Bente Kahan: “HOME - Songs and Tales by a European Jew”

The artist will take us through the history of her family, from the thirteenth century to the present. After leaving Spain, Bente Kahan’s ancestors travelled through many European countries and, after World War II, settled down in Norway. The family’s journey introduces the audience to the complicated fate of European Jews. Since its premiere in Norway in 2000, “HOME”, featuring songs in Yiddish, Hebrew, and other European languages, has played on many prestigious stages in Poland and all over the world.
Bente Kahan is a Norwegian-born Jewish actress, musician, director and playwright. She has been the director of the Center for Jewish Culture and Education at the White Stork Synagogue in Wrocław since 2005. She studied theatre in Tel Aviv and New York and has been performing since 1981. She began her career at Habima, Israel’s national theatre, and at the National Theatre in Norway. Her first performance in Yiddish was in Oslo in 1983. After many years of working as an actress in Oslo she began performing in her own monodramas, written with Ellen Foyn Bruun, a Norwegian stage director. In 1990 she founded the production company Teater Dybbuk-Oslo; her first productions were created in Warsaw in cooperation with Polish musicians Dariusz Świnoga and Mirosław Kuźniak. Teater Dybbuk-Oslo productions have also performed on many stages around the world.
In 2000 Bente Kahan was awarded by the Norwegian Art Council for her artistic achievement. In 2006 she received the Wrocław Mayor’s Award, and in 2010, after the opening of the White Stork Synagogue following its restoration, the title of Ambassador of Wrocław and the German-Polish Silesian Culture Award. That same year she was awarded the Medal of Merit for Tolerance by the Tolerance Ecumenical Foundation. In 2013 she received the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta for her outstanding artistic achievements, her merits with respect to intercultural dialogue as well as rescuing the heritage of Lower Silesia.
20 April, 7:30 p.m., free admission, online reservation required.
Supported from the Norway and EEA Grants by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway
www.eeagrants.org, www.norwaygrants.org
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