BRATTLEBORO-On Saturday, June 27, in the Vermont Jazz Center (VJC) space, Kinetic Theory Theatre will present “A Bissel Borscht Belt: A Yiddish Vaudeville Extravaganza,” promising, according to a press release, to bring “you back to a simpler place and time” in “a fun-filled tribute to the Catskills’ variety shows of yesteryear that truly shaped modern American entertainment.”
Under the direction of Stephanie Bass Abrams, Kinetic Theory Theatre has been creating experimental theater and circus productions since 2001. The group produced numerous shows in San Francisco and Los Angeles before relocating to Brattleboro. Additionally, the award-winning circus-theater company has created and presented more than 30 original productions to audiences around the U.S. and in China.
For this event, Abrams goes back to an era when Grossinger’s and other resorts in New York’s Catskill Mountains presented what might be called “variety shows” today but were, in fact, vaudeville — one of American theater history’s most lively and edgy forms of popular entertainment.
Having emerged in the 1870s, vaudeville thrived throughout the U.S. for several decades before it was eclipsed by the advent of cinema, but Abrams points out that “vaudeville variety shows continued in the Catskills (Borscht Belt) and were a big draw for the resorts through the 1960s.”
The Borscht Belt style “began as a segregated circuit featuring Jewish immigrants performing for Jewish communities primarily in New York’s Lower East Side,” Abrams says. The performers later migrated north to the Catskills, where one could find accommodations suited to a range of income levels, a sporty atmosphere, and an abundance of entertainment, including some of the best-known and rising entertainers of the time, including George Burns, Milton Berle, and Joan Rivers.
The Brattleboro show will feature Abrams herself, an award-winning mime-director, and her husband, Patrick Branstetter, formerly of Blue Man Group. They’ll be joined by other acts, including acclaimed hand balancer and contortionist Fleeky Flanco of Greensboro; the Flying Lin-Bianco Brothers, based in Las Vegas and San Francisco; Diavolo, a dance theater group; and the western Massachusetts-based Klezmer Kapelye featuring Rachel Leader (violin), Ariel Shapiro (accordion), and Ozzy Gold-Shapiro (vocals/ukulele).
The show, the release states, is filled with “live klezmer music, dancing, comedy, juggling, acrobatics, Yiddish language and culture, schtick, spiel, kvetching, and cursing [that] will have you kibitzing, kvelling, and getting verklempt from all the meshuggaas!”
Abrams says it will be “interactive,” telling The Commons that there will be “audience participation bits as well as music set by the band after the show when dancing is encouraged.”
“It’s not about, like, you come and sit there and just watch the show,” she adds. “You really are able to get involved both physically and verbally.”
Abrams says she has a rule that heckling is allowed only in Yiddish. “Okay. So you better be a fluent speaker if you’re gonna heckle,” she says.
“But,” she adds with a chuckle, “I’m not a fluent speaker.”
Capturing the vibe for today’s audiences
“I’ve done many vaudeville shows, but I have always sort of snuck in the Jewish and Yiddish humor,” Abrams says, “but this is the first time I’m doing a full-themed show that’s Yiddish vaudeville.”
Aiming for historical accuracy, Abrams’s research led to the discovery that in the actual Borscht Belt comedy and in vintage vaudeville, the “jokes are really offensive by today’s standard.” She quickly realized, “We can’t say any of this, even in Yiddish. The Yiddish speakers will be upset.”
So she has “tailored the comedy to capture that vibe, but still make it appropriate for modern audiences.”
Her research has also found ironies around, for example, how women were a notch below men in societal hierarchy, yet in vaudeville, they became stars for their innovation, daring, and quirky characters — sometimes played in drag.
The band is “really excited about this project,” she adds, and “to play more Yiddish pop of the 1950s, not just klezmer,” which is “a big part of the culture, granted, but not all there is in popular Yiddish music.
“Even within the Yiddish arts world,” Abrams says, people “forget there’s theater, there’s literature, there’re other art forms within this realm of Yiddish and Jewish culture. So this isn’t just klezmer music, it’s klezmer mixed with this very specifically Borscht Belt style.”
Musical comedy, too, is “tied in and integrated into this show,” she says.
The comedy and physical theater in the June 27 show are offered primarily by Abrams and Branstetter, now a piano tuner, whom she met in the circus. “I’ve gotten him back involved ’cause I was like, ‘This has to be a family affair, you know: That’s a tradition.’”
Other acts will feature tap dancing, acrobatics with integrated dance, juggling, barrel contortion, and hand balancing.
The show, Abrams explains, “is also designed so that the acts can easily interchange based on availability of artists. If we go up to Burlington or if we go across the country, we can plug local artists into the show for the variety acts. The format stays the same. And some of the comedy bits are built in, but the rest of it is very interchangeable.”
That, she says, is the concept of vaudeville: “You can see something different all the time.”
Co-sponsored by the Brattleboro Area Jewish Community, Abrams’s project received seed money through a grant from the Yiddish Book Center, part of the Yiddish Arts and Culture Initiative for Jewish Communities, based in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Jewish Communities of Vermont has been supportive, as has the VJC, to the extent that all donations taken at the door can go directly to the performing artists, Abrams explains.
And she adds: “even though it has the Jewish culture element, it’s not just for Jewish audiences. No, no. It’s vaudeville!”
“Feel free to dress up and wear some vintage,” Abrams urges. “Grab your 1950s Catskills outfit, OK?”
The show is at the Vermont Jazz Center, 72 Cotton Mill Hill #222, in Brattleboro on Saturday, June 27, at 7:30 p.m. Admission by donation ($5 to $10 suggested; cash or Venmo only at the door). For more information, visit kinetictheorytheatre.com.
This Arts item by Annie Landenberger was written for The Commons.