Behind the scenes of Stempenyu!: A Tale of Joyous Theatre Making
Nadia Hussein goes behind the scenes of Stempenyu! will run at the ADC Tuesday 11th-Saturday 15th at 7:45pm, tickets from £10. Panels with expert speakers on klezmer music and Yiddish revivals will accompany the opening and closing nights. Programme profits will be donated to Rise Alliance for Children’s ‘Element of Play’ programme in Ukraine.
Most ADC shows come together in under three months but Stempenyu! has been brewing for far longer than that. Stempenyu!, a surrealist Yiddish rom-com from ‘a space outside of time and inside folklore’ and based loosely on the life of a travelling violinist, opens this Tuesday at 19:45. This will be the first time the play has been performed in (and translated into) English, a feat which presented a daunting challenge for final-year directors Anna Sanderson and Lia Joffe.
The pair met whilst freshers and bonded over their love of Marc Chagall’s paintings and a shared desire to stage a joyous representation of Eastern-European Jewish life. Especially given the war in Ukraine, they wanted to channel their energy into a work of revival and joy, capturing Eastern European stories at their ‘most life-affirming moments’. One day, they came across an article about the violinist Stempenyu – and to their surprise, discovered he was a real life person and not just a myth.
They fell down a rabbit hole of Yiddish theatre history, uncovering that Sholem Aleichem, famed for Fiddler on the Roof, also wrote a novel that was later adapted into a play that toured the world with small Yiddish troupes. Determined to find the script, they paid for a premium Linkedin account to contact the article’s author, leading to a breakthrough in Lent 2024: the script was found in New York’s YIVO Archives. That summer, they travelled to New York, where they handled and digitised the handwritten script. For Anna, related to Sholem Aleichm, it was ‘incredibly moving to see the writings of [her] ancestor’.
Anna and Lia painting the set. Photo: Nadia Hussein, with permission for The Cambridge Student.
Having found the script, the next challenge was finding a translator. Sholem Aleichem’s Yiddish, rich with original idioms, required expertise in his entire oeuvre. By chance, a friend mentioned Alex Kahn, who had three free months before starting a fine arts course in Florence to work within the tight turnaround. A key question was how much to secularise and anglicise the script without losing the impact stored in the Yiddish.The final script, carefully footnoted, ‘becomes an archive of its own’ says Lia.
“It's full of Hebrew, textual references, religious conventions and wordplay. It's kind of like trying to read Chaucer or Shakespeare.”- Lia
Without stage directions, the bare script encouraged the cast to bring a lot to rehearsals: they brought information from their own backgrounds to enrich the characters. In doing this, they lent into the play’s past as a community play, travelling and adapting itself to its audiences and performers.
This production was no different. With music and dance holding an important place in this production, the company held a dinner where Lia taught some Yiddish songs, setting the atmosphere for rehearsals that were full of joy and play. The actors created an onstage environment where the audience felt comfortable to clap and move with the actors. And you will want to dance along because of the immersive onstage band. The production’s composer, Sohan Kalirai, has composed an original score inspired by melodies from a Ukrainian archive of Yiddish songs from the early 1900s, the original setting of the play.
Photo provided by Lia Joffe with permission for TCS
Set-designer Oscar Griffin’s backdrop is drawn in Chagall’s style, a nod to Anna and Lia’s bond. ‘Stempenyu (both person and mythical figure) has traveled into our British world through the medium of Chagall’s paintings that take inspiration from the folktale. We want him to come out of the painting and for us to hear his story’ says Anna.
Stempenyu! has developed a strong network, with set pieces and costumes made by Jewish communities in London and international connections forged through the script’s acquisition and translation. Both directors hope the play will live on in English, and in particular hope ‘all the values that Stempenyu! stands for reach community and educational settings.’
This is one-of-a-kind production for Cambridge, its path to the ADC stage from a New York archive so unique.The history and sense of community permeates through every aspect of the show's design. The play seeks to pull you into a world of myth and music alongside Stempenyu and is definitely not to be missed!