On the Job

Jerome Saibil and Eli Batalion major in hip hop multitasking

Relaxing. That’s the surprising way Jerome Saibil describes the approximately five months he spent last summer and fall constantly touring with various shows, chiefly Job: The Hip-Hop Musical.

“We don’t have to rehearse anymore, so touring is like working out once a day, and the rest of the time you relax,” explains the 22-year-old co-creator of the runaway Fringe hit. But then, judging by Job, and everything else Saibil and childhood friend Eli Batalion have achieved at their tender age, these guys have more energy than the rest of us. And that’s good, because their dance cards are pretty full for the next eight months.

Montrealers are currently getting a second chance to experience Job, which is one of five shows in Centaur Theatre’s WildSide festival until Jan. 18.

Saibil and Batalion, who have been writing together since they were 13-year-old Bialik high school students, honed their MC skills while at Brown University in a project called the Grafenberg All-Stars (named after the doctor who discovered the G-spot). Although they are satirists, they also have an immense respect for the hip hop form, and it shows in their moves and their beats.

After graduating last May, they were writing another play for the 2002 Fringe circuit, when they suddenly hit on the idea of the hip hop musical. Saibil claims that Job was thrown together in about two weeks. He doesn’t even know how they settled on updating the Biblical story: It just seemed right.

Job: The Hip-Hop Musical will have a two-week run at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre in February and March, followed by four weeks in New York in April (venue to be confirmed). Meanwhile, Saibil and Batalion are working on a sequel for this year’s Fringe circuit. It will not deal with the Job story but will reprise their MC Cain and MC Abel personas.

They are looking forward to September 2003, Saibil says, when, without the responsibilities of school, they expect to be able to devote themselves completely to their company, Foqué dans la tête productions, which is as much about music and video as it is about theatre. “We’re eager to see what we can do if we devote months to a project,” Saibil says. Same here.

— Amy Barratt