New Yiddish Rep Reveals Design Team for THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO CHAIM World Premiere at Theater for the New City

Led by the director Dmitri Barcomi, founder of the new Museum of Drag, New Yiddish Rep's production design for the world premiere of Mikhl Yashinsky's new drama “The Gospel According to Chaim,” will be as thrilling theatrically as the play is thought-provoking due to its iconoclastic story.  The design team blends the veteran credentials of Downtown favorite Gail Cooper Hecht (New Federal Theater, who is doing costumes), with the multi-disciplinary talents of set designer Mengyi Liu (from Sichuan China, by way of Carnegie Mellon), and the vision of lighting designer Alex Bartenieff, who is carrying the mantle at Theater for the New City where he was born and raised.

“The Gospel According to Chaim” (“Di psure loyt khaim”) receives its world premiere at Theater for the New City, 155 First Avenue, in a production running from Thursday December 21 to Sunday January 7, 2024.  Playing a total of 21 performances, “The Gospel According to Chaim,” which is performed in Yiddish with English supertitles, has an opening set for Sunday December 24 at 7:30pm.

Tickets, which are $25, $36 and $45, are available at www.newyiddishrep.org

“I'm very proud to have such a diverse and young design team on board to bring this eye-poppingly original drama to life,” says David Mandelbaum, New Yiddish Rep's artistic director (NYR). “The Gospel According to Chaim” is the first entirely original, full-length American Yiddish drama to be produced for a general audience in seven decades.  Its author, Mikhl Yashinsky, who is the 33-year-old, is at the center of the burgeoning downtown Yiddish arts and social scene, that, in the past 10 years especially, has been attracting a new generation of young Jews (and even Orthodox exiles) to a secular cultural enterprise once considered moribund.

Adds Mandelbaum, “We aim to continue to expand the reach of contemporary Yiddish theater, as we have done in recent years, to both non-Yiddish-speaking general audiences, as well as to religious Yiddish-speaking audiences who are still acquiring a taste for theatre consumption.

A strange and mystical parable about the disconnect between Jewish and Christian belief, “The Gospel According to Chaim” introduces us to Chaim Einspruch (1892 – 1977), a Yiddish writer who found Jesus and translated the New Testament into Yiddish.  A Jewish immigrant from an observant Polish Jewish family, Einspruch set out to publish his book in Baltimore in the early years of WWII, only to be turned down by every Yiddish printer he approached.  Undeterred, he learned the art of printing so that he could print an elegantly illustrated manuscript on his own.

Einspruch's original printed manuscript, “Der bris khadoshe — The New Covenant” (printed in Baltimore in 1941), perhaps one of the least-read books ever made, is part of the permanent collection of the Yiddish Book Center, where Yashinsky discovered it in 2016 when he was a research fellow.

NYR, New York's daring producer of contemporary theater in Yiddish, has added several landmark productions to the Yiddish canon in recent years.  These include groundbreaking productions of “Waiting for Godot” in Yiddish (2013-14), “Death of a Salesman” in Yiddish (2015), “God of Vengeance” (2016-17), “Rhinoceros” in Yiddish (2016), and “Awake and Sing” in Yiddish (2017).  New Yiddish Rep is credited with being one of the main companies at the forefront of the surprising revival of Yiddish secular culture.  The company trains both actors and non-actor native Yiddish speakers (many of whom are LGBTQ+) who elect to separate from their communities of origin.

Born in Detroit, and educated at Harvard, Yashinsky is an actor, director and writer. His first play, an erotic yeshiva drama “Vos flist durkhn oder” (“Blessing of the New Moon”), debuted as the only non-English language work at the Lower East Side Play Festival in the summer of 2022.  With the National Yiddish Theatre – Folksbiene he performed the title role in “The Sorceress,” appeared in their acclaimed “Fiddler on the Roof,” and will appear in the premiere of “Amid Falling Walls” beginning this month. As a director (in his native Detroit), he has staged work at the Detroit Opera.  His recent translation of the memoirs of Yiddish theatre pioneer Ester-Rokhl Kaminska, “The Mother of Yiddish Theatre,” is forthcoming from Bloomsbury.

Director Dmitri Barcomi is a co-founder of the award winning international artist collective Section 175.  He is a cross-disciplinary theatre creator and director whose interests include working with unusual source materials, and integrating technology and live performance.  A member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, he is the artistic director of the newly opened pop-up Museum of Drag (MoDrag),

“In my work as a theater artist I like to shine light on hidden pieces of history,” says Barcomi, whose resume includes shows at Target Margin, Ars Nova, HERE Arts, La MaMa, and BRIC.  “'The Gospel According to Chaim' is a fascinating and clever examination of a unique moment in Yiddish history, a truly unusual story.” He adds, “I look forward to sharing with audiences what makes Yiddish theater an enduring and endlessly inventive art form!”

“This play is a moral highwire act,” adds Mandelbaum.  “Mikhl would appear to be well ahead of his years to be able to tackle this subject matter and to humanize a conflict of such Biblical proportions. Not since Sholem Asch's ‘God of Vengeance' have we seen a play centered so authentically in the morality it calls into question.”

New Yiddish Rep's “The Gospel According to Chaim” (“Di psure loyt khaim”) plays 21 performances (including five previews) in its world premiere engagement at Theater for the New City, 155 First Avenue (between 9th & 10th Streets), running Thur Dec 21 at 7:30pm, 2023 to Jan 7 at 3pm, 2024, with an opening on Christmas Eve, Sunday December 24 at 7:30pm.

Performances are Wed at 3pm and 7:30pm; Thu, Fri at 7:30pm; Sat at 3pm & 7:30pm, and Sun at 3pm.  Added performances on Sun Dec 24 at 7:30pm; Mon Dec 25 at 7:30pm, and Tue Jan 2 at 7:30pm.  (Performance on Sat Dec 23 at 7:30pm only.)

Tickets, which are $25, $36 and $45, and are available via www.newyiddishrep.org

On every performance day, 2 hours before the first performance, a limited amount of $20 Rush Tickets will be released at box office (based on availability).

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