Remembering the great jay hamburger
Ethe world can be moved or changed through a poem -Jay Hamburger
ach night of theatre began with the director—my father Jay Hamburger—reading a poem to the audience. I remember watching him step onto the stage with his unruly beard and, in a voice that filled the room, thank us all for showing up.
From the audience, Jay’s opening words held a dramatic mixture of enthusiasm, curiosity, and humour. Such a warm greeting, whether on the stage or the street, characterized nearly every encounter of his life.
Jay was a poet, theatre director, and radio host. He spent the last 30 years of his life creating dramatic works that celebrated the diversity and strength of his community on Vancouver’s east side. Jay died of pancreatic cancer on March 26 surrounded by family in the home he so dearly loved. He was 76 years old.
Jay was born in New York City on July 18, 1947. He first stepped onstage as Caliban in Shakespeare’s The Tempest at the age of 12. At 20, Jay wrote a love poem while studying theatre at Carnegie Mellon University. The poem, titled By My Side, would become lyrics for the hit musical Godspell. He would later donate the royalties from the song to a hospital in southern Alabama.
Inspired by the beatniks, Jay spent the next decade writing poetry, founding and acting in travelling theatre troupes, and engaging in political activism, including protests against the Vietnam War. In the early ‘80s, Jay was arrested handing out anti-war poetry at the Rocky Flats nuclear arms plant near Denver. He was sentenced to community service teaching theatre to low-income youth. He was more than happy to comply.
Around this time, Jay started making trips to Canada to see his mother, the writer Edith Iglauer, who was living in Garden Bay on the Sunshine Coast. Soon Jay found himself living on the Coast, too, where he began engaging in environmental efforts.
At a protest encampment amidst the old-growth forest of the Carmanah Valley, Jay met my mother, the artist Atty Gell, in 1988. Thus began a life-long partnership. Jay and Atty were later arrested at the historic Clayoquot Sound logging protest in 1993.
By 1994, my parents had moved to East Vancouver and I was born. That same year, Jay founded Theatre in the Raw out of a storefront cafe on Commercial Drive. The community-focused theatre company’s motto was “Giving Exposure to Voices Seldom Heard”—an ethos that defined Jay’s creative work.
From the beginning, Theatre in the Raw was a community event and a family affair. Jay had a knack for inviting people onstage, no matter their background or experience. Amidst an ever-growing community of artists and performers, Atty would design stage sets and posters while I sat through endless rehearsals. By the age of five, I was encouraged to draw posters, too.
Over the next 30 years, Jay would direct and produce 17 mainstage productions and over 180 original one-acts in both conventional and unusual venues throughout Vancouver and across Canada. His productions ranged from new and unknown plays to classics such as Waiting for Godot and The Threepenny Opera.
In 1999, Jay started the Theatre Workshop at the Carnegie Community Centre in the Downtown Eastside. For the next eight years, he worked to produce creative and original plays by local writers and residents from the neighbourhood. During this time, Jay met the writer and activist Bob Sarti, who would go on to collaborate with him on three original musicals about the community.
Later known as the Untold Stories of Vancouver, the musical trilogy included Bruce the Musical in 2008, about the legendary activist Bruce Erikson; and The Raymur Mothers in 2014, inspired by the single mothers of Raymur Housing Project who stood up against corporate power
to defend their children and community.
Alongside his community mentorship and theatre direction, Jay was a long-time host for Vancouver Co-op Radio’s The Arts Rationale and The Raw Diaries. For nearly 30 years, he produced hundreds of unique interviews alongside dozens of original radio plays for the station. In 2016, he received the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award for Community Engaged Arts.
Upon receiving the award, Jay said: “There is something going on for us on this planet that is better than the violence, hatred, or recessive problems that can surround. For a possible moment, the world can be moved or changed through a poem, or a play, or a piece of music put out there for the health of the community.”
Jay continued to broadcast community stories on Vancouver Co-op Radio until the final week of his life. Despite his illness, he was always thinking of the next person to interview. His curiosity was endless.
Sylvan Hamburger is a visual artist based in Vancouver. He is the son of Jay Hamburger.