Green Spears and Pomegranate Seeds explores a woman’s journey through the garden. Written by Deborah Sheppard and Vincenzo Sestito, the one-woman play moves from the idyllic sun-baked of cottage summers in the Eastern Townships, to the lush springtimes of Northern Virginia and back to the oak shade of a Toronto ravine. The play moves from garden, to living room, to office, to kitchen, to garden as the narrator keeps finding her way back to the earth at each new phase of her life.

Up against a lyrical botanical backdrop, the one-woman play weaves through three relationships that mark each new phase of her life: her father, a Virginia farmer and the six-year-old boy who lives next door. Green Spears and Pomegranate Seeds is beautifully and powerfully written using a unique blend of poetry and prose.   This stirringly true story is filled with sensuality, colour and humour that will leave you crying one moment and laughing the next.

Green Spears and Pomegranate Seeds is approximately 50 minutes in length and was first performed in March 2014 at the Papermill Theatre in Toronto to sold out-audiences.

Hear the Crows’ Wings is a true story of three generations blends comic playfulness, poetic lyricism and haunting narrative: nostalgic years of growing up in Montreal, halcyon summers in the Eastern Townships, misfortune in Ukraine. Co-written by poet Deborah Sheppard and theatre director Vincenzo Sestito, with projections rendered by artist Annabel Weinstein, the one-person play is one hour and ten minutes in duration (a 50 minute version is also available). It was first performed at the Winchester Street Theatre, Toronto, in January 2009, to sold-out houses.

The set is simple, consisting of two chairs: a chrome and vinyl chair evocative of the 1950s and a wooden spindle chair which represents old world Ukraine. Whimsical and evocative historical and family images are cued in as the play unfolds. 1950s hit parade tunes and traditional Jewish songs serve as bridges between segments and create the feeling of time and place.

Moving from a 1950s chrome vinyl chair, the narrator tells the story of growing up in Montreal and the humorous contradictions of going to a Protestant school where , surprisingly, most of the students were Jewish. We meet her father, a handsome, intense man who lives his life with passion, whether it’s his political beliefs, his work life, his taste in music or his garden.  We drive to the cottage and experience the temptation of French fry stands and the shimmering beauty of the Eastern Townships landscape.

The narrator moves across the stage to a simple wooden chair, and introduces us to a small boy in the Ukrainian shtetl of Koretz in the early 1900s.  He is a lively little fellow, testing his parents’ patience, but basking in the warmth of family love.

We discover the tragedy that befell tens of thousands of Jewish children in Eastern Europe. The rescue of the boy and his relocation to Canada brings with it more painful discoveries, and revelations.

A Minyan of One is a one-woman play commissioned by the Cantors’ Assembly, the international association of cantors affiliated with Conservative Judaism, and performed at their Annual Convention in July, 2011 as part of a ceremony held at the Holocaust Memorial at Earl Bales Park. Written by poet Deborah Sheppard and theatre director, Vincenzo Sestito, the 17-minute play describes the narrator’s family-filled childhood in Montreal, replete with holiday feasts and stories, but with a troubling undercurrent of things not always being safe for the Jewish community. A curious 10 year old, she reads a history book of accomplishments and achievements of Jews, and also of exile and persecution. She turns a page and is confronted by her first images of the Holocaust – and the world becomes a different place for her.

The story shifts to a visit many years later to her ancestral home in the Ukraine in the former Pale of Settlement where Jews were required to live. She is thrilled to find herself in the little shtetl of family lore, to see the river and the hills about which she had heard so much. She meets the wife of the one remaining Jew, is invited inside their home and is taken to see the old Jewish cemetery. She walks among the headstones of her ancestors of her family who had emigrated long before the war and bears witness to the unspeakable loss of those who stayed behind.

A Minyan of One has been performed at the Cantor’s Assembly Annual Convention in Toronto, July 2011, at Beth Radom Synagogue as part of Holocaust Remembrance Week, November 2012 and at the Papermill Theatre Toronto, March 2014.

This play is highly suitable for educational settings. It requires no set and can be performed in classrooms. Its content makes it relevant to a discussion of the Holocaust and other historical and social issues. There is an available study guide that can be used in conjunction with the play.