TORONTO — Over the past four years, annual shows featuring Leo Baeck Day School parents and teachers raised a total of more than $100,000 for the school.
From left are David Goldfarb, Ari Blicker and Harvey Cooperberg singing Fugue for Tinhorns from Guys and Dolls at a recent rehearsal for Aim Chai.
But this year, organizers felt it was time to take a break. “We didn’t want it to get too stale,” said Mike Levinsky, middle school co-ordinator for the school’s north campus, and the shows’ director and choreographer.
The shows had been drawing from a limited pool of performers and playing to the same audience, he said.
But Levinsky and musical director Robin Perlmutter – a former Leo Baeck parent, and the founder and managing director of the Toronto Youth Music Theatre Company – had second thoughts when they considered feedback from cast members who told them how much it had meant to them to be in the shows.
They decided to use the same model and raise money for a charity.
But first, they wanted to know if a committee of three parents who had played key roles behind the scenes would work with them again. “There’s no way we could do what we do without the three of them,” said Levinsky.
When he explained that this year’s effort would be for a charity, they said they would come on board “for sure,” he recalled.
Levinsky and Perlmutter formed a new production group called Play It Forward Productions.
One of the committee members, as well as Levinsky, had a two-degrees-of-separation connection with Ve’ahavta: The Canadian Jewish Humanitarian and Relief Committee, and decided to look at the organization’s website when they were searching for a charity to help.
“We were really impressed,” Levinsky said.
This year’s production, Aim Chai, is a Broadway musical revue with 18 songs from 18 musicals, including Annie, Wicked, West Side Story and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
It will raise money for Ve’ahavta with shows at the City Playhouse in Vaughan at the end of January: a 2 p.m. matinée and a 7:30 evening performance on Jan. 30, and a final evening performance on Jan. 31. The evening show will also be an event of the Toronto Alpha Omega Dental Society.
Cast members are not professional actors, although some of them have had voice training. “They just love performing,” Levinsky said.
Levinsky and Perlmutter accepted 40 cast members, and chose songs – both ensemble and solo pieces – that would fit their voices, Levinsky said.
“We work them very hard,” said Perlmutter.
At the same time, Levinsky added, “We feel good about creating a tight-knit ensemble.”
Laurie Walman, a mother of two who manages a psychology practice, said that even when she’s having a bad day, she “can’t wait” to get to rehearsal.
She joined the first cast with no singing background, after an audition she recalls as nerve-racking. “I called them and said I can’t do this. They worked with me and said, ‘We are going to make an actor out of you.’
“The support is incredible… In the end, it’s like we become a family.”
Although she sings only “a line or two,” it’s not about being the star. It’s about being part of something that’s for a good cause, and how much fun it is.”
Harvey Cooperberg, a 60-year-old dentist, is the senior member of a cast that includes performers age 23 and up. He has performed in “lots of” amateur musical theatre including a 2006 Yorkminstrels production of Oliver!, but he hasn’t performed with Play It Forward before.
“I’ve been blown away by the talent in this group,” he said at a December rehearsal. “Rehearsals are just as much fun as the performance.”
For more information or to buy tickets, go to veahavta.org and go to “Current Events”. Tickets start at $36.
