The Alexander Singers & Players present Shmiddler on the Roof

JAKE -

by Jess Goldman

(Plenty of Free Parking)


Leah Posluns Theatre

4588 Bathurst Street

North York ON

rehearsals were held

in a church basement

Protestant

that smelled of wax


chicken soup

dust and

the splattered insides

of microwaves

CAST OF CHARACTERS


big breasted balebostehs

alterkakers white haired

two teenage girls

mit soft pinchable punims


and a man, he was shy, yung,

named Pavel

who would play ‘MOTEL THE TAILOR’

and ‘DANCING COSSACK’


Pavel wore brown corduroys

t-shirts that was too big for him

and snakeskin cowboy boots

his black bowl cut flat


full of grease

his drawn face teeming

with

inside beauty


like a caterpillar

one of the teenage girls

(Rebecca

a “VILLAGER”) thought


Rebecca thought also

Pavel looked like a

lesbian

this intrigued her


made her want to fatten

his small mouth with

gefilte fish but

also it made her avoid him


at all the costs


Pavel was timid

but he sure could pirouette

he could hold a falsetto note for

ten seconds and


handsome he looked in his beige

Russian-Elizabethan shirt

with the skewed collar

and bulbes sleeves


which Gwyneth

(costume designer

and wife of Vincenzo

the director) had sewed


Gwyneth wore purple lipstick

everyday

Gwyneth had tried to make the villagers

technicolor


Gwyneth had wanted to put on Joseph

But Vincenzo said no

Vincenzo had bigger dreams

bigger dreams by the name of


Shmiddler


Vincenzo

would never be caught

without

his black beret


beneath his beret was

a man balding

not

a director


but what

thought Gwyneth

was bigger

than technicolor?

Jess Goldman is a writer, comics artist, and amateur puppeteer based on the traditional, unceded lands of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam peoples. Their writing has been published in Maisonneuve, the CBC, and Room Magazine. A graduate of University of British Columbia’s MFA in Creative Writing Program, their writing explores that sweet spot where Yiddishkayt and queer culture joyfully collide. (Jess Goldman is becoming a reluctant autobiographer. Having written many of these little bios, they are becoming less and less sure of who they really are. Less sure of the easy confidence of “is” versus “could be” or “for now”. Really, they’re a million things at once, just like every human here on this strange, brutal, and wondrous planet.)