COLLEGE OF THE CANYONS THEATRE
VILLAGE OF IDIOTS
Black Box Theater
THURSDAY-SATURDAY, NOV. 19-21, 2026 | 7 PM
SATURDAY-SUNDAY, NOV. 21-22, 2026 | 2 PM
A family comedy based on Eastern European Jewish folktales of the village of Chelm. Chelm is a real city in Poland, which, in the 17th through 19th centuries, was a shtetl, or small village with a significant Jewish population, and got the reputation among the other villages as the place where all the fools lived.
Village of Idiots weaves together dozens of traditional stories and jokes into the tale of Yosef, a deserting soldier on the run, who decides to hide out in Chelm, partly because of his attraction to young Miriam, the other Outsider in the village. At first Yosef is merely annoyed by the “Chelmniks,” who light every match in the box to make sure they all work, or who don’t understand that when you’re cutting down a tree, the saw moves and the tree stands still. But when word reaches Chelm that the Cossack soldiers are planning a pogrom – a violent raid on the village – and Yosef desperately tries to help his new neighbours prepare for the attack, the apparent foolishness of the Chelmniks ceases to be a laughing matter.
