Capture The Moon

Circle Theatre presents “Capture The Moon” Nov. 23 & 24 at Alan J. Levine Performing Arts Theatre at the Omaha Jewish Community Center. Performances are Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $20.

Synopsis: “Capture the Moon,” based on the traditional Yiddish tales of Chelm, portrayed as a mythical Eastern European shtetl, its people being awfully poor, very devout, thoroughly democratic (just about anything could justify a town meeting), and of a uniquely innocent way of thinking and acting. The play spotlights this poor village’s humorous attempt to solve a streetlighting problem by capturing the moon and harnessing moonlight. The failure of the first attempt (to capture and store the moonlight in a barrel of water) forces them to seek the help of the neighboring Christian village to climb their church steeple (almost) up to the moon. With their neighbors’ cooperation, the Chelmites then must journey through the surrounding Christian countryside in search of the moon at its lowest point on the horizon. On this journey, they become aware of their “differentness,” and they are finally appreciated for it. Capture the Moon offers, in children’s terms, interesting elements of Jewish history. More than that, though, it is a play about a common devoutness that encourages mutual respect, respect for different ways of thinking and imagining.

Gotta Be Me, a partner organization also providing all abilities program for people with disabilities and their families, will be the opening act for the “Grimm Tales” performances, telling the story of the “Town Musicians of Bremen” based on the account of the German storyteller Dorothea Viehmann.