An email to TellAri

Becky here – with my artist hat on…. As an actor and producer one of my greatest hopes is that people will come see the show. And one of my greatest disappointments is when I hear that someone missed the show …because they couldn’t afford it.

Although there is no question that in order to keep creating new shows – tickets have to be sold…but it is also true that many,  if not all, of the theaters in the area offer PWYC nights.  Personally, I like to think that  it’s partially because we — the artists who create and who carry the sometimes earned moniker “starving” — know exactly what it feels like to miss a show you’d love to see due to a light wallet.

All this to say…we received the email below from a visitor to the theater.  And in response,  I think I can safely say…our Pay What You Can shows are here to stay!

 

Dear Ari and Patricia:

“Pay What You Can,” should be re-branded as, “Open to Humanity.”

That is my take away as being an appreciative and grateful recipient.

This past year, I have been in transition and last night was the second time I have taken advantage of the program.

Being a native New Yorker, basically a “Broadway Boy,” legitimate theatre is very important to me and my emotional makeup.

Venues like The Kennedy Center price people like me right out of the market and make it virtually impossible to enjoy the theatre.

“Pay What You Can,” provides opportunity and a sense of stability. I can be struggling financially at the time, but, I still get to be on even playing field and enjoy the theatre like my neighbor.

All because of the DC JCC. It’s powerful. And, I walk away feeling whole and like a participant in life.

Soon, I will land back on my feet and the first thing I will do is buy a season subscription as my way of saying, “Thank You.”

The program needs to continue as it serves a very valuable purpose and keeps folks connected to the performing arts.

Please forward this email onto the appropriate board members as they need to know how important of a program this truly is.

- Rich Moonblatt

In case you don’t have time to Google on your own

Becky here:

The longer I am here the more I realize that I spend a lot of time on the internet…between keeping our website as up to date as possible, writing emails, selling tickets, keeping up our Facebook (are you our friend?), tweeting on Twitter (follow us!), blogging (randomly), researching organizations, researching cameras for our foray into video (which will be even more internet funtime) and researching our incoming shows and that’s only supposed to be a small part of my job.

Which brings me to this…as I was scouring the internet for information on Jim Brochu…and by scouring what I actually mean is I typed “Jim Brochu” into google and then clicked and read and then back and then click and read…
Until I came upon the numerous You Tube delights out there…not only of Jim (some with a cat on his head..) but of Zero Mostel. I honestly couldn’t stop myself. Do you know how funny and talented both of these men are? Really – In all honesty.

And at this point – I would like to plead the fifth on how much of the work day was spent “researching”. Seriously I think that You Tube is it’s own Black Hole.

In any case, I will be sharing my research with the blog…on Facebook…on Twitter and I would love to hear what you think!

Below is a video of Jim getting ready for one of the last incarnations of Zero Hour. Enjoy!

One Woman July Festival – Lise Bruneau Rocks!

What a great and timely article! Congratulations, Lise. And let’s hear it for DC Theatre Scene. What aren’t they on top of?

New Forms or Nothing?

Shirley here. 

We gathered this Sunday, July 12 for our penultimate “Artistic Director’s Roundtable Discussion”, titled: “New Forms”: Adapting the Classics. The title of the talk came from a well-known line of Treplev’s from THE SEAGULL: “We need new forms of expression. We need new forms, and if we can’t have them we had better have nothing.” Of course in our version the line, and that specific cry for a more avant-garde theater, has changed to meet the circumstances of the world we’ve created. Which seemed a perfect launching point for this discussion…

Joining us on the panel were:
• Joe Banno, Former Artistic Director of Source Theater, Freelance Director
• Jacqueline Lawton, playwright and dramaturg
• Jason Loewith, playwright and adapter, Executive Director of the National New Play Network
and
• Ari Roth, Artistic Director of Theater J, adapter of THE SEAGULL ON 16TH STREET

First though–two quick definitions of “adaptation”:
Literary Adaptation: Literary adaptation is the adapting of a literary source (e.g., a novel, short story, poem) to another genre or medium, such as a film, a stage play, or even a video game. It can also involve adapting the same literary work in the same genre or medium, just for different purposes, e.g., to work with a smaller cast, in a smaller venue (or on the road), or for a different demographic group.

Adaptation: The process whereby an organism becomes better suited to its habitat. Also, the term adaptation may refer to a characteristic which is especially important for an organism’s survival.

The second one–the biological definition–interested me. What happens if we substitute the word “play” for the word “organism”?

But back to the panel. With introductions out of the way we started with the question, “What about a piece of original source material inspires a writer to want to adapt it?”

Washington Post Feature on Our Seagull

The Nest of Times: Making ‘Seagull’ Fly Anew
By Celia Wren

Special to The Washington Post

Sunday, June 21, 2009

“When I write a play I feel uncomfortable, as if somebody is poking me in the neck,” Anton Chekhov once confessed. Theater J Artistic Director Ari Roth and his colleagues, too, have suffered twinges — philosophical ones — while crafting “The Seagull on 16th Street,” a risky, shofar-and-R.E.M.-inflected spin on Chekhov’s 1896 classic.

“I found myself, with my staff, talking — and sometimes arguing — about, ‘Can we do this play? Should we do this play? Are we allowed to do this play?’ ” Roth recalled last month, in an interview in his tiny 16th Street office.

His team resolved that particular bout of soul-searching, which reflected a seeming disconnect between Theater J’s mandate — to explore the Jewish cultural heritage — and Chekhov’s oeuvre. The upshot is the show that officially opens tonight, under John Vreeke’s direction. Adapted by Roth, “Seagull on 16th” veers from Chekhov’s script, with tweaked lines, new scenes and re-imagined character identities.

Why Do a Reading of Churchill’s “Seven Jewish Children” at a Jewish Theater?

Check out this important post from Washington DCJCC’s Josh Ford, our Chief Programming Officer. It’s up on the 16th Street J blog and cross-posted on the Makom website

You can understand the outrage. Imagine it: a non-Jewish, British playwright has the temerity to write something as provocative as the line, “The Jews do not belong here” and a Jewish theater, in a fit of obvious self-loathing, gives that voice a venue by placing it on its stage. I am not speaking of the sudden controversy surrounding Caryl Churchill’s short-play, Seven Jewish Children which the Washington DCJCC’s resident professional company Theater J will present readings of this week. Rather, I am referring to the same Theater J’s production of David Hare’s Via Dolorosa nearly a decade ago, in the fall of 2000.
Back then we knew we were undertaking something with the potential to be controversial for its outsider’s observations of the Israel-Palestine conflict. We braced ourselves for outrage. We prepared our leadership for potential protests, even boycotts. We were not doing this merely for controversy’s sake, but because of our belief, that the work – consisting mainly of Mr. Hare’s channeling the voices of the various Israelis and Palestinians he met – confronted us with a challenging and artful portrayal of ourselves and our Israeli cousins.

Naomi Regan’s call for boycott of “disgusting play”

Israeli religious author Naomi Regan (Women’s Minyan) writes the following in a global email to her avid readers, using one of the most reliably flammable subject headers out there:

—– Original Message —–
Sent: Tuesday, March 17, 2009 3:40 PM
Subject: BOYCOTT “Seven Jewish Children”, the Jews=Nazis play, now in U.S.

Friends:  An Irish hotel had the decency to cancel a performance of the disgusting play “Seven Jewish Children,” whose main thesis is that Israeli Jews are just as bad as Nazis. But that doesn’t mean that it won’t be showing in a theatre near you soon, including the Jewishly-funded and supported Theatre J, house in the Jewish Community center in Washington. And all to raise money for the poor Palestinians of Gaza! What is the matter with people? Please protest. Please boycott. Please raise your voices.  Naomi

Here’s my response to a friend who attached the the Regan email.

>>from ari:  The Naomi Regan piece is a small smear which inaccurately describes both the piece in question and our intentions with it. The play has nothing in it to suggest anything equating Israeli behavior with Nazism. We all know what Nazism achieved. Caryl Churchill’s critique of Israeli Jewish contains no parallel to any aspect of the Nazi regime.

We, at Theater J, are presenting a reading of Churchill’s play not to endorse it, but to examine it, to respond to it, to listen to it, and to interpret it. Much has been said about the play that is passionate, and some of the passion is over-heated and inaccurate. The play is very clever and deft in accurately overhearing what parents–Jewish parents–might say to their children. The play moves to a place where the parents say less attractive things. The play, it seems to me, attempts to hold up a mirror to capture and render the language of outrage — the language of feeling under siege — the language of being fed up and furious and, in that way, the play voices a certain kind of Jewish outrage. And it’s not a pretty picture. We hear that in Naomi Regan’s shrill call for a boycott.  And we hear that in pages 6 and 7 of Churchill’s 7 page play.

I am critical of the play, and that’s why I’m offering our stage for a reading–not a performance–of it. So it can be heard, digested, and responded to by our diverse audience. I trust that we will have a candid and responsible conversation about it. And that we will also present two artistic pieces written in response to the play; SEVEN PALESTINIAN CHILDREN by the Jewish American writer Deb Margolin, and THE EIGHTH CHILD, by Israeli Performance artist, Robbie Gringras

I also offer, below, our own Agency’s position on why we’re presenting this event:

from Peace Cafe Co-Founder Mimi Conway

Theater J and the Washington DCJCC have created and nurtured a place for public conversations on important topics more easily avoided. The reading of Caryl Churchill’s ten-minute work, SEVEN JEWISH CHILDREN, A Play for Gaza, as well as other short readings, is the most current example.

With dramatic art at its center, Theater J has been offering discussions on art and ideas–and engaging our hopes and fears–in a safe space for more than a decade.

This is a invaluable service and a model to the whole community. These public conversations are part of what makes this theater and this house great.

Mimi Conway
Co-founder Peace Cafe

from Derek Goldman

I applaud Theater J for doing what any seriously engaged arts organization should do, which is to present work that asks troubling questions, stirs dialogue, and allows us to better understand positions that may be the opposite of our own. Ari Roth and Theater J have been very explicit in their framing of this work that presenting it does not imply advocacy of its message (or in this case even strong convictions about its effectiveness as art — one of the advantages of its ten-minute format). The fact that two other plays written in response to this play will also be presented testifies both to the Theater’s commitment to engaging a many-sided dialogue and to the impact Churchill’s play is having. Whatever the merits of this play may or may not be, Ms. Churchill is undisputedly one of the leading playwrights of our generation, and the play is being heard, discussed, and commented on around the world. I am grateful that Theater J and Forum Theater will give us a chance to do so here in Washington and to form our own opinion. The impulse to boycott and silence that which troubles, shakes or offends us is a dangerous and narrow one. We can always make the choice as individuals not to attend, but when we start to police that choice for others, there is cause for concern. I am grateful that we as a community will be given the chance to engage in this important and difficult conversation, and to form our own opinions.

Professor Derek Goldman, Ph. D.
Director, Theater and Peformance Studies Program, Georgetown University
Artistic Director, Davis Performing Arts Center

And Here’s Our Post Review of DAI – fresh from the battlefront

‘Dai’: A Jolting Character Study of Israeli Society
By Peter Marks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 16, 2009; C02

Every story ends in mid-sentence in Iris Bahr’s intermittently effective solo piece, “Dai.” Several times in the hour-long work, an audience is jolted out of complacency by seat-rattling sound effects — the noise of the suicide bomb that tears through a Tel Aviv cafe and terminates a reporter’s inquiries.

One by one, the denizens of the cafe are prodded by a TV correspondent to open up about themselves, about what they’re doing in a place that “lives and breathes existential threat” and how they feel about the daily dance on the fraying tightrope of Israeli life. We’re reminded frequently in the Theater J presentation that the tripwire for tragedy is a routine apparatus in this part of the world.

Bahr, who was born in the Bronx and moved to Israel as a 12-year-old, spends just enough time portraying each of the 10 cafe habitues for us to become comfortable with the characters, to glean an essence of who he or she is. And then: Ka-boom! Over and over, we relive the moment that wipes them all out. The actress, embodying her characters in an upstairs space at Studio Theatre that has been rented for the five-day run, wants us to appreciate the complex dynamics of Israeli society even as she dramatizes how that world is being ripped apart, both from inside and out.

Particularly at times of crisis in the Middle East, partisan impulses call for each side to brand its adherents the victims. While Bahr’s sympathies are primarily with Israelis on this occasion — the reporter, for instance, declares that her intention is to “explore the Israeli plight” — “Dai” is not so much political as sociological. As in the case of Anna Deavere Smith, whose one-woman shows examine conflict through a gallery of impersonations, Bahr uses a talent for mimicry to channel various points of view.

“Dai,” the Hebrew word for “enough,” benefits from Bahr’s gifts of observation, especially when her characters are trying to distill for the reporter’s camera some peculiar aspect of Israeli behavior. A prostitute who has emigrated from Russia, for example, talks about the special intensity of Israeli lovemaking; a flower child describes, without a trace of irony, smuggling the drug ecstasy into Israel through the tunnels between Egypt and Gaza; an expatriate home for a visit explains why living in Israel brings on claustrophobia: “It’s like everyone,” she says, “is in your veins.”