Aaron Henne is a writer and director who has continued to discover new ways and venues to challenge both his audiences and his company’s extremely talented cast of actors and vocalists.  Theatre Dybbuk has performed at Diavolo Performance Space, the UCLA Fowler Museum’s amphitheater, Central Library – Mark Taper Auditorium, and now at the Philosophical Research Society on Los Feliz Boulevard in Los Angeles. His latest production hell prepared: a ritual exorcism inspired by kabbalistic principles, performed within a dominant cultural context was the most adventurous, intense and comprehensive of the plays that I have seen him direct. The group first caught my attention because of how Henne incorporates movement into his plays, and hell prepared took that to an even higher level.

Director Aaron Henne - Photo courtesy of Theatre Dybbuk

Aaron Henne – Photo courtesy of Theatre Dybbuk

Upon entering, the audience was welcomed into a Jewish ghetto by actors dressed in all black and wearing gold silk yarmulkes or kippahs. From the onset, we were instructed that once we entered that we were not to leave, but if we did that we could not return. This subtle statement instilled upon the audience how for centuries, Jews have been forced to live in such neighborhoods of enforced confinement, i.e. ghettos.

The play began with the audience given yarmulkes to wear and male Jewish names as they were ushered into the building’s library, now the Rabbi’s study. We stood around the room, sat in chairs or on a long table to watch Rabbi Moshe (Jonathan C.K. Williams) prepare to perform an exorcism of a demon, dybbuk or ghost from one of his congregation while the cast of actors/vocalists chanted from a balcony above. He told us that this was a “night of atonement, rogation and death.” That person who was to be cleansed of the dybbuk turned out to be the Rabbi’s wife Sarah (Julie A Lockhart) who thought that she was there only to assist her husband by holding up the book of kabbalah teachings.

Following a series of beautifully choreographed movements, the confused, angry and respectfully resistant Sarah was carried out of the study and the audience followed them across the courtyard and into a bluish lit room whose floor was covered with wood mulch, to find Sarah lain upon a sacrificial table.

Over the next 90 minutes or so, the congregation aids in the exorcism to drive the dybbuk out of Sarah. In a twist of plot, the demon resided within them both. At different times, each was bound to the table by leather straps and the dybbuk (Diana Tanaka) finally leaves Moshe’s body and reveals itself as a ghostly shadow behind a white curtain. The demon’s voice was expertly manipulated electronically to shift between sounding male, female and eerily nonhuman.

Inspired by an English translation of Moses Zacuto’s “Tofteh Arukh” by Michela Andreatta, PhD and conceived in collaboration with Erith Jaffe-Berg, PhD, hell prepared is a play about the Jewish people searching to hold on to their identities as people of Jewish faith, endurance as a people of constant persecution and a desire to find a home of their own. It is much more, however. It is a story about love, trust, devotion, loss and portrayal.  This play also speaks to what is transpiring within our own country right now. Families being separated, the persecution of people of color and of religious beliefs.

hell prepared reveals Moshe’s struggle with his own faith, and his marriage being tested because his son has left the Jewish religion to live outside the ghetto. The dybbuk leads them through seven pits of shadows including Silence, Portrayal, Disillusions without bottom, Death and Nothing More, and within each realm these divisions and struggles are revealed.

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Theatre Dybbuk - Julie Lockhart and Jonathan C.K. Williams in Hell Prepared - Photo: Taso Papadakis

The rest of the cast shifted between assisting in the exorcism and those of ghosts from the past who Sarah is possessed by while traveling through the seven pits of shadows. Her personae moves from the ancient past to the future and back again, accelerating during the seventh and final pit when Sarah is possessed by a multitude of ghosts from beyond.

It is an acting tour de force for Lockhart and Williams, who both rise above and beyond these challenges. They are taken through rigorous physical actions by choreographer Kai Hazelwood as well as the highly intense emotional cycles that Henne’s hell prepared laid before them. Henne and Hazelwood have worked together several times and it is a wonderful collaboration. Both are extremely gifted and understand how to get actors to move in a way that they can look natural and still deliver their lines with great authority.

Lockhart and Williams perform a series of hand gestures, falls, back bends and contortions while never dropping a line or getting out of character. They were a great match for this play; the chemistry between them filled with love, fire and devotion to their marriage and to their faith. Lockhart is a master at shifting emotions as displayed when she was inhabited by one of her ancestor’s ghosts or souls.

Kai Hazelwood, Choreographer - Photo courtesy of the artist.

Kai Hazelwood, Choreographer – Photo courtesy of the artist.

During the final scene when the couple are shown the future by the dybbuk, Moshe stated that he was sad that the Jewish faith had been diluted. Sarah is happy by the prospect that the faith lives on in different forms and that a woman has become a Rabbi. One of her lines that struck home for me during their exchange was “preservation is not life”. At the conclusion, one is left with a sense that everything is new, but that nothing really changes.

The music which helped to create a sense of each shadowy pit and rang though the beautiful voices of the cast was composed by Fahad Siadat who also acted as Musical Director. The creator of the shadowy figures and the eerily blues atmosphere was Lighting Designer Brandon Baruch, and the person who created an uncomfortable but extremely appropriate venue of emotional strife was Production Designer Leslie K. Gray.

The amazing Vocal Ensemble, listed here as Member of the Confraternity, who created the initial tension and fear within the ghetto, portrayed devoted congregation members assisting their Rabbi, and who lithely inhabited the bodies of ghosts were Monika Beal, David Conley, Molly Pease, Rebecca Rasmussen, David Garcia Saldana, and Fahad Siadat.

hell prepared: a ritual exorcism inspired by kabbalistic principles, performed within a dominant cultural context continues through August 4, 2019 at the Philosophical Research Society. For more information and to purchase tickets, click here.  I highly suggest that you go see this play.

Written by Jeff Slayton for LA Dance Chronicle, July 29, 2019.

To find out more about Theatre Dybbuk, click here.

Featured image: Jonathan C.K. Williams and Julie Lockhart in Theatre Dybbuk’s “Hell Prepared” – Photographer Taso Papadakis