Prodigal Son

By Shawn Macdonald

Production:  9th Hour Theatre Company

What is good about 9^th Hour Theatre Company is their unflinching courage to tackle bold and often sensitive subjects. What is great about them is their consistently challenging and artistic story telling that manages to hold up a mirror to its audience, no matter the topic. Their new production, Prodigal Son by Shawn MacDonald, is inspired by the suffering of LGBTQ people of faith, but in director Jonathan Harris’ interpretation, the story becomes universal – it is about our imperfect world where individuals struggle with preconceived notions, embedded deeply through their upbringing. Unable to fight society’s rigid rules, carved in stone by prejudice and a blind faith in authority, they lash out on those close to them and end up losing themselves. …

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Photos by  9th Hour Theatre company

My Name is Asher Lev is a story about growing up in a strict and religious surrounding while searching for an individual identity. Set in in the 1950s in a Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York, it explores the conflict between orthodox Jewish tradition and art, as well as between the individual and the group.

It is not easy to be different and Asher Levy, a child with a prodigious artistic ability, knows it only too well. Although everybody admires his gift for painting, it seems that, as he grows older, the adults are less and less capable of understanding him, and more and more prone to angrily censor his work.

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