PurimFest! will culminate in a big-bash, collective, collaborative, immersive, and political theater experience, called PURIMSHPIEL! |
OTHER PURIMSHPIEL FAQs!
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We will bring in the weekend's inspiration, art-making, and songs to tell the Purim story in a funny and poignant final celebration of solidarity. |
In short: a PurimShpiel is a comic dramatization of the Book of Esther. The Megillah, or Book of Esther, is a "they tried to kill us, we survived, let's eat" kind of story, which a lot of our Jewish stories are. In the 1500s, Ashkenazi Jews began to create shpiels (Yiddish for play or game) as a form of community Purim celebration and satirical commentary on their lives in Christian-hegemonic Europe. Our PurimShpiel is no different!
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There is a Kabbalistic idea that every earthly place, Shushan - the location of the Book of Esther - included, has a heavenly doppelganger - a utopic counterpart without the violence and exploitation of the place we know on earth. Our flying Shushan will hover somewhere between the heavens and the earth, simultaneously reflecting the problems of our reality while illustrating an aspirational future. But what are these problems, and what could this future hold? That’s where you come in!
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clothing swap & costumes!Sunday, 3pm
Step 1: Bring to the festival old clothes, good clothes, bad clothes, clothes you don't want anymore, clothes you'd like someone to cut up OR bring home! Step 2: At the clothing swap, pick any clothes you want to use to build your Purim/shpiel costume! Step 3: We will provide craft & art supplies to make your costume all yours! Silliness, seriousness, drag and queer exploration encouraged! Conventional beauty standards? We don't know them. |
we are...Building a visionary Shushan
together. |