Wandering Stars by Samuel Hunter and Julie Paucker

Premier 2021 at the Vagantenbühne, Berlin, Germany

“The children are gone!” The call goes from street to street in the shtetl in Holeneschti. The poor Cantor’s daughter Reyzl and the rich Benye Rafalovitsch's son Leybl have disappeared. Gone too is the Yiddish traveling theater that stole their hearts. And in which they gave their hearts to each other. In Sholem Aleichem's story, the first encounter with the theater is just as earth-shaking as first love. It opens the door to the imagination, to undreamt-of possibilities, to the world. With heart-warming, sometimes malicious humor, Aleichem tells a story that contains everything: The journey from the provinces to the city, from home to faraway places, from “Old Europe” to the “New World,” from obscurity to stardom. From Holeneschti somewhere on the Black Sea, Reyzl and Leybl are driven on separate paths across Europe and from one stage to the next - will they find each other again in the end?

In this adaptation by the Jewish team of authors Sam Hunter and Julie Paucker, an unconventional, politically committed, rickshaw-riding street theater troupe of today has set out to bring this sprawling, straightforward, very Jewish and Yiddish story to Berlin audiences.