Mother and son collaborate on play

Kathy Kacer

When a son leaves home, he may not look forward to frequent visits from mom, but that’s not the case for award-winning actor of stage, TV and films Jake Epstein. 

His mother, multi-award-winning author and playwright Kathy Kacer, came to New York a lot when Epstein was performing on Broadway in Beautiful: The Carole King Story, in order to work on Therefore Choose Life, their first play written together. It took six years to complete.

Presented by the Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company (HGJTC), Therefore Choose Life makes its world premiere, April 18 at The Greenwin Theatre at Toronto Centre for the Arts. The two always believed their play would be a perfect fit with the HGJTC and are thrilled about the partnership.

Therefore Choose Life is a love story about Joseph, who lost his wife in the Second World War and moves to Toronto after the war, remarries and has a son.  Then he discovers his first wife has miraculously survived the war and is coming to Toronto to see him,” Epstein says. “It’s about this man, his second wife, his son, his son’s girlfriend and how they all get entangled in this one man’s extraordinary dilemma.”

Kacer, who’s written many books on the Holocaust for young readers, says the play is loosely inspired by a true story. 

“Someone told me of a man who survived the camps thinking he lost his first wife, and how she resurfaced many years later, after he had remarried,” Kacer says. “I thought of writing it as a book, but something about it appealed to me more written as a play. Jake and I, at the same time, were talking about doing a project together.

“I loved Jake’s writing and how he constructed stories, so when I brought him this idea, we both instantly agreed that we would love to give it a try. We wrote the first draft when he was still living at home and between gigs.”

Epstein says he was interested in writing about his mom’s experience as a second-generation survivor. “My mom tells stories about her parents and other survivors, but I thought her story, as someone who grew up with these stories of survival as a kid, deserves to be told about in the play. The story is about a man who survives the war, but it also tells the story of his son and how he has dealt with that growing up.”

Kacer and Epstein worked together well and say the experience never felt hierarchical. To them, it felt collaborative right through, and they said they look forward to working together again. 

During the first four months, they worked intensively on a daily basis, planning, creating, writing and rewriting. 

“Over the years, as we have been rewriting and rewriting it, we’ve had to rely on technology to help us along,” Kacer says. “We’ve spent many hours on FaceTime, Skype, and on the telephone sending drafts to one another until we got down to the nitty-gritty and I felt we had to work on it face-to-face, so I went down to New York often.”

“There was a point after the summer that we had written the first draft, that I felt this could be a writing team that could be effective,” Epstein says. “I think we were able to bring something very different to the table from the perspective of two generations in two different worlds… It makes for three-dimensional characters in the play.” 

Kacer hopes that Therefore Choose Life will prompt great discussions among the audience. 

“The choice the character of Joseph has to make is an extremely painful one. We can imagine people will fall on both sides of his decision, and we want people to be moved and troubled by it. The play is called Therefore Choose Life and is really about choosing what you’re passionate about and what moves you, embracing that and moving forward with it.

Epstein feels he’s been able to separate being a writer from being an actor. When he’s acting, he says he drops the fact that he’s written it and any expectations he has about the characters, and lets the play breathe on its own, allowing the actors to bring their own perspectives.

Kacer, who has written a dozen books, all of which focus on stories of  World War II and the Holocaust, has a new book coming out this fall called Stones on a Grave, published by Orca Books.

Epstein, best known for playing Craig Manning on Degrassi: The Next Generation, will be seen on Remedy on Global Television and has just completed two films, Borealis and Full Out.

Directed by Rachel Slaven, Therefore Choose Life also includes Lisa Horner, Sheila McCarthy, Amelia Sargisson and HGJTC’s co-artistic director, Avery Saltzman. 

 

Therefore Choose Life runs April 18-May 10 at The Greenwin Theatre at Toronto Centre for the Arts. For tickets, call 1-855-985-2787 or go online to www.hgjewishtheatre.com.