Beginning July 4, Rosebud patrons can see Anne of Green Gables and My Name is Asher Lev on the same day. Rosebud’s summer Studio Stage offering,My Name is Asher Lev by Aaron Posner is based on the well-known novel by Chaim Potok.
The play follows a young Hasidic Jew who has an incredible gift for drawing. Unfortunately, his conservative parents consider his creative gift to be “foolishness” and they do everything in their power to get him to stop. Yet his passion to draw and paint is too strong, and he is forced to find a way among everything that is important to him: his faith, his art, his parents, his calling and his God.
Rosebud Theatre Artistic Director Morris Ertman claims that although this play is of a Hasidic Jewish family set in the 1940s, the underlying story “has been happening in homes for generations” and crosses cultural boundaries. Explains Ertman, “It’s an intimate tale that crystallizes the difficulty of making one’s way in the world when the vocation that calls to a young person differs from the expectations of one’s parents and community.”
The novel by Potok was inspired by his own life. Although Potok had a gift for painting when young, he gave it up to pursue more serious interests. Much later, a gift of an easel from his wife and daughter rekindled his interest in painting, and he began to wonder what his life would have been like had he not abandoned his art, eventually publishing the story in 1972.
The Rosebud show is a remount of a production that received critical acclaim and positive reviews when it played at Vancouver’s Pacific Theatre. In fact, the Rosebud Studio Stage offering will include the same artistic team, and two of the three actors. Ertman decided to bring the show to Rosebud when audiences and critics raved about the show, which also received three Jessie Richardson nominations for the set, costume and sound designs.
Giovanni Mocibob, who is also playing Gilbert in Rosebud’s summer musical Anne of Green Gables, plays the young artist retelling his life from age six to nineteen.
Rosebud favourite, Nathan Schmidt, plays all the male roles, including Asher’s strict father, Ari Lev, and Asher’s artistic mentor, Jacob Kahn. New to the cast, but known to Rosebud audiences is Heather Pattengale who plays all the female roles, but primarily Asher’s long-suffering yet conflicted mother Rivka.
My Name is Asher Lev by Aaron Posner, based on the novel by Chaim Potok, plays at the Studio Stage in Rosebud from July 4 - August 25. Shows run Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday at 5:00 PM.
