The Sydney Jewish Writers Festival will move beyond the printed page this August with the launch of Festival of the Spoken Word, a new month-long program of live Jewish storytelling.
Presented by Shalom Collective, the festival will feature theatre, music, staged readings, poetry, comedy, conversation and performance across Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs and North Shore.
The program runs from Sunday, 2 August to Sunday, 30 August, bringing together established and emerging Jewish artists, writers and performers whose work explores memory, identity, history and contemporary Jewish life.
International guests include Israeli authors Ayelet Tsabari and Yishay Ishi Ron, who will appear as part of the Australian Jewish Writer Awards.
Tsabari is an Israeli-Canadian author whose books include The Best Place on Earth, The Art of Leaving and Songs for the Brokenhearted, which won a National Jewish Book Award for Fiction.
Ron is an Israeli author, former elite combat soldier and PTSD survivor whose novel Dog was longlisted for the Sapir Prize and has been published in English.
Festival Director Hannah Saunders said the new format reflected an expanded vision for the Sydney Jewish Writers Festival.
“Stories remain at the heart of what we do. This year we wanted to create more ways to encounter them,” Saunders said.
“Festival of the Spoken Word brings together theatre, music, conversation and performance to create experiences that begin with language and come to life in the room.
“At a time when opportunities for Jewish creatives to share their work publicly are increasingly limited, the festival creates space for Jewish artists, writers, and performers to bring audiences together around contemporary Jewish stories.”
The new festival arrives amid growing concerns about the place of Jewish voices in the arts following October 7, with some Jewish writers, performers and artists reporting harassment, professional exclusion and pressure because of their identity or views.
Organisers say the need for spaces celebrating contemporary Jewish stories has become even more important in the shadow of the antisemitic attack at Bondi in December last year.
Other highlights include One of a Kind, a semi-staged musical theatre work; staged readings of Ron Elisha’s Wake and Dear Jessy, Dear Miriam by Jessica Chapnik Kahn and Miriam Hechtman; and music and performance events including Who By Water with Anita Lester and Fugitive with Simon Tedeschi.
Joanne Fedler will appear in conversation with Magdalena Ball, while the comedy and spoken word program includes You Were Great in Shule! and Voices of the Tribe.
The festival also includes Out of the Depths, drawn from one of the earliest collections of Holocaust songs, and Hineinu: Songs for This Time, a gathering of Hebrew and English song, prayer, chant and spoken word responding to the aftermath of the Bondi attack and the long shadow of October 7.
The Festival of the Spoken Word runs throughout August. For program details and bookings, visit https://www.shalomcollective.com.au/whats-on/festival-of-the-spoken-word.
A 15 per cent discount applies automatically to bookings of eight or more tickets.