Shabby suitcases will shroud the stage as Dex Grodner, the star of the one-person show Chanukah Lewinsky: 120 years from Grodno, pieces together Jewish history in an hour-long performance that fuses queer cabaret, live art, poetry and campy melodrama.
Clad in flamboyant, Yiddish-inspired makeup, with “curly Jewish hair” and a costume that will resemble “a mix of a strong campy-drag aesthetic and a modest Jewish one,” Grodner says the show will be “everything a Jewish night could need.
“The set revolves around old luggage; a lot of it is stuff I’ve found on the street, outside construction sites or people’s houses. I want it to reflect the physical and historic baggage that we, as Jews, have carried with us,” says the 23-year-old genderqueer Reform Jew.
For one night only, on November 1 the audience will be transported through time to see Chanukah’s journey as a refugee. Grodner is “definitely aiming to extend the show, this is just the beginning of its development.
