Everyone has had the shocking experience of hearing their parents’ voices issuing unbidden from their own mouths. In Two Jews walk into a theatre… Directed by Lucy Guerin, Brian Lipson and Gideon Obarzanek examine and expand this phenomenon. Although they never cease to be themselves they present their fathers with all the intimacy, understanding and horror that only a son can supply.
It is probably a good thing that Zenek Obarzanek and Laurence Lipson never met in real life, but the fictional meeting of these two irascible old men makes for entertaining and provocative theatre. Their disagreements and affinities are intense and range from the domestic to the global.
This brand new dramatic experiment is a challenging departure for three of the most adventurous and experienced theatre artists working in Melbourne today. The result is deceptively simple and subtly affecting. It is also packed with surprise.
- Venue Format
- Theatre, Hall, Black Box Venue
- Technical Rating
- Touring Party
- 3 (2 performers & stage manager) plus director and lighting realiser to first opening night
- Considerations
Trailer Password: briangideon (password will be removed)
Everyone has had the shocking experience of hearing their parents’ voices issuing unbidden from their own mouths. In Two Jews walk into a theatre… Directed by Lucy Guerin, Brian Lipson and Gideon Obarzanek examine and expand this phenomenon. Although they never cease to be themselves they present their fathers with all the intimacy, understanding and horror that only a son can supply.
It is probably a good thing that Zenek Obarzanek and Laurence Lipson never met in real life, but the fictional meeting of these two irascible old men makes for entertaining and provocative theatre. Their disagreements and affinities are intense and range from the domestic to the global.
This brand new dramatic experiment is a challenging departure for three of the most adventurous and experienced theatre artists working in Melbourne today. The result is deceptively simple and subtly affecting. It is also packed with surprise.
Unique Selling Point
Internationally acclaimed performance-makers, Obarzanek (founder Chunky Move) and Guerin, (choreographer-director Lucy Guerin Inc), join Melbourne's acclaimed actor, Brian Lipson, to explore father/son dynamics and the universality of parental expectation and filial response.
Presented as a conversation, simple and humorous banter traverses the personal and political. The dialogue bridges tensions within the Jewish community, but the work is easily understood. Audiences will identify parallels in the broad Australian narrative through passionate and entrenched attitudes of the two fathers against both the community’s specific political/religious dynamic and their hopes for their sons.
Critics and audiences are changed by the experience.
Marketing Materials
• All the reviews used the word “unmissable”,
• most of the reviewers were not Jewish, and were still profoundly affected by the performance.
• The use of the specific (and personal for Brian and Gideon), bridges and speaks to a more universal experience.
• The parent/child mechanism provides fertile ground for audience engagement and recognition
• Promoting it as a cross-generational experience
Community Engagement
The company will work with the presenters to design a community engagement program to suit their audiences and community.
There is interest in connecting with men's mental health groups in addition to Q & As.
Comments/Reviews
Cameron Woodhead
Media Review
The affectionate embodiment of their fathers leads to a fair amount of sharp, self-deprecating skewering of their own artistic foibles. It also ignites vehement conflict between conservative and liberal ideologies, over Australia's refugee policy and the fraught geopolitics of Israel.
Sally Hussey Arts Hub
Media Review
It's a bit like theatre as seance, a sense amplified by a final movement into the existential – a brush with impending death, and whatever afterlife there is.