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 creators 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 2025 to June 2026.
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 for 2025-26 are now closed.
For questions about JAM, contact Sivan Slapak at sslapak@segalcentre.org.
JAM COHORT 2026
Josh Fichman-Goldberg
Josh Fichman-Goldberg is a Montreal-born cultural advocate and multidisciplinary performing artist. He explores Jewish identity through performances as his original drag-clown character Rokhl (Instagram: @itsrokhl), a theatrical exploration of Ashkenazi Jewish life that bridges historical memory and contemporary queer & gender expression. Passionate about Jewish history and diaspora culture, he is an active participant in Montreal's klezmer music scene and has attended KlezKanada’s summer retreat as an Azrieli scholarship recipient and as their 2025 ombudsperson. Through his performances and showcase events, Josh seeks to celebrate and reimagine Jewish cultural expression for contemporary audiences. He is also pursuing a career in law, currently working in consumer rights advocacy for a Canadian non-profit organization.
Michele Shashoua Reich
Art leads. Art consoles. Stories endure. Michele comes to theatre and storytelling through an unconventional path. A creative strategist by profession and a multidisciplinary practitioner at heart, she is drawn to the ways stories shape identity and belonging. Her work has long focused on helping others express complex ideas; only recently has she turned that inquiry inward.
Through Jewish Arts Mentorship program, she is developing a documentary-style theatre project rooted in her Iraqi Jewish heritage and the near-extinct Judeo-Iraqi language. Using interviews, archival fragments, and the sensory details of culture — its sounds, tastes, and expressions — she explores how identity is carried forward and reshaped across generations.
She sees herself as a curator of voices, gathering and giving form to the memories that have shaped her family and community.
Rae Vineberg
Rae Vineberg creates deeply personal, non-fiction plays, performance, poetry and public art, and documentary plays. Creating and holding meaningful spaces for personal stories- as a bridge- remembering us back to ourselves, and each other- is at the art of everything she does. She views herself as a “re-emerging artist” and she is over the actual moon to be part of the J.A.M. 2025-26 cohort. She is returning to full-time art practice after scaling back for a number of years while raising her daughter, who is now a wonderful young artist in her own right. Cherished moments and projects include Telegraph from Departure Bay, recently celebrating its 25th anniversary with much of the original cast at Le Lion d’Or, and dreaming of a remount. The play was also part of the Harvard Independent Film Group Readings in NYC after its original run at Le Monument National. Two amazing residencies at La Baraque, one for The Development Possibility, the other for The Marathon of Accommodation. Being part of the awesome FTA with beloved play Coming Home to Roost was an honour and a joy.
See previous cohorts here.