Its been a while since a blog post, but better late than never!

The Book of Judith team has rode into Peterborough, Ontario to prepare for their two performance at The Market Hall this weekend (January 21st and 22nd).  Our dear friends at Public Energy are presenting us as part of their 2012 season!

This is the second stop on our Ontario tour.  Our first was in Kingston in November.

Next weekend we’re in Aurora at the Aurora Cultural Centre.

Its been incredible getting to spend time with new choirs, and the Peterborough B of J choir is INCREDIBLE.  The music sounds incredible and man oh man are they ever ready to rock the Hall.

Last night was our first rehearsal with the crew over here.  Take a look

For TICKET info, please go to the public energy website!

Hope to see you this weekend.

Love,

Michael (AKA: Matthew Goldberg)

Unfortunately, our performance in the UK have had to be cancelled due to unforeseen reasons of health. We are all fine, and health issues are on the mend, though we still had to sit this one out.

We are in talks about the 2012 DaDa Festival.

Stay tuned, as we are hard at work putting together an upcoming Ontario Tour.

With love and warm wishes for the upcoming cold season

xo

Michael

Hello.

It is the Tuesday after our workshop.

There are a number of things that I’ve wanted to communicate over the course of this time–because, in all honesty, the workshop was very HARD. Sarah and I burnt out half-way through, which left us with no choice but to work on fumes. The Friday before beginning our time in St.Catherines, Kazumi had to back out of the performance–which was very sad for us–but his prior commitment to a documentary he was working on had to take priority. We understood. Kazumi’s been a huge part of this workshop and The Book of Judith. He brings a lot of intelligence and experience into the room, not to mention generousity and he’s a great performer. But we trekked on … as we continue to.

The next day, Saturday, we presented the Choir with the latest draft (completed the evening before). We did a work-through in the space … which was hard. Very Hard. At the end of the work through, the choir, and everyone else (myself included) just wanted to get the hell out of there, back to Toronto–back to safety. Something was not right. Something was not fun.

1. Gywn 2. Lesley

1. Nick & Mariah 2. Frank

On the ride home, Sarah, Mariah, Wanda and I all spoke about the piece–trying to understand where the holes were. In the car, I started to look through the script … why was it so hard? Why was it not fun anymore?

And then I get a call from Judith Snow.

“Michael” she says. “I have a fever. I’m in bed sick. I don’t think I can come tomorrow”.

The next morning she confirms. Judith Snow cannot be in the workshop presentation.

Ok. Breath. Deep breaths. We’ll work this out. After all, its not the FIRST time Judith couldn’t make it.

And so, we had on our hands a new draft of the play that was NOT FUN, and we no longer had JUDITH SNOW. I looked over at Sarah, and she had her head in her hands. I could almost hear the moans coming from her brain/body. What the hell were we going to do.

“We’ll be okay. We always will.”

I give her a hug, and we determine that I’ll take a look at the script, and try and fix it.

1. Sarah 2. Michael & Mariah

I get in the house, and I stumble across an earlier quote that we used of Judith’s. Something like: “Now, the only thing left to do, is to figure out how to do the play without me”.

It was like she was speaking to me through my own play.

I will admit that I was also quite tired, and feeling sick and possibly a touch delusional. But whatever the excuse for this visitation, it seemed to do the trick.

I spent the next three hours writing a final draft that helped us find the play of the play. The choir went for being disdainful and aggressive to full-on-cheerleaders … for the play … for Judith Snow. Rocky Horris Picture Snow. The choir is the life-blood of the work … and they are also the representative for Judith Snow in her absence … and perhaps always have been. Judith tried to tell us, but we’ve noticed that we have a hard time always hearing Judith Snow. Surprise, Surprise. ARTLIFESHUTUP.

But, as she has before, as she has now, and as she will continue to … once again, the answer came from her.

The next day in St. Catherines, the Choir communed by around 2:00. We used the next three hours to work through the new draft. An hour to eat–and then the audience came.

And there it was. The play was back. It was not all there, of course, as I was still on book, and there’s still some work to be done on the script … but we’ve found the play and made it stronger.

And something happened at the end of the performance. Something very profound and more poignant than we could have ever expected. And it could not have happened any other way … we could not have planned it … though, it seems like we did … like John Locke (LOST) says, faith. faith. faith.

Those who know me, know i am not a man of faith … but those who also know me know that everything I do seems to be an attempt to find/contradict/embrace it.

It was possibly the most poignant experiences in the theatre of my life.

I’d like to tell you what it was. If you were there, you know. If you weren’t, we are going to keep it for ourselves … because we do not want to spoil it … and we hope it will happen again. It may not, but if it does, we hope you will not see it coming, as we hadn’t.

And so. There you go. The Book of Judith is alive once more. It continues to transform us, and audiences.

A few comments from the audience that night were:

“It speaks to the soul and to what is really important in this life.”

“Absolutely amazing!”

“Beautiful, beautiful program!”

I’m assuming that Matthew will have his script memorized – very important (this one made me laugh)

The show continues to be as strange, confusing, frustrating, moving, beautiful and exciting. In just over a months time, we take it to the U.K. to continue on.

What happens next is a mystery.

But we are sure of one thing.

It will always be a surprise.

With love and tenderness.

Michael.

1. Andrew 2. Judith

1. Irena 2. Emily

Shots during the performance taken by Jason Cadieux (ECT).

Ladies and Gentleman, we are thrilled to announce that the Book of Judith has begun its second life. We have received two excellent pieces of news. The first was an invite from the DaDaFest in the U.K. We will be performing the show twice. Once in Glasgow on Wednesday, November 17th at the Hamilton Townhouse and on Sunday, November 21st at the Sefton Palm House in Liverpool.

We’ve also received a grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation for an Ontario Tour of the show–and will be doing a workshop presentation of the newest incarnation of The Book of Judith on Sunday, October 3rd in St.Catherines, Ontario at the Market Square start at 6:00 (see press release below)

Sarah Garton Stanley and I recently travelled to London, England, where we joined forces with Alex Bulmer and did three days of script workshop together in preparation for a continued workshop back in Toronto.

We’ve been workshopping the piece with some invited members of the original choir back to help us in this next step, as well as Composer, Andrew Penner and Musical Director, Nick Carpenter (from Montreal!) and Wanda Fitzgerald stepping into the role of Pippa (formerly Alex) for this workshop. We’re all very excited, and the show has gotten even stronger than it was before…. with some changes to the music, and some changes in the Book!

left to right: Andrew, Steve, Frank, Mark, Kazumi, Emily

left to right: Frank, Mark, Kazumi, Emily, Gwyn, Irena

left to right: Gwyn, Irena, Lesley, Erin, Nick

Stay tuned for more info as it comes our and your way … because more is coming … oh yes oh yes.

With Love,
Michael

***

For Immediate Release: September 20, 2010
For more info contact: jason@ectheatre.ca

The Self Conscious Theatre Company, in association with The Theatre Centre and The Essential Collective Theatre present a workshop presentation of: THE BOOK OF JUDITH

September 20, 2010 – After a sold-out two-week run in downtown Toronto in May 2009, the acclaimed production, The Book of Judith, is preparing an upcoming tour of Ontario and the U.K. Self Conscious Theatre Company, in association with The Theatre Centre and Essential Collective Theatre, are pleased to present a workshop presentation of this very exciting piece of theatre.

“This is not the world I would have designed” – Judith Snow

Performed in St. Catharines’ Market Square, The Book of Judith, created by Michael Rubenfeld and Sarah Garton Stanley, is a musical play about a self-annointed preacher man who is passionately driven to change the lives of others. After a chance meeting with a quadriplegic woman named Judith Snow, theatre artist Matthew Goldberg (Michael Rubenfeld) believes he has “seen the light”. With the help of his director, Shauna Coupland (Sarah Garton Stanley), and her best friend, disabled artist, Pippa McLaren (Wanda Fitzgerald), Matthew has managed to coral a fully integrated group of choristers with and without disability, to help him tell, for the first time, his inspirational, maniacal and deeply suspect tale of Judith Snow. The Book of Judith takes us from innocence to ignorance and through to the other side – a truer place of transformation.

The Book of Judith
Created by Michael Rubenfeld and Sarah Garton Stanley
Directed by Sarah Garton Stanley
Music Composed by Andrew Penner
Musical Direction by Nick Carpenter
Performed by Michael Rubenfeld, Sarah Garton Stanley, Wanda Fitzgerald, The Book of Judith Choir (Gwyneth Baillie, Erin Brandenburg, Mark Brose, Lesley Dowey, Frank G. Hull, Irena Kagansky, Emily Scheer, Steve Schwabl, and Kazumi Tsuruoka) and featuring Judith Snow.

Sunday, October 3rd. 6:00 pm
St. Catharines Market Square (corner of King & James)

For tickets: RSVP to jason@ectheatre.ca

* This is a FREE workshop presentation of the work.

reviewed by Paula Citron.

The Book of Judith
Theatre Centre, Absit Omen & Die In Debt
Written by Michael Rubenfeld (with Sarah G. Stanley)
Directed by Sarah G. Stanley
Starring Michael Rubenfeld (with choir)
At the tent on the CAMH grounds

Sadly, the run of The Book of Judith is over, but it was a fascinating theatrical experience. It took place in a tent on the grounds of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health so that it would be completely disabled-friendly. The format of the play was an old-fashioned revival camp meeting. Audiences were given missals which contained the prayers and the hymns composed by Andrew Penner. There was an on-stage choir of eleven mostly disabled singers.

Playwright, librettist and performer Michael Rubenfeld is one of Toronto’s most interesting men of theatre. The genesis of the play was Rubenfeld’s encounter with quadriplegic, activist and visual artist Judith Snow, and the initial starting point was, “How do you find a lover for a quadriplegic?”

The plot is basically the history of Rubenfeld writing the play with co-writer and director Sarah G. Stanley, but it is also much more than that. It is the story of a remarkable woman called Judith Snow told through wit, humour and passion.

Come and be healed one last time.

BIG TENT ON THE CAMH FRONT LAWN! ]]> http://www.bookofjudith.com/2009/05/31/one-show-left/feed/ 0 http://www.bookofjudith.com/2009/05/31/closed-and-opened/ http://www.bookofjudith.com/2009/05/31/closed-and-opened/#comments Sun, 31 May 2009 20:32:15 +0000 Michael http://www.bookofjudith.com/?p=462 We closed the show today to a sold out house and another standing ovation.

This has been the wildest ride of my life.

There has been a lot of encouragement for a tour, from many different sources, and and so we’re currently just wrapping our head around how to make this happen.

There are a great many people, especially within the disability community, who have been quite explicit about their feelings that everyone should see this play and that it needs to tour. This has been very encouraging. What works about this play, I think, is that it is not about disability at all. It is about me. It is about my relationship to a woman named Judith Snow who I saw at first as a quadriplegic, and then saw as Judith Snow, and now see as my friend who I love. Its that simple, but within that simplicity holds the sort of complexity we are faced whenever we meet anybody for the first time, and the hurdles we face whenever we try to move beyond assumption to get to something authentic with another human being. This is the story that my relationship to Judith was able to help me tell, and her quadriplegia was the key to unlocking questions that we don’t particularily like to ask … mainly : What is standing in the way of love?

The answer to that question usually has way more to do with ourselves, and what it is that we don’t see about ourselves.

And that was the play for me. My ignornance. My prejudice. My foolishness. My boundaries. My desire to move beyond myself to become a “better” self.

It is a real blessing that for many, it seems these things became also very personal.

So. Amazing, yes?

At the centre, perhaps, we really do all want the same things? Perhaps? Perhaps?

I think so.

Not everyone will agree with me. That’s fine. But hopefully, if you didn’t like the play, you at least REALLY HATED IT. I would be much happier about that. That was never the intent, of course, but if you HATE it, then perhaps we were doing something right in there.

I am proud that we were able to tell this story surrounding questions of love within the context of disability, and have it put me, a “non-disabled” person at the centre of the story. I thought we would piss more people off than we did. It is miraculous that it has been embraced as much as it has.

The houses were very good, though not as amazing as we had though based on the reaction to the play. We had a couple of reviewers who didn’t seem to understand the play, which was fine, though I do wonder what goes on in a reviewers mind when an audience gives a standing ovation to a piece that they do not like. I wonder if they ever question their own ability to grasp the work. Or, perhaps they think the audience is somehow below them or not as aware or doesn’t understand theatre the way they do. This is an interesting question, because the piece really is asking the audience to question their own relationship to their own ego … and of course, when one’s job is to publically flex their ego, and determine that their opinion is quite important, this piece would likely be quite complicated to connect to. I understood, for the first time, the complication in the role of being a reviewer. To enter into a show preparing to review the work already instantly seperates the them from the work, as how can one review a piece of work that is asking the audience to include themselves in it? In any case, I do feel compassion for the role of the reviewer, as it must be very complicated to exist in the context of always being feared rather than loved.

IT IS HARD TO LOVE.

It is also easy.

But to get to easy, it seems so important to recognize that it is equally very hard.

Thank-you to Sarah Stanley, for being as brilliant an artist as she is as compassionate a human.
Thank-you to Andrew Penner for the humbling and beautiful music.
Thank-you to Franco Boni and the Theatre Centre for creating space for this show to happen, and for continuing to be a leader in this city for developing alternative creation based work.
Thank-you to Alex Bulmer for leading us in the choir with her vision.
Thank-you to Nick Carpenter for helping the music live!
Thank-you to Andrea Lundy for making everything a reality.
Thank-you to the Tanya Greves and her unborn child for keeping things alive.
Thank-you to Beth Kates for making us beautiful, and for constantly offering her love.
Thank-you to Stéphane Monnet for giving the show image.
Thank-you to the choir for helping this piece move from a play to a crusade.
Thank-you for Caleb and Tara for being a part of this from the beginning, and for being a part of it now, and for loving me and letting me love you (and exploit you).
And thank-you to Judith for staying true to yourself, whether people like it or not. Without you, this would not have happened … and thank-you for knowing that.

I leave you with words from Judith that I’ve taken from her personal blog to re-post here.

Much love,
Michael
xo

***

Well, I am deeply immersed in the play: “The Book of Judith.” I wouldn’t have thought that the play and World Peace through Inclusion were related a mere three weeks ago. Now I understand that they truly are and so I am reporting on the play and my experience of it in this blog. Anyone who might have a chance to come and see the play in Toronto will really, really get something out of it, so don’t miss your chance!

“The Book of Judith” has mainly been created by Michael Rubenfeld and Sarah Stanley. A subtext of the play is about my part in their co-creation, a part which seemed to end about April of 2008. It was at this point that I got sick and tired the advocacy flavour of the piece. I was also beginning to have serious thoughts about taking on World Peace through Inclusion as my main focus at that time, although it was several months before I would meet Gabor and we begin serious consideration about taking off for six months.

Some of you know how deeply I struggle with the concept of advocacy even though I am often thought of as an advocate. The root of the idea is to speak for someone else. It contains within it the ever present idea that people who are considered to be disabled require other people’s help in order to function as human beings. It is not so much that we need advocates, as we need listeners, since even those who have no voice are very good at communicating and even better at contributing. Given that, it is no great task to discover what their dreams are and to create ways for them to contribute even more fully in society. We do not need to advocate; we need to pay attention.

So I was burnt out, disgusted, and unwillingly to spend the time and energy it would take – or at least, so it seemed – to shift Michael and Sarah’s focus. In this play Michael reads the email where I clearly told him and Sarah that I was out of the picture.

Last January, when I had to come back to Toronto so that issues around the funding of my personal assistance could be resolved, I went to a reading of the play which at that time had minimal structure and was being formed as a musical with Alex Bulmar as choir leader and Andrew Penner as composer. It was evident that Michael, and no doubt along with him Sarah, had taken a major shift in focus, and that in fact Michael was prepared to express a vulnerable and moving shift in his understanding of me personally and the life experience of people who get excluded by being labeled.

Those who get to know this play will understand that I was conflicted at that moment. On the one hand it would require me to allow myself to be exposed and in some ways, deified, so that the play could be formed. In other words, every view that other people have of me would become fully expressed in public – odd, inspirational, wrongheaded, bullheaded, artistic, curtly articulate, and more. It was no small struggle to agree to have these images boldly displayed.

At the same time, Michael himself takes a personal beating in terms of his ego and reputation. I realized that he is not putting me through this wringer as some kind of sacrificial lamb to a great cause, but he and Sarah have uncovered a brilliant format to create the context that could blow all the stereotypes to the wind.
I agreed with some reluctance to participate in “The Book of Judith” and justified it to myself as necessary to make up for the fact that I had abandoned Michael and Sarah at a critical stage in their process and that I owed it to them, particularly Michael who had put so much of himself into creating our group in the first place. I came to the rehearsals with that attitude.

Two or three days into the rehearsals I began to realize the genius of the structure of the play. A few more days and I awakened to the brilliance of having it be a musical with a choir made up of volunteer men and women, many of them people with disability labels themselves. They are at times my voice and at times Michael’s voice and very much the voice of people whose voice and social presence is erased by the societal oppression we call disability. At times there are some very humourous moments where the choir affirms the amazing possibilities that lie within the personal experience of being someone whose abilities are considered “wrong”.

And so now I am having a bit of fun with the whole thing. I have also had a wonderful opportunity to meet many of the choir members on a personal level and have some moments of deep reflection on our common journey.

Perhaps the greatest learning for me has been how much I was, and probably still am, caught up in the mirage of disability. This play could never have come to be being if I had not thought that my current singleness was the “fault” of my being quadriplegic. I started and fuelled the entire cascade of errors and events by believing that it is my stillness that places an obstacle between myself and potential lovers, and not just the reality of my being busy, somewhat solitary, and Britishly inhibited! It’s an amazing thing to have a play open your eyes to your own foolishness.

But back to World Peace through Inclusion. “The Book of Judith” is an on-the-ground (or on-the-stage) exposition of the contributions that people can make when they are included. It is also a full exploration of the journey that it takes for people to go from seeing each other as strangers to having collegial and intimate relationships. It’s a full expression of how peace is created when people take on the struggle to work from diversity instead of from sameness. I will never have a better example of what I have been talking about than this play.

We are very much hoping to tour the show. Anybody who has some ideas about this, please let me know.

By the way it has been a long time since I told anybody how to get in touch with us and/or the World Peace through Inclusion Foundation. My email is: avalanche0809@gmail.com and my phone # is: 647-232-9344. Gabor Podor is at gaborpodor@gmail.com.

Videos and information about “The Book of Judith” can be found at: www.bookofjudith.com. Enjoy!
Judith

***

Know the anxious, wearing feeling you get when you really want to do something outside your usual comfort zone, but this little gnawing voice inside you keeps whispering, in that tiny, tinny, maliciously-snickery way, “you can’t… you can’t… “ ? You know that going through with whatever task it is will, in some way, be an important step in terms of development, but there’s that constant voice – mocking, questioning, criticizing –making you question your judgment and motivation, making you weight the outcomes, blowing the putrid stench of fear all over your best intentions. It doesn’t matter whether the task is big or small; usually those tasks, for everyone, involve a display of vulnerability.

Vulnerability is scary. It implies openness. And within that openness, a willingness to go forwards, into the unknown. The best kind of creativity –and certainly, my favourite sort of live performance –involves artists confronting their own vulnerability. With performance, the fact this quest is done within a public sphere makes the journey all the more thrilling, involving, and yes, important. We need to see that bravery, so we can embrace it in ourselves and go forwards.

The Book of Judith is Michael Rubenfeld‘s attempt to wrap his head around his relationship with disabled advocate Judith Snow. As he told me when I interviewed him about the work on Take 5 recently, he met Snow through a friend who was working as her personal assistant. Snow has no qualms about displaying her vulnerability for all the world to see; then again, she doesn’t have much of a choice. She is a quadriplegic. She depends on others for her survival. She has had to make peace with her vulnerability being a fact –publicly and privately –for all of her fifty-plus years.

Rubenfeld was inspired to write a work around her when he was asked if he knew anyone who might want to be her lover. The Book Of Judith is his personal odyssey to create a work around Snow related to this most distinct of inquiries – but in so doing, he finds something much greater, something I suspect he hadn’t thought he’d find when he first started out. He finds the lines between “able” and “unable” dissolving; he finds definitions of “normal” and “abnormal” fading, and perhaps most importantly, he find a whole new way to embrace his own vulnerability –thus allowing us to embrace ours. Several times through the play, we’re asked to make eye contact with our fellow audience members, share food, sing, clap, cheer, and relate not just to what’s unfolding before us, but to what is being revealed within us.

I’ve always had mixed feelings around personal memoir-style theatre; much of it tends to fall into the gutter of self-indulgent preaching, and here, Rubenfeld walks a fine line; while he claims knowing Snow made him “a less arrogant prick,” he displays a stunning male bravado, full of ferocious cheerleading and sloganeering. That all falls away, however, when he realizes Snow had, in fact, wanted him as a lover. The fervent gospel-style preaching he’d indulged in earlier morphs into guilt, angst-ridden justifying, fervent bargaining, self-loathing, and finally, the kind of vulnerability that might make more staid audiences shift uncomfortably. Yup, he gets his kit off. The fact he so willingly uses his own body as a palette on which the audience may paint their own prejudices, sketch their own fears, and project their own vulnerabilities, is remarkable –it’s a brave choice, but it’s also the right one.

The Book Of Judith is a good reminder of the healing effects of connection, one of those being the community created through art. Judith Snow has written that “living in this way challenges and extends our courage, our love, our empathy for others and our creativity. We see and hear what others miss entirely.” That’s a good metaphor for artists. And Snow is her own kind of artist –the kind who accepts and in fact, loves her vulnerability. The voice we hear saying “you can’t” is one she’s turned into “I have… and I am.” Hallelujah. Praise be.