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.) is an initiative created to help theatre makers foster skills, gain knowledge, build artistic community, and receive valuable professional networking opportunities.
The program seeks to support emerging theatre makers of any age who are working on projects with Jewish themes or who are engaged in issues of Jewish identity. Three to 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 2023 to June 2024.
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 ‘strategic plan’ to identify your project’s 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 invited 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 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 and 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 2023-24 are now open.
The deadline to apply is Tuesday, October 31st at 11:59 p.m. The submission form can be found here: http://segalcentre.org/en/jam-application-form
For questions about JAM, contact Sivan Slapak at sslapak@segalcentre.org.
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JAM cohort of 2023
BRITT DASH
Britt is a multidisciplinary artist living in Montreal. Drawing from her background in writing and performing, Britt is inspired by true life storytelling, puppetry, and improvisational comedy. Her work has been featured in Confabulation, Yarn, the Montreal Fringe Festival, and CBC’s Grown Ups Read Things They Wrote as Kids. She was selected by the Quebec Writers Federation Mentorship Program in 2018, and has been writing since. Her project will explore themes such as fitting in within a small community, school-based learning, and identity. She is grateful to benefit from the guidance of the Jewish Arts Mentorship program team, and excited to begin her project which she hopes to eventually bring to youth in school settings.
ALEX SHIRI
Alex Shiri is a comedy writer/creator born and raised in Montreal. After receiving his BA at McGill, Alex completed a Masters program at Boston University in Television Producing & Management, where he was a finalist in the BU Pilot Writing Contest. While living in Los Angeles, Alex worked at Snapchat and in development interning for Propagate Content and Paul Feig’s production company, Feigco. Alex also has set and production experience, having worked on multiple seasons of hit digital series turned feature film, Carmilla, as 2nd & 3rdAssistant Director in Toronto. After relocating back to Montreal during the pandemic, Alex began to experiment with his creative output, hosting a late-night show on Instagram Live, creating a quarantine business/character “MatchaMan”, and filming an indie comedy pilot, Entourage Girl. Alex is thrilled to be a part of this year’s J.A.M. cohort, developing an original family-centered comedy feature focusing on a group of cousins over the course of a Bar Mitzvah weekend.
NOAH SINGER
Noah Singer is an actor, writer, and producer born and raised in Montreal. He holds a BFA in Acting for the Theatre from Concordia University and a DEC in Cinema, Video, and Communications from Dawson College. Since completing his studies, Noah has been working as an independent theatre artist in Montreal. He recently performed in Wildfire Theatre's Strangers at the 2022 St-Ambroise Fringe Festival and is co-writing a new piece that will debut at this year's festival with his collective Placeholder Productions. He's also been honing his film production skills as a Visual Effects Coordinator on projects including Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. Noah's thrilled to be developing his latest play with Segal Centre's J.A.M. program, a historical fiction exploring his family's roots as Jewish immigrants in Montreal's Mile End. Conflicting ambitions, ideals, and egos clash in this family drama set against a backdrop of organized crime & rising fascism in the 20th century.
ILANA ZACKON
Ilana Zackon is a multidisciplinary performer and creator. A true wandering artist, Ilana has lived and worked in Montreal, New York City, Vancouver, and Toronto. On stage, selected performances include Mazel Tov (Infinitheatre), So, How Should I Be? (Presentation House Theatre), The Array (Upintheair Theatre/Theatre Conspiracy) and Under Milk Wood (Edinburgh Fringe Festival). Directing credits include Part I and in/cognito (Project X Performance), The Great Canadian Porno the Musical (Vancouver Fringe, Jessie Award nominee), and two plays at Speakeasy Theatre’s Pull Fest VII. Ilana is passionate about creating art which invokes the audience to confront their humanity and foster empathy towards one another’s experiences. She is very excited to be part of J.A.M. this year. (Especially because the Segal’s mainstage, then the Saidye, was the very first stage she ever performed on, as a very young child!) Ilana is also a freelance writer and yoga teacher.www.ilanazackon.com
See previous cohorts here.
With the generous support of
