Each year, Producer and Director Moira Blumenthal stages a professional production, telling universal stories that reflect the history, culture and identity of Jewish life.
To expand on this exploration of Jewish theatre Moira Blumenthal Productions are delighted to announce SECOND STAGE – an initiative to discover and develop new ideas, scripts, plays, monologues, memoirs, poems, extracts from books… anything you have written. In return Moira Blumenthal Productions will present staged readings of these new plays, under the watchful eye of a director/dramaturg and presented by professional actors.
In the future this SECOND STAGE initiative will run as an ongoing series alongside the annual Main Stage production.
The first production as part of SECOND STAGE will be Certificate of Life by Ron Elisha. This will be presented as a Staged Reading on Saturday 29 August at Monkey Baa Theatre Company in front of a live audience (subject to Covid update).
Ron Elisha is a very accomplished and prolific playwright (born in Jerusalem in 1951 who moved to Australia in 1952) whose first performed play was ‘In Duty Bound’ in 1979. He also practices as a GP in the suburbs of Melbourne.
If we are not in a position to present a live reading, we will record a podcast of the play which will be sent to all our friends and supporters.
Certificate of Life opened in April 2017 at the Cameri Theatre in Tel Aviv, Israel and was a smash hit – running for over two years. It is a dark, blackly comic, ferocious, compelling and, ultimately, deeply moving exploration of what it is to be human and to be alive. For twelve years, from 1933 – 1945, the vile machinery of the Third Reich was orchestrated in such a way as to bring about the annihilation of Clara Reich.
But the Third Reich collapsed, the war ended, and Clara was still alive.
From that day forth – every year, just before her birthday – Clara has been compelled to attend the German Consul and, in a supreme irony, present them with a Lebensbescheinegung: A Certificate of Life.
In this way, the German government satisfies itself that the recipients of its reparation pensions are indeed still alive.
Separated from a brutish second husband whom she never loved, she lives with her only daughter, Hilda. Together, the two of them exist – year in, year out – in the shadow of the Holocaust. And together, each year, they attend the German Consul, in order to prove that Clara is still alive.
But is she?
Its relevance to today’s world is striking – indeed, unnerving – both in its specifics, with the soaring rise in anti-Semitism around the globe (particularly in Europe) and in its generality.
Certificate of Life Reviews:
“a sensitive study… an almoama whose driving force is simmering emotion… impressive, touchist perfect comedy” Jerusalem Post
“an intimate and delicate drng and compelling” City Mouse
“the weightiest matters handled with great lightness of touch result in a true crowd- pleaser…” Ha’aretz
“sad, funny and touching…” Megaphone
Please send submissions for inclusion in to SECOND STAGE to mail to -:moirablumenthalproductions@gmail.com or call 0411 558 439
To register to attend the staged reading at Monkey Baa at 7pm on Saturday 29 August 2020 please email your full name, phone number and number of tickets you would like to mailto:moirablumenthalproductions@gmail.com