Segal Centre Jewish Arts Mentorship (J.A.M.)
What is the Segal Centre J.A.M.?
The Segal Centre is a leading English-language theatre in Montreal and an important cultural resource for the Jewish community. Throughout its history, the Segal Centre has supported emerging artists, providing them with opportunities to develop their work and reach the next steps in their careers.
The Segal Centre’s Jewish Arts Mentorship (J.A.M.) initiative was created to help theatre makers foster skills, gain knowledge, build an artistic community, and receive valuable professional networking opportunities.
The program seeks to support emerging theatre-makers over the age of 21 working on a project with Jewish themes or are engaged in issues of Jewish identity. Four candidates are chosen per cohort.
The program includes one-on-one artistic mentorship, group discussions about Jewish identity and the arts, and final presentations by each artist. This season, J.A.M. will run from November 2024 to June 2025.
What kinds of projects are a good match for J.A.M.?
Projects may include but are not limited to scripts, screenplays, physical theatre, puppetry, spoken word, operettas, drag, multidisciplinary, experimental, research, and more.
What happens over the mentorship year?
- Each J.A.M. participant is offered monthly individual meetings with Artistic Mentor Adina Katz to create a personalized plan to identify your goals, steps needed to achieve them and support you in developing your creative work.
- Monthly group discussions on Jewish identity and the arts facilitated by the Segal Centre’s Jewish Programs Manager Sivan Slapak, with guests from the Jewish and arts spheres. These are an opportunity to receive peer feedback on your creative work, engage in topics of shared interest, and build an artistic community.
- Opportunity to connect with various Segal staff members with expertise in relevant fields to assist you in professional development.
- Becoming part of the Segal Centre community and invited to events as well as productions when possible.
- Access to Segal rehearsal space for up to two hours per week (when available)
- Networking opportunities in the larger professional art world.
Who can apply?
The Segal Centre J.A.M. is an inclusive program that aims to unite a group of strong, diverse voices fitting the following criteria:
- Emerging artist of any age over 21 in the performing arts
- Living in Montreal or the surrounding area
- You do not have to be Jewish to apply. We welcome all candidates. However, your project must engage with Jewish themes and recognize that the mentorship year focuses on Jewish identity and the arts.
We welcome and encourage submissions from individuals of all gender identities, cultures, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and abilities. We would like to know how to address you. If you choose, you may provide us with the pronouns you would like us to use in your submission, or any other self-identification you wish to share if you are comfortable doing so. If you are a person with a disability and require assistance during the application, please let us know and we will work with you to meet your needs.
Chosen candidates will receive a $1000 stipend for the year.
Submissions will reopen in fall of 2025
For questions about JAM, contact Sivan Slapak at sslapak@segalcentre.org.
_________________________
J.A.M 2025 COHORT
Maria Melititskaya
Maria is a queer poet and dancer from Russia. She writes on scraps of paper whenever an experience overwhelms her, and she is often overwhelmed by combinations of beauty, humor, and grief that spreads from her early childhood. Maria works as a writer after moving through a linguistics degree and a career in social work and trauma counselling. She is a being of light. Maria is proud to be in cohort and in cahoots at JAM. For her project, she will be developing a show, crafting together her dance practice, her voice, and her poems, drafts, and memories of people and landscapes collected while living in proximity of two wars, between March ‘22 and March ‘24.
Jonathan Pariente
Jonathan Pariente is an actor, director, and writer based in Montreal. As a child, he always dreamed of becoming a boxer, inspired by the fighters he admired on TV. It wasn’t until later that he realized they were all actors, sparking his love for performance and storytelling. This passion led him to graduate from the Dome Theatre, and continue to refine his skills through ongoing classes and workshops.
Since then, Jonathan has continued to diversify his career through Theatre, Film, TV, and Voice work, collaborating with major companies like Netflix and Apple TV. He is stoked to join JAM, where he plans to develop a project close to his heart, inspired by real-life experiences, exploring the struggle of faith and belief during life’s most vulnerable moments.
Abi Sanie
Abi Sanie (she/they) is a Montréal-based director, stage manager, educator, and theatre maker. A graduate of Concordia University’s Theatre program, specializing in Performance Creation, Abi’s work explores queerness, protest, love, and liberation. Their artistic vision is deeply influenced by their Moroccan Jewish heritage, and experience as a first generation American and neurodivergent artist. She is the newly appointed Artistic Director of Dense and Stage Theatre, a proud Puppeteer with Bread and Puppet Theater, and an emerging Intimacy professional. Abi is dedicated to fostering artistic expression and joy in their community. Visit abisanie.com for more.
Reanne Spitzer
Reanne began her performance journey dancing in the international Hip-Hop troop Culture Shock, but pivoted to theatre through the vessel of improv. A jack of all trades, master of one (latkes), Reanne is an actor, musician, dancer, choreographer, writer, producer and registered massage therapist. She has contributed artistically to companies such as Bad Hats Theatre, Soulpepper Theatre, MTYP, Carousel Players (with support from YPT), The Howland Company/Crow’s Theatre, National Arts Centre and more. She is thrilled to be working with The Segal Centre to develop a new work with the support of both the arts and Jewish community by her side! Through this mentorship, she hopes to create something brave and entertaining that reflects the current culture of identity politics.
See previous cohorts here.