The Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company in St. Paul presents "Rachel Calof," a memoir of a Jewish picture bride who emigrated from Russia to Devils Lake in 1894.
Calof's manuscript, which was discovered by her children after her death, chronicles her life in a 12-by-14 foot shack shared with five other people. Published as "Rachel Calof's Story" in 1995, Ken Lazebnik wrote an adaptation and Leslie Steinweiss wrote and composed music to bring the story to life again.
The memoir is performed as a one-woman show by actress Kate Fuglei, Omaha, Neb. Fuglei both narrates the story and plays all of the characters including Calof, her husband, her mother-in-law and several other characters.
"It's a play of memory, where Rachel is looking back on her life," Fuglei said. "In a way, it's her viewpoint of these people, her viewpoint of how they were."
The show opens with Calof sitting in her dining room in the St. Paul home, where she wrote the manuscript. As she begins to tell the story, the audience is transported back in time to the 1890s when Calof first immigrated to the United States.
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"It's a very inspirational story about perseverance and inventiveness and character," Steinweiss said.
Much of the story takes place in Devils Lake, where Calof lived for four years in a confined space. She gives birth to her children and endures cold, blistering winters on the prairie. In the end, she overcomes adversity.
"I think that the story is so compelling because ... it tells the real every day details of a woman on the prairie, and it asks the question how do you go on when you feel you can't go on and how do people find perseverance," Fuglei said.
Fuglei performs the entire 80-minute play in a 12-by-14 foot taped-off area with just two wooden chairs, a table and a handkerchief. She said the aesthetic of the show is very stark and spare to portray how Calof's life was like at the time.
"We ask of the audience to use a lot of their own imagination," she said.
As Fuglei narrates and acts as multiple characters, Steinweiss said the music is an integral part of the piece expressing Calof's inner thoughts, feeling, epiphanies and concerns.
The play is both heart-wrenching and hilarious, Fuglei said. "One of the things that helps anyone in a difficult time is to be able to have humor, and that's definitely true of this story."
The play runs Sunday through Aug. 25 at the Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company in St. Paul. For more information, visit mnjewishtheatre.org/Rachel-calof.
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Maki covers Arts & Entertainment and Life & Style for the Herald and can be reached at (701) 780-1122, (800) 477-6572, ext. 1122; or jmaki@gfherald.com .
