About Magid Ensemble

“Extraordinary, Suspenseful, Mesmerizing” – Shterna and the Lost Voice transports audiences into the rich world of Yiddish folklore. This immersive storytelling production follows Shterna on an epic hero’s journey, accompanied by live original klezmer music and an exquisite papercut crankie.

The Magid Ensemble (“magid” meaning “storyteller” in Yiddish) is a multidisciplinary group creating new work that integrates folk art, traditional oral storytelling and original klezmer music. The Ensemble consists of award-winning musicians and composers Mattias Kaufmann, Raffi Boden, and Rachel Leader, storyteller Weaver, and visual artist Kiah Raymond.

This original story, developed through rigorous research on Eastern-European Jewish folklore, is illustrated with a backlit “crankie”, a long scroll wound onto two spools that illustrates the story as it unwinds. The work incorporates shadow puppetry and is inspired with motifs from Jewish papercut art. The newly composed score accentuates moments of mystery and beauty, and brings the audience wholly into the world of the tale. Shterna and the Lost Voice is a highly engaging hour-long storytelling performance suitable for audiences of all ages!