Jake Epstein to debut play he co-wrote with author-mom Kathy Kacer

TORONTO – Former “Degrassi” star Jake Epstein is back from Broadway and about to debut a play he co-wrote with his mother, author Kathy Kacer.

So, what’s it like writing with your mom and having to edit each other’s work?

“It should be disastrous,” Epstein says with a laugh in a phone interview. “(But) it’s been surprisingly wonderful, I say cautiously.

“I’m such a huge fan of my mom’s writing and I have a huge respect for her. As a young writer, it’s been an incredible experience.”

The Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company will present the world premiere of “Therefore Choose Life” at the Toronto Centre for the Arts from April 18 to May 10.

Theatre company co-artistic director Avery Saltzman stars as a Holocaust survivor who moves to Canada and settles down with a Canadian woman (Sheila McCarthy).

Epstein plays their neurotic son who means well but “doesn’t always say the right thing,” he says. The cast also includes Amelia Sargisson and Lisa Horner. Rachel Slaven directs the show.

Epstein says he and Kacer started collaborating six years ago after he’d finished starring in a tour of the Tony Award-winning rock musical “Spring Awakening.”

“I came home to Toronto, I didn’t have an apartment and so I moved back in with my parents, as one does,” he explains with a laugh.

Epstein was interested in writing and had done so while on tour. When Kacer heard that, she suggested they work on a story together.

“Because I was living at home, it was this perfect storm of circumstance and we spent the summer writing our first draft,” says Epstein, who played bipolar musician Craig Manning on “Degrassi: The Next Generation” from 2002 to 2008.

Kacer is an award-winning author of more than a dozen books on the Second World War and the Holocaust (both of her parents were survivors).

But Epstein says she’d never written anything about her own experience of being a child of survivors, so they decided to make the play a generational tale inspired by a real-life story she’d heard through friends of friends.

Since then, a lot has happened for Epstein, who attended the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal.

There was a role in the North American tour of Green Day’s “American Idiot” musical, not to mention his 2012 Broadway debut in “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” as the alternate for the lead.

“I went down there 2 1/2 years ago when I got my green card and six weeks later I was cast as Spider-Man in ‘Spider-Man,’ making my Broadway debut. It was surreal,” he says.

“My parents took my sister and I to New York every summer. That was our family trip, to see Broadway shows, so I’ve grown up loving theatre and big Broadway theatre.”

Then last year he originated the role of lyricist Gerry Goffin in “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.”

“I grew up loving folk music,” says Epstein. “I feel like I was born in the wrong generation, and to get to do a musical set in the ’50s and ’60s and sing songs written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin, it was a really amazing experience.”

Epstein also recently shot a couple of indie movies as well as a few episodes of the TV series “Remedy.”

He says he and Kacer worked on “Therefore Choose Life” through Skype sessions and various workshops over the years.

He’s been back home for a month now and feels it’s “been a labour of love.”

“Working with my mom, it’s like a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” says Epstein.

“To get to share my mom’s writing with her and a love of writing with her has been a highlight.”