shema’
to him.
“The piece went out right
after the synagogue shoot-
ings, and that scene was
very moving. It was an odd
concurrence of events, and I
could hear people crying.
”
Moscovitch, who lives
in Halifax, is married to Christian
Barry, a theater artistic director. Both
are hockey fans and have traveled to
Detroit for games. They hope to return
when their 4-year-old son is a little
older.
“Halifax has about 1,000 Jews, and I
go to a Shabbos event every month or
two with young Jewish families,
” she
says. “There’
s nothing like having a son
named Elijah to celebrate Passover.
”
As Moscovitch works on upcom-
ing projects, including TV shows in
development since writing episodes
of the spy series X Company, she can
take inspiration from awards — the
Windham-Campbell Prize presented
by Yale, Gascon-Thomas Prize for
Revitalizing Theatre and Toronto
Theatre Critics Award for Best
Canadian Play.
“I’
m used to my projects being at
new works theaters,
” she says, “so it’
s
quite beautiful having my work put on
beside George Bernard Shaw’
s.
” ■
Shaw
Festival
playwright
Hannah
Moscovitch
uses a mix
of humor
and tragedy.
The
Russian
Play
SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Shaw Festival Lineup
These plays have been scheduled for this
year’
s Shaw Festival, which runs through
Dec. 22 in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.
• The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis,
adapted for the stage by Anne Chatterton.
A talking horse rescues a boy.
• Brigadoon, book and lyrics by Alan
J. Lerner, music by Frederick Loewe. Two
hunting buddies get lost in a land that aris-
es once every 100 years.
• The Ladykillers by Graham Lineham.
A senior encounters a group of disguised
criminals.
• Man and Superman and Don Juan in
Hell by George Bernard Shaw. Romance
ensues with a dream sequence often per-
formed separately.
• The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee
Williams. A memory play about a mother
and her grown son and daughter.
• Sex by Mae West. A prostitute looks for
a better life.
• Victory by Howard Barker. A woman
risks her dignity.
• Rope by Patrick Hamilton. College stu-
dents commit murder.
• Getting Married by George Bernard
Shaw. A wedding is called off.
• Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond
Rosland. A self-conscious swordsman falls
in love.
Hannah Moscovitch
ALEJANDRO SANTIAGO
Mike Nadajewski as Kostya and Gabriella Sundar Singh
as Sonya in The Russian Play
DAVID COOPER
details
The Russian Play
runs through Oct.
12 during the
Shaw Festival at
Niagara-on-the-
Lake, Ontario.
See sidebar for
complete play
listing. For infor-
mation, call (800)
511-7429 or go
to shawfest.com.