From Feb. 13 to March 8, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre (RMTC) will present its production of the Tony-nominated play Indecent. The play, directed by RMTC’s artistic director, Kelly Thornton, features a local cast and crew.
Written by Pulitzer Prize winner Paula Vogel, Indecent is a play-within-a-play, set in a small Yiddish theatre. It tells the true story of the controversial play God of Vengeance, written by Sholem Asch. The 1920s Broadway production of God of Vengeance sparked controversy that put its producers and cast at risk, threatening their careers and livelihoods. “Everyone on stage is playing a theatre troupe,” said Josh Bellan, a Winnipeg artist and one of the actors in the production. “This theatre troupe is telling the story of the real-life events that happened during the making and after the making of the God of Vengeance.”
According to Bellan, some of the controversy surrounding the show stemmed from its depiction of Jews throwing a Torah onto the ground and featuring the first lesbian kiss on stage.
Bellan first discovered acting through his love for music.
“I came into acting just sort of from a music place first. I really dug music and then kind of fell into love with musical theatre, and then from that, things just kind of kept rolling on and then I just kept doing theatre,” he said. “Now I’m an adult and doing it still.”
Bellan has appeared in productions of The Little Mermaid, American Idiot and Merrily We Roll Along, among others. He is an alumnus of U of M’s faculty of music, something that greatly influenced him and changed the way he viewed art.
“[I learned] how to think of doing art more in a professional way, as opposed to doing it before, and not thinking about it as much in that sense,” he reflected. “When I first went into university, I was very much like, ‘I’m doing music, it’s going to be very easy,’ but I quickly learned it was a lot more challenging, and I think I grew a lot from that experience.”
In Indecent, Bellan plays Avram the Ingenue, a character who takes on four different roles in the play-within-a-play. He said the characters Avram portrays are those who want to see change in the world. Bellan’s primary role is that of playwright Sholem Asch.
“I think my favourite part of playing Sholem is just the wide journey that he has,” Bellan reflected. “He starts off trying to make a change with his play, and as he gets older, and things start to impact his life more […] he ends up becoming a little bit of a recluse and doesn’t really involve himself as much as he once did. He still does things from his writing, but never, not to that point that he was when he was at that younger age.”
Bellan says his preparation usually involves understanding the journey of each character he plays and making sure their arcs make sense to him. Playing four different roles in a single production has been a new challenge for him, and he said that the characters he plays are similar in some ways and very different in others.
“The prep, just in terms of that, has been a little bit more involved than [other productions] have been in the past,” he said.
Bellan noted that while Indecent includes music, it is a play rather than a musical. Coming from a musical theatre background, he found the experience different from what he was used to.
“With musicals, I find that coming from that background of music, it’s very quick for me to get into that,” he said. “For Indecent, there is music in it, but […] it’s more of a transition-type thing when the music is involved, or a spotlight on a certain thing.”
During rehearsals, Bellan said he has learned a lot. He said that he learns new things about the show every day and praised the show’s writing. “My favourite part has been the discoveries made along the way,” said Bellan. “Just in terms of working on certain things and going into them with a certain expectation and then having that flipped on its head.”
When asked what he thought audiences would love about the show, Bellan said the show’s themes are quite timely, given current world events.
“I love the show because of how timely it feels,” he said. “The show deals with a lot of censorship […] a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment, which we see a lot right now down south […] having that LGBT content in there and also dealing with antisemitism.”
Bellan said he hopes audiences see themselves reflected in the play.
“Finding themselves in [the play], that’s always what I really hope an audience gets out of when they watch it, just seeing themselves in the show,” he said.
Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s production of Indecent runs from Feb. 13 through March 8 at the John Hirsch Mainstage. For tickets and further information, visit royalmtc.ca.
