THE SHOW

Rachel Calof ~ A Memoir with Music is a dynamic theatrical event with great drama, heart and melody. A solo show, Rachel Calof is a theatrical tour de force based on the memoir of a Jewish picture bride. In less than ninety minutes, on a stage bare except for a table and two chairs, Kate Fuglei enacts the story of Rachel Calof as she emigrates from Russia to Devil’s Lake, North Dakota in 1894. America is a nation of immigrants, and Calof ’ s story touches themes that are essential to our shared experience: The courage to come to a new land; the capacity to endure brutal hardships in the quest for a home of one ’ s own; and the intersection of the faith of the old world with the realities of the new world.

Theatre invites audiences to become imaginative partners in a journey, and Rachel Calof takes us into a world filled with intense challenges and sparkling delights. Kate Fuglei embodies the characters that fill the twelve-by-fourteen foot shack: Rachel’s glowering mother-in-law; her slovenly brother-in-law; her loving husband; an unexpectedly kind butcher. Leslie Steinweiss’s evocative and modern score is as primal as the plains Calof lived on. Rachel Calof ’ s diary left behind mesmerizing details of a woman ’ s life on the prairie – eight human beings huddled together in a shack during the winter, enduring the close quarters shared with two flocks of chickens and a cow; the towering skies of the summer and the intense loneliness of life on a sea of prairie grass; the joys of the first party in three years – and the music, words, and bravura performance bring it vividly to life.

Rachel Calof is appropriate for all audiences. It brings up timeless questions: How do you go on when you think you can’t? How does one deal with tiresome in-laws? How do you face being alone among those who are supposed to be your family? The performance is a tour de force for Kate Fuglei, whose transformational power brings to life Rachel Calof ’ s spirit, humor, and love of life. It can be performed in a simple space, with a table, two chairs, an acoustic piano, and a minimalist lighting plot.