The Rimon Artist Salon Series will conclude its season with “Writing Backwards: Finding Meaning in a Family’s Past” 7 p.m. Wednesday, May 7 at the Playwrights’ Center, 2301 E. Franklin Ave., Minneapolis. The series is presented by Rimon: The Minnesota Jewish Arts Council, an initiative of the Minneapolis Jewish Federation.
Playwright and performer Sun Mee Chomet will present excerpts from her new script based on the life of her Jewish grandfather, who had been forced to flee Austria prior to the Nazi incursion.
Moderator Samuel Norich, publisher of the Jewish Daily Forward, will join Chomet onstage in considering the Holocaust’s impact on a young Jewish Asian-American woman’s life.
As a child who was born in Korea but raised in the United States, Chomet’s life was marked by dislocation and binationality. This experience gave her a special bond to her Austrian-born grandfather.
“An unexpected connection existed in the close relationship my grandfather and I shared — perhaps because we were both born on soil that eventually sent us away, perhaps because we simultaneously longed for and loathed our home countries,” Chomet said in a press release. “The writing process for this project is fascinating and delicate. It involves delving into the family history, filling longstanding voids as well as imagining what my grandfather’s life may have been like prior to 1938.”
Chomet is a 2013-14 McKnight Theater Artist Fellow and is featured in Ten Thousand Things’ world premiere production of Dirt Sticks.
Tickets are $10, or $5 for students; contacting the Rimon office at 952-381-3449 or visit: www.rimonmn.org. The salon is co-sponsored by Playwrights’ Center and the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas (JCRC) — with media sponsorship by the Jewish Daily Forward.
