The Wedding Jester with John Feffer
Join us in person on Sunday, February 9, 2025 @ 2:00 p.m., at the Yiddish Book Center
In 1970, in a small village somewhere in Croatia, a stand-up comedian confronts the director of Fiddler on the Roof over errors in the film’s script. In a former life, the comedian was a badkhen, a jester who served as the emcee at Jewish weddings, and he’s familiar with shtetl life in ways that Fiddler’s non-Jewish director couldn’t possibly know. Along the way, The Wedding Jester—an original one-man show written and performed by John Feffer and directed by Josh Perlstein—traces the history of Jewish comedy from the weddings of the Old Country to the Borscht Belt of the United States. It challenges our notions of authenticity and of what is “too Jewish” or “not Jewish enough.” And it does what any good badkhen must do—it makes audiences laugh and cry.
Runtime: The performance is 60 minutes followed by a 30-minute Q&A.
John Feffer is the acclaimed author of more than a dozen plays. His shows have appeared in the One Man Standing and United Solo festivals, at the New York and Capitol Fringe festivals, and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Hailed as a “brilliant writer and performer” by the Washington City Paper, he received a solo performance award from the Maryland State Arts Council. His previous show about the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, directed by Chris Rohmann, debuted at Easthampton’s CitySpace in 2023.