We canceled last night’s Saturday preview along with the rest of the DC theater community, shutting down in the midst of our historic December snowfall. But this morning’s a beautiful day and we’re all shoveling out in our hoods, and getting the DCJCC shoveled out as well (though that’ll be coming later, this morning, rather than sooner).
Our performer trudged from the hotel to the theater yesterday for a run-through with the creative team, God bless ‘em, and we’re ready to entertain the world. Ski on over, come by sled, by snow-shoe, hell, try driving — we’ll be ready for ya inside a dry, warm theater.

With an important discussion at 4:15 as well. FREE post-show panel (at 4:15) on “the future of Same Sex Marriage” with Christopher Dyer (Director, DC Mayor’s Office of GLBT Affairs); Ellen Kahn, Family Project Director, Human Rights Campaign; Tim Craig, Washington Post Reporter currently covering the same-sex marriage debate.

updates shortly on this wonderful show…

Tessa Klein & Halo Wines in SLEEPING ARRANGEMENTS, directed by Delia Taylor

2007 saw us continue to focus on family themes as explored by female authors in our world premiere adaptation of SLEEPING ARRANGEMENTS based on Laura Shaine Cunningham’s heartwarming memoir about growing up fatherless, and then motherless, in the Bronx.  Working from a script penned by the author/playwright/journalist herself, Sleeping Arrangements deals with the potentially wrenching predicament of being orphaned at a vulnerable age but, with the writer deploying a light touch, chooses to focus instead on the heroine’s being raised most lovingly by the unlikeliest of surrogates—two eccentric uncles and a truly grandiose grandmother from Minsk.

Laura’s play, like the memoir, on which it’s based, is a soulful chronicle where hardship and heartbreak are always inflected with feelings of love. While Sleeping Arrangements is often sassy and comic, at bottom it’s a poignant paean to growing up. To paraphrase Cunningham’s own words, “If tragedy brought our family together, it’s comedy that kept us close.”

But the show’s emphasis on comedy was not, as it turned out, everyone’s cup of tea.  Its gentle humor perhaps didn’t land with our more gentle-resistant crowd.  For those tough cookies, we brought in, over successive seasons, the double-barreled diva duo of Judy Gold and Sandra Bernhard.

Judy Gold, whose latest show, MOMMY QUEEREST (It’s Jewdy’s Show), actually begins previewing tonight, is the 6-foot-3-inch, Kosher, gay, award-winning comedienne, and mother of two boys who has both traded in—and then has totally subverted—the stereotypical Jewish mother typology. Gold’s many jokes about the cliche of the Jewish matriarch, as well as the neurosis about becoming a typical Jewish mother herself spurred her quest to find out what makes Jewish mothers different from non-Jewish mothers. Traveling across the United States for five years, she and award winning playwright Kate Moira Ryan interviewed over 50 Jewish women, of different ages, occupations and ethnicities, ranging from non-practicing to ultra-orthodox to “confused;” from Holocaust survivors to converts.

The questions ranged from reflective (“How are you like and not like your mother?”), to droll (“Who do Jewish little girls get to look up to?”) to deeply personal (“What is God to you?”). The results, described by many in the New York press, was “a hilarious and poignant look at the mother-daughter bond, Jewish culture, and what makes a Jewish mother, well, a Jewish mother.” And so it was with us in DC as well. A great 5 week run.

The play is structurally innovative, interlacing testimonies from a random assortment of women with Judy’s own hysterical stand-up rants about dealing with her mother and being a mom herself. While we’ve had great one-woman shows at Theater J before, Judy Gold’s 25 Questions is formally much more intricate, and ultimately more ambitious than any typical stand-up act.  And most of all it’s hilarious.

And God help us (this is me praying this morning in advance of last rehearsals before previews tonight), her new piece should be even fresher, funnier, and certainly, well more gay!  And musical!  First audiences, here we come!!!

We’ll be using the same cabaret seating arrangment for MOMMY QUEEREST that we used for Sandra Bernhard’s WITHOUT YOU I’M NOTHING—a fabulous experience for us artistically that caused just a wee bit of controversy when we performed it back in September of 2008 (and you can scroll back into older postings here on the blog to read all about our blowing up as Sandra’s Sarah Palin video went viral in a pandemic way).

Much as Sandra represents a link in the chain of amazingly audacious and talented comic Jewish actresses, there’s something wholly unique about Sandra’s act. Part  chanteuse, cultural critic, pop phenomenon, (former) best girl friend to Madonna, and—for our purposes—the wonderful niece of Jack and Faye Moskowitz, Washington cultural fixtures and major leadership assets here at Theater J and the DCJCC.  Yes, Sandra  came to DC to be among friends and family.  But more crucially, she came to Theater J to reignite a show that launched her star into orbit some 20 years ago.   She was the perfect artist to kick-start a wholly new kind of season for Theater J; hard-hitting, provocative, full of variety, ambition, international cachet, and radical honesty!

Sandra teaches her own brand of liberation theology and she preaches the gospel of loving oneself for all one’s underappreciated assets and beauty.  She is a walking, strutting, singing, slinking definition of the word Pride; Gay Pride, Jewish Pride, Flint Michigan Pride, and Proud to Still Be Kicking Butt in the Business Pride. 

From all that Sandra-generated good feeling, we can a moment for some Theater J Pride too:  What kind of awesome Jewish theater company is this that can host an act like Sandra and her amazing band, the Rebellious Jezebels, and then follow it up with a bracing, mainstage world premiere offering about the torn conscience of a Serbian perpetrator stuck in a Bosnian kitchen with an awesome and unasked for responsibility, in Stefanie Zadravec’s HONEY BROWN EYES?

Maia Di Santi and Alexander Strain in HONEY BROWN EYES, directed by Jessica Lefkow

Blog readers will know (or be able to index back and re-read) that HONEY BROWN EYES told a harrowing yet humane story that brought focus to two mothers, one Bosnian-Muslim (Alma, pictured above) and one Serbian-Christian (Jovanka, pictured below).

Barbara Rappaport and Joel Reuben Ganz

We come to identify with both the Muslim and Christian sisters and brothers in this play, and we see them both as victims and survivors, resistance fighters and hidden children.  The play marked a departure of sorts for us at Theater J. No Jewish characters, no Jewish author, no Jewish teachings, per se. Other than the watchword that “Never Again” may there be genocide in our time. And yet there it unfolded before us. And unfold before it will again elsewhere.

Alma and Jovanka are Women in War, perhaps a 5th typology all its own. And one could wax on, and on, about the 3 generations of women we had on stage in HONEY BROWN EYES; a child hiding under the floor boards, her soon to be deceased mother, murdered before us in a kind of mercy killing to spare her from the rape camps, and an older grandmother—call her a Serbian Christian Babushkie—who survives by her wits and her culinary cunning and displays enough of an open heart to feed and shelter an enemy combatant whose fled his position at the frontlines of the Bosnian resistance. It’s a beautiful play, ferociously written and staged, by strong female theater artists (Stefanie Zadravec and Jessica Lefkow respectively) and how proud we were that this play anchored our “Ethics and War” series and then went on to win our first ever Helen Hayes Award for Best New Play.

A fun place to stop, wouldn’t ya say? Or suspend the discussion, for another day’s consideration. More sermons to come. Suffice to say—with much work awaiting—that the cause for women staking claim to our stage has never been stronger. There’s something very right going on in our theater, and it has to do with the stories we’re telling about and by our better halves; our feminine selves.

My talk at Hadassah concluded by looking forward to this seasons offerings of strong women on stage. But not before also talking about our portrait of Israeli women (SHIT!!! I FORGOT TO WRITE ABOUT THEM!!!) Here they are:

Iris Bahr in DAI (Enough)

And wasn’t Iris awesome in displaying her own gallery of a dozen different Israelis, Arabs, and assorted visitors to a Tel Aviv cafe, depicting them in the mortal moments before a bomb-blast would interrupt their lives irrevocably?

Iris Bahr in DAI, directed by Will Pomerantz

And here’s Leila Buck, our wonderful Lebanese-Christian-American artist whose IN THE CROSSING presents her chronicle of returning to Lebanon with her Jewish husband in the summer of 2006 right before war broke out and bombs began to fall in Lebanon and Israel.

Leila Buck in IN THE CROSSING

And, of course, there’s the Israeli play that anchored last season’s “Voices from a Changing Middle East Festival,” Hillel Mitelpunkt’s hit Israeli play, THE ACCIDENT, which featured portraits of three strong, vibrant, yet flawed Israeli characters, each of a different decade in age, in the persons of Shiri, her mother Nira, and their friend/arch-rival, Tami.

Jennifer Mendenhall and Eliza Bell in THE ACCIDENT, directed by Sinai Peter

Becky Peters and Jennifer Mendenhall

So much to say. But not here. Index back. And we’ll double back to consider Shiri’s redemptive role. And Nira’s redemptive, Judaica-salvaging role. And Tami’s truth-uttering cathartic role. All fascinating depictions.

And now, here finally, is the gallery you’ve read about and will continue to read about over this 2009-10 season. The Wonder Women (of Steel) on Theater J’s stage:

Tana Hicken and Holly Twyford in Neil Simon's LOST IN YONKERS, directed by Jerry Whiddon

It’s quite interesting to consider the radically different typologies that Bella Kurnitz and her mother, whom we only come to know as Grandma Kurnitz, embody. Granda is, in fact, described as being made of steel. She could be sold for scrap, quips her son, Louis the gangster. She’s hardened in a very different way than any of our other husband-less Divas. She’s coarsened by life; by loss; by work; by bitterness (not unlike Wendy Wasserstein’s writerly Flora, who diagnoses her own illness as being “allergic to her own bitterness” — remember way back to part 1?)

Bella yearns for softness. For love. Like Holly Twyford’s other characters at Theater J, she’s a damaged woman who’s healed in the course of the drama. In this case, it’s her nephews who help. But it’s also in her boldly, bravely confronting her mother that she makes her critical passage from girlhood to womanhood. She emerges as a truly strong woman of valour right before our eyes.

Judy Gold is MOMMY QUEEREST, directed by Amanda Charlton

The plight of the Darfuri refugee Hawa and a female journalist grounds IN DARFUR by Winter Miller

and finally, our exploration of Israeli women in…

MIKVEH by Hadar Galron, directed by Shirley Serotsky

So much more to say.

Anyone (at long last) care to comment?

 

 

Valerie Leonard & Jim Jorgenson in A BAD FRIEND directed by Nick Olcott

In 2004, our Morris Cafritz Center for the Arts hosted a fall’s worth of programming celebrating the work of Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, book author, screenwriter and playwright Jules Feiffer and Jules introduced DC to the character of Naomi Wallach, a fiery, domesticated ideologue, described in his stage directions as “a public school teacher and a communist, dressed as if she has no interest in how she looks.” A BAD FRIEND tells the story of Naomi’s daughter Rose, an eighteen-year-old enduring the vicissitudes of adolescence in a family of 1950s firebrands. Naomi embraces Josef Stalin and the Soviet Union while her increasingly skeptical husband, Shelly, learns of the infamous Doctors’ Plot in the weeks following Stalin’s death. Naomi’s ferocious loyalty to Stalin is but one of several instances of misplaced trust as her ambitious Hollywood screenwriting brother follows in the footsteps of Clifford Odets, while Rose befriends both an FBI agent and an older painter with a mysterious agenda in this suspenseful, moving drama about family loyalty and political betrayal.

With all the earnest political passions that Naomi and husband Shelly wear on their sleeves, we watch the drama through the ironic lens of history and the skeptical perspective of young Rose. For the parents in this play—-True Believers and Fellow Travelers—are models of cultural and political commitment. They are raging through their own fervent years, decrying the amorality of Capitalism with all their soul and might. And we know that they are also in for a fall; one that history will soon provide. This is a play about getting one’s politics a bit wrong—betting on the horse that lost, as it were—and, at the same, it’s an indictment of the means by which our own country has often snuffed out political dissent. That Jules Feiffer should interlace both the folly of far-Left Utopianism with the brass-knuckle crackdown of those in power here in America suggests something of the political sophistication that has characterized Jules Feiffer’s work for half a century. This lovely piece of writing is shrewd enough to look at the 1950’s from a variety of perspectives, and it gets the Plight and Demise of Progressivism in America right. This play reminds all of us that we have lost quite a lot in our country; not just those on the Left, but everyone engaged in what passes for political discourse today.

The figure of Naomi passes from passion to disillusionment to a kind of resignation in old age which is both personally heart-breaking and politically tragic. So much fervor in youth and, in the end, so much waste; so much silence.

The feminist answer to the collapse of Naomi as political firebrand arrived on our Theater J the very next year in the undaunted energies of a Next Generation of Politicized Women (not quite “Third Wave Feminism” but in between 2nd and 3rd) as we ran into a veritable pack of Wonder Women; call them The Women Who Fight Back.

The rock group BETTY and their show BETTY RULES was so successful in DC that we brought it back for a second, sold-out engagement. After a successful, initial seven month Off-Broadway run in 2003-04, BETTY returned to their old hometown with the story of what they’d been doing since they left. Before evolving into the wild and theatrical rock band they are to this day, BETTY got its start in DC as an edgy acapella/spoken word/techno beat trio. After years of jamming in their Dad’s blue-collar garage in Fairfax, VA, singer-songwriter sisters Amy and Elizabeth Ziff, found talented bass player Alyson Palmer after putting a call-out on DC’s local alternative rock station, WHFS 99.1 FM.   Fierce Elizabeth (guitar), funky Alyson (bass) and funny Amy (cello) joined forces and began performing as BETTY in the late 80s at a birthday party for legendary 9:30 Club owner, Dodie Bowers. Their success that night led rapidly to bigger gigs. Within a month of their first appearance they were touring nationally and internationally and shared the bill at rallies and extravaganzas starring James Brown, Patti LaBelle, and The B-52’s. Soon after, they wrote and performed the two-act musical play, BETTY: INSIDE OUT at DC Space. BETTY continued to work the DC music circuit, performing at local DC favorites like Blues Alley, The Birchmere, and The Bayou.

Shortly after the launch of BETTY’s DC career, they were booked at NYC’s Bottom Line where they were discovered and cast as the house band on HBO’s first educational series, Encyclopedia. In the fall of ‘87, the women relocated to New York City and dove into the independent music scene where word-of-mouth about their uncategorizable live show led to tours through Europe, Canada, Australia and across the United States. These exciting years are all chronicled in BETTY RULES, as are the subsequent ups and down, highs and lows, heartbreaks and breakthroughs that have come their way over the past two decades.

BETTY RULES is a collaboration between the women of BETTY and Michael Greif, director of RENT, and it’s the rock band’s self-actualized dramatization of the true story of their 20-year career together as a working rock group. While BETTY RULES is about the wily ways girl rockers resort to in keeping their dreams, hearts, and lives together, it is the emotional tricks of the trade they pick up on the way that forms the core of the show.  As the trio shuttles back and forth across the landmines and triumphs of their musical lives,  BETTY combines humor, drama and a unique and vibrant sound equal parts rock, cabaret, pop, a capella and spoken word.

BETTY’s larger-than-life personas has clicked on television as well, most prominently on THE L WORD where they’ve been the house band, contributed the show’s title song, and where Elizabeth has worked as a composer, writer and producer for years. In addition to numerous other television and film credits, BETTY has established political activist bonafides as well.  BETTY fights fiercely for causes they believe in like equal rights, finding cures for breast cancer and AIDS, Planned Parenthood, the Pro Choice movement, an end to sexual violence and, as they like to say, “everybody’s inalienable right to dance naked in the streets.” Their performances have helped raised millions of dollars for these causes. The DC production of BETTY RULES played host to benefit performances on behalf Human Rights Campaign, featuring the creator and producer of The L Word, Ilene Chaiken, as well as a night for Planned Parenthood.

We share this biographical review because BETTY really helped Theater J liberate itself and its audience with its Big Sound, Big Outreach, Big Moxie, and Big Box Office too. We continue to love BETTY because of their musicality, their personality, their theatricality, and their on-stage charisma.  We loved Amy and Elizabeth’s father, the late actor Irv Ziff, who performed with us in wonderful plays by the late Arthur Miller.  BETTY remains a rambunctious group with awesome musical chops and BETTY RULES was an expertly assembled piece of theater.  It was, in hindsight, a wonderfully risky project for a small theater like ours to have become investing so deeply in, and the rewards—in both the 2005 and 2006 runs were appreciable.

As it so happens, the gay and lesbian programming track at Theater J has been with us from the start with the 1999 world premiere of Deb Filler’s FILLER UP, and the 2001 DC premiere of Susan Miller’s MY LEFT BREAST (part of 4-play series “Sex and Guilt in the Jewish Theater”). It’s a track that’s always also included questions of family, identity, and searches for God, values and meaning.

Let’s once again check out our gallery of Divas:

Sherry Glaser in FAMILY SECRETS

After reigning Off-Broadway in one of New York’s longest running one-woman shows, Sherry Glaser reprised her mirthful, bittersweet ode to family dysfunction in FAMILY SECRETS during our 2006-07 season.  In the play, Glaser first introduces us to Mort Fisher, the no-nonsense, accountant father, who describes his mortification over his daughter’s bringing her female lover to his wedding anniversary. Next we meet the unflappable housewife Bev, who cackles as she unflinchingly describes her midlife meltdown. Glaser then introduces us to Mort and Bev’s bisexual daughter Fern, who acts out—in hysterically painful detail—the natural childbirth of her daughter. Glaser transitions to Mort and Bev’s rebellious sixteen-year-old daughter Sandra, who is beset by a slew of adolescent problems. Finally, we meet the feisty Grandmother Rose, who giddily describes her second chance at love and invites the audience to the next Passover Seder.

What made Glaser’s show so endearing and impressive was her endowing each character with warmth and humor without sparing us any of their flaws. Her show has a fascinating, triumphant, if somewhat tragedy-touched trajectory, and it effortlessly draws the audience into these characters’ lives.  The play is heartwarming in an almost shameless way, inviting the audience to join in singing with the elderly grandmother in a round of “Sunrise, Sunset.”  Shmaltz, indeed, and yet a pitch-perfect ending for Sherry’s show.

We include Sherry Glaser in the gallery of Theater J Divas not so much for the family content of her hit solo show as for the ferocious spirit Sherry radiates as a political activist.  We’ll never forget Sherry heading down 16th Street to the White House every day—while still performing her show up the block on 16th & Q at night—and presenting her own brand of political theater daily as part of her Breasts Not Bombs project. Somedays topless, some days filter-less, Sherry let it all hang out in her anti-war work, combining theater, political advocacy, Queer identity consciousness raising, and community building during her very productive DC residency.  Sherry Glaser remains a renegade in her art and life and, with FAMILY SECRETS, she found a heart-warming vehicle to bring audiences closer to her craft and to her artistry.  Once hooked, Sherry let the world have it with the depths of her passion and radical whimsy that continues to inform her very unique brand of political theater.

Let’s move forward to TYPOLOGY #4 – THE DAMAGED SOUL, restored by Jewish Teaching. And, as it so happens, the following examples are written by non-Jewish authors who come to their respective portraitures with deep sensitivities.

Michelle Shupe in Joyce Carol Oates' THE TATTOOED GIRL

There’s usually a moment when a theater says “yes” to a play; The moment of saying “yes” to THE TATTOOED GIRL happened early in the reading of it; when Alma Busch, the disturbingly alluring life force at the center of Joyce Carol Oates adaptation of her own novel, begins to talk about where she comes from.

“Akron Valley, PA. Where white smoke rises like steam through cracks in the earth. “Fissures” the newspapers call ‘em. Where the anthracite mines deep in the earth are burning. Since 1962! Wind Ridge, Bobtown, McCracken, Cheet were the names of the mines when they had names. Before the fires. Where do I live? — I live in Hell.”

The effortless authority of that writing and the conflict that gets set up between a dispossessed, emotionally bruised American and the target of her resentment in the person of a privileged, cosmopolitan Jew makes this an irresistibly pertinent conflict to have put on our stage. This refugee of Pennsylvania coal country is an alternately resilient, cunning, and radically unaware character on the brink of change.

And so Alma is white trash personified, branded with the equivalent of literal and emotional swastikas, spewing hate when she’s discovered, like refuse behind a dumpster, in an Ivy League college town by a professor in limbo, ailing and alienated, who becomes her unlikely nursemaid—and Henry Higgins—and, just as quickly, she becomes the nursemade to him.

The Jew in the case of Joshua Seigl is, like Alma, a resilient creature representing an immigrant class now honored and at home in America, but hardly at ease. Joshua is revered for a history of the Holocaust he has written. But he is uncertain whether there is efficacy in renewing that history and keeping it alive. It is Alma who questions the Holocaust’s veracity before being charged with ensuring its legacy. It is Alma who learns to respect the history that Joshua, in his illness, turns away from. And it is Alma who becomes an active signifier of the woman as healer. Having been tragically scarred herself.

Michael Russotto and Michelle Shupe in THE TATTOOED GIRL, directed by John Vreeke

Another Damaged Soul, tragically scarred, who devotes her journey to active healing, of herself and others, is the protagonist in Jeanette Buck’s memoir for the stage (with ample screentime for her associative dreams), THERE ARE NO STRANGERS.

Holly Twyford in ...NO STRANGERS directed by Delia Taylor

THERE ARE NO STRANGERS delves into one woman’s journey to heal both body and soul with the help of her community. What began as a simple tribute from Jeanette—a most beloved DC stage manager turned film-maker with a growing national reputation, who saw her burgeoning career derailed when she became the victim of a random act of terrible violence—this ostensible “thank you video” to the friends and family who helped her recover from the brutal attack in her Venice Beach home six years ago, developed into an emotionally charged one hour play charting her course of survival.

Multiple Helen Hayes Award-winning actress, Holly Twyford, portrayed Jeanette. The act of violence and the long, painful road to recovery is what prompted Buck to write THERE ARE NO STRANGERS. The real subject of this play, as it turned out, however, was not the terror of the violence she experienced, but the daily struggle to rebuild a life from the ground up upon surviving violence. THERE ARE NO STRANGERS speaks to Jeanette’s need to make sense of the senseless, as well as to the universal struggle to cope with a world torn apart by violence.

Although Buck has no clear recollections of the attack, her memories have been filled in over the years by the friends and family encircled around her. Brutally assaulted in the middle of the day, Buck was almost left for dead. After multiple surgeries and countless physical and emotional scars, Buck was left with two questions:

Why was she chosen as a victim? And why was she chosen to survive?

Many victims of violent crimes often find themselves at a loss for meaning in their lives, never able to overcome the feeling of shame, guilt and pain that comes from such an ordeal. Buck, however, attempted to see the assault and her attacker in a different light. In the process of healing, with the support of many loved ones, Buck focuses on praying for her attacker because, as she remarks, “this man is not evil incarnate. His life is so dark. Is there any way to pray the dark can be lifted? That’s my challenge.”

Holly Twyford told Buck’s story in as plaintively beautiful, straight-forward and uplifting a manner as you could ever imagine. It seems that every five years, Holly comes to Theater J to break our hearts and lift our spirits. Five years earlier, in 2000, she came to give birth to the heart-broken character of Alison in a memoir play I was writing called LIFE IN REFUSAL.

Here’s Holly as an American who finds her soul in Mikhail Gorbachev’s Soviet Union, becoming a reluctant activist in the case of embattled Soviet astronomer and refusenik, Ben Charny.

Holly Twyford & Lawrence Redmond in LIFE IN REFUSAL, directed by Wendy C. Goldberg

Alison, an adventurous young political scientist travels to Russia in 1988 to document the dawning of glasnost and perestroika, reluctantly coming into contact with the real-life figure of Benjamin Charny, a rocket scientist whose repeated applications for an emigrant visa have been summarily denied by Soviet authorities. An elegant, humble and wise member of the Jewish “refusenik” community in Moscow, Charny is dying of cancer, treatment for which is complicated by an acute heart condition, as Soviet doctors refuse to operate on him. Alison, a Jew in denial of her own identity, is slowly drawn into Ben’s life, his family, and eventually, sheds her resistance to become a forceful advocate for Ben’s case. Set some ten years after the fall of the Soviet Empire, the play allows Alison to reflexively move back and forth as she meets up with Charny in the United States and more poignantly, from beyond the grave.

Alison and Ben develop a moving relationship over time and space. It’s a bit of father-daughter; it’s a bit of pupil-teacher; and it’s a bit of caring friends who venture to become even closer. And then it’s gone, in death, in distance, as the movement ends and Alison is left bereft and bewildered. The play asks about the meaning of such relationships; of such moments in history when people fuse together to undo an injustice. What happens after the cause no longer takes hold of the conscience as it once did? Whither the bond with the Jewish refusenik when he or she is no longer refused?

“All relationships have a shelf-life” wrote one reductive critic in response to this play, which others found to be moving. But thinking more about that dismissal, it occurred to me that the relationship whose usefulness has expired doesn’t necessarily get tossed with the garbage like month-old yogurt; it occupies space in the soul and the conscience, as memory retrieves moments of shared love and anguish and worry. And then the context changes. The bond slackens. But the resonance is transformed. The changing resonance is what infiltrates Alison’s soul and leads her back to reclaim a piece of her heritage; a song from the old country; an identification formerly eschewed. Weeks and months and now even years after Ben Charny’s death, this memory sends the character back to a soulful place, where connection is made to a past, to a way of feeling, to a way behaving, which hopefully makes us all a bit more soulful in our present, awakening state.

Obviously, Twyford’s Alison isn’t a damaged soul, per se, though she does become inspired (like Jeanette’s alter-ego, and like Alma Busch as well) by some sage Jewish teacher. And so “The Damaged Soul as Pupil” still seems to apply.

Let’s now look at the Pupil as Teacher; the Truth-Seeker-Philosopher who starts out impressionable and grows to become a formidable moral arbiter. We’re talking, of course, about Hannah Arendt and the dynamic portrait of her rendered in Kate Fodor’s HANNAH AND MARTIN.

Elizabeth Rich & John Lescault in HANNAH AND MARTIN, directed by Jeremy B. Cohen

Elizabeth Rich’s Hannah – her thoroughly persuasive, hugely vital moral adjudicator and emotional wrestler, is presented to us first as an impressionable student of philosophy, smitten by the brilliant teachings and towering intellect of her professor, Martin Heidigger. History will split them apart and Heidigger will become rector at Freiberg University, an active member of the Nazi party, and a vocal proponent of the Fuhrer. And after the war, he will come before an academic tribunal. Whither the rest of his academic career? Arendt must decide whether she will testify against his re-instatement, or on his behalf.

Arendt articulates questions most profound for our day and age: Should we forgive the moral lapses of a loved one? What does justice demand of our closest and most respected leaders?

Often these days, we find ourselves, living close to people who, for one reason or another, do unspeakable, unforgivable things. Or maybe just stupid things. Or things that they are forced to do in the course of following orders or doing business that may cause irreparable harm. And sometimes these offenders are great men; or women; much beloved; who have a tremendous amount still to offer to the world. What to do with them?

After tackling the Kabbalistic meditations of THE MAD DANCERS, what was new for us in HANNAH AND MARTIN was the more rigorous world of philosophy, and of philosophers in love. Our playwright—the daughter of academic philosophers, herself—was able to strike just the right balance between abstraction and concrete detail to make this fierce relationship play of ideas come to life,

Incidentally, we will explore the charcter of Hannah Arendt again in THE BANALITY OF LOVE which we’ll present May 10, 2010 in a reading at the Embassy of Israel, where we’ll get to know Hannah Arendt from an Israeli perspective, in the distinguished author/playwright Savyon Liebrecht’s new take on Hannah and her relationship with Heidigger.

Now we go back a bit to look again at Prototype #1, The Jewess in Relationship to Her Family.

Bill Hamlin & family members in Jennifer Maisel's THE LAST SEDER

It’s always a treat and a challenge to present a family play; what’s more readily identifiable than a Jewish family’s foibles? And because it’s so frequently depicted, how much harder a task for our playwrights to render that family with anything approaching originality? But that’s what Jennifer Maisel did in bringing a fresh, frenetic and uncensored voice to render the Price family with stylish sensitivity in her Kennedy Center award winning THE LAST SEDER. A family of four daughters are summoned home for a final Passover with dad before he’s sent to a nursing home as he succumbs to Alzheimer’s Disease.

But in the stunning second act seder meal, where the Prophet Elijah seems to enter and bless the house with a miracle, time is magically reversed. For a glorious extended interlude, Marvin Price, the family patriarch battling a crippling disease, is wholly restored and transforms the lives of everyone. He retains all his faculties, presides over the seder every inch the master of the house, dances with each daughter, and his wife, gives them sage council, and then, just as the Chad Gadgya is sung and Elijah departs out the front door, Marvin reverts to his addled form.

Michelle Shupe and Tricia McAuley in THE LAST SEDER, directed by Joseph Megel

More to come…

The second feminine typology to have presented itself on our Theater J stage is best personified by another major artist who came into our lives in 2003…

director/choreographer Liz Lerman

Call Liz Lerman enunciator of… THE WOMAN DANCING THROUGH LIFE ON A SPIRITUAL QUEST

IN SEARCH OF GOD

IN SEARCH OF MEANING

IN SEARCH OF TRUTH

OR HER PLACE WITHIN TRADITION

CALL IT WOMAN AS THE GRAND DREAMER, GRAPPLING WITH BIG IDEAS…

Is that a capacious enough a category? Let’s try to boil it down to a single impression as we did with “bittersweet” and here the phrase is…

“In between.”

Liz represents the archetype of being of earth and of the sky; of mind and body; in search of God and truth within the context of the corporeal, physical present not only in her own body of work—incorporating text and dance; spiritualism and community—but by virtue of her directorial debut which she made at Theater J in 2003 (sharing the directorial reigns with Nick Olcott) on Yehuda Hyman’s THE MAD DANCERS (subtitled “A MYSTICAL COMEDY WITH ECSTATIC DANCE”) which saw us use the extraordinary actress Naomi Jacobson as a kind of feminist version of the Bal Shem Tov, the great Hassidic Rebbe who goes on a time-traveling voyage trying to rescue Elliott, a lowly data processor from his cloistered shell of a life in modern day San Francisco, drawing him toward the Kabbalistic garden where he might repair the world and become a messianic prince for the Jewish people. (Can you believe that plot?) Liz made this mystical journey come alive with dance.

And figures as various as the great philosopher Hannah Arendt as depicted in Kate Fodor’s HANNAH AND MARTIN, or the protagonist of Jeanette Buck’s THERE ARE NO STRANGERS, or Amy Ziff’s alter-ego in her zany philosophical riff about what fate awaits her either in heaven or hell in the solo piece ACCIDENT, all evince this same cosmic curiosity on a search for a kind of truth or spiritual home.

We’ll come back to those just-alluded-to examples, but let’s press on with the other typologies to get them out of the way, because we’ll be zigging and zagging from one to another for the rest of this talk as we traverse through the seasons.

And so TYPOLOGY # 3: The CONTEMPORARY WOMAN AS SUPER GIRL

or THE WOMAN OF STEEL meets THE TRADITIONAL BALABUSTA (which I take to be a yiddish riff on the Hebrew “Ba-alat Ha-abit” or “Woman of the Home” but given the ring of it, more accurately feels like “House Wife Meets Ball Buster.”)

Think WOMEN WHO KICK ASS!

Think of the traditional Jewish home where the mother has run of the household, setting things straight, making us feel both at home and on guard, insisting on being heard, paid attention to and, through it all, spreading the love (and a little bit of fear!). Now think Women Who Don’t Need Men To Make It. Think Sisters Doing It For Themselves. Think Solo Voyagers. And where we’re soon to wind up with previews this coming week, as we open Judy Gold as MOMMY QUEEREST (with the new subttile “It’s Jewdy’s Show: My Life as a Sitcom!”) which might as well be called with The New Wonder Woman Raising Family, Same As It Ever Was, Except Who the Hell Needs Daddy?

Judy Gold is MOMMY QUEEREST

MOMMY QUEEREST culminates a long succession of Big Bold Jewish Women Behaving Bawdily, Bodaciously, and Beautifully. Let’s enjoy that procession of…

BETTY!

Sherry Glaser/Family Secrets

Judy (in 25 Questions!)

and Sandra!

And then in part III, we’ll look at the 4th typology and move through the seasons…

THE EVOLVING ROLE OF WOMEN
ON THE AMERICAN JEWISH (& ISRAELI) STAGE
(December 10, 2009)

Wendy Wasserstein (October 18, 1950 – January 30, 2006)

Today we’re going to talk about a procession of women whose lives have unfolded before us in bold and striking fashion over the last seven seasons on the Theater J stage. By women, of course, I mean characters – creations conjured by women (mostly and occasionally by men) who form a vibrant kind of feminist minyan; a robust chorus fronted by divas, and best supporting players with nary a jewish stereotype in the bunch. We don’t often think about the range of women our dramatic literature has provided us; we usually think of two famous playwrights and fold up the tent; Wasserstein and Hellman, and Lillian wasn’t too much of a Jewess in her art, let alone her life (at least not from the cursory bios I’ve read). But Wendy was, in her own inimitable way. And Wendy came to us to give birth to her final set of new works. And so that’s why today’s talk is dedicated to her, and that’s where we’re going to start…

In 2003: That’s when things got serious for us in our exploration of the drama–of the evolving role, the complicated identity–of the female protagonist on the Jewish stage.

We can appreciate the wealth of portraiture here by differentiating between these women; intuiting a basic set of typologies for these various representations of the matriarchy; or the sisterhood; of better, call it our own theatrical Hadassah. We can see these characters as expressions of 3 radically different kinds of female artists; as it so happens, American Jewish artists. And we’ll add a 4th type to the mix; a prototype conceived by non-Jewish authors about damaged characters who find wholeness in Jewish teaching.

In this talk I’ll also be talking about some non-American characters as well, and ultimately, about a host of exciting Israeli female authors where our talk today will end and where our current season will essentially culminate.

The protoypes that might be handy for us to think about today can be thought about in this way—and perhaps during today’s presentation, you can help me flesh these out and think of other typologies as well—beginning with Typology number one…

The AMERICAN JEWISH WOMAN AS SHE RELATES TO THE FAMILY; OR TO HER LACK OF ONE.

Or call it…

The AMERICAN JEWISH WOMAN NEGOTIATING HER PLACE RELATIVE TO SOCIAL EXPECTATIONS AND THE CARDS THAT LIFE HAS DEALT HER.

Or reduce this to a feeling; a flavor:

Bittersweet.

Which pretty much sums up the subject of FAMILY.

The aforementioned laureate of this typology, of course, is Wendy Wasserstein, tragically no longer with us, who wrote about family—about not having one herself as a single woman in THE HEIDI CHRONICLES—about belonging to one in THE SISTERS ROSENZWEIG—and in the world premieres which she unveiled at Theater J in 2004, after workshopping them with us at the kennedy Center in 2003, she looked at the ambivalence of belonging to a family juggling the multiple roles she was negotiating as both a mother, a daughter to a failing father with Alzheimer’s Disease, a Shakespearean scholar re-reading KING LEAR from a feminist perspective, a wife soon to be divorced from a weight lifting liberal arts professor, and a teacher being challenged by a conservative student she’s falsely accused of plagiarism.

That’s the plot of THIRD which would go on to be expanded from an hour long one-act to a two-act full-length which would be Wendy’s last New York premiere when it opened in the late fall of 2005, just weeks before her passing.

Eddie Borovich and Karhtryn Grody in Third, directed by Michael Barakiva

And here’s the companion piece to THIRD, a play that was so close to the bone for Wendy, she never allowed for it to be performed again. It was a about a writer and her phantom illness; an illness that would come to resemble Wendy’s in many ways, a cross between Bell’s Palsy, Lupus Disease, and leukemia. I share the following scene with you from WELCOME TO MY RASH because of its unbelievable relevance for today’s talk. And for the beautiful emotions it generates in reflecting on a life flecked with happiness, tragedy, disappointment and perseverance. This is from WELCOME TO MY RASH, a scene between a writer, her doctor, and her drip.

William Gillette, Kathryn Grody, and her drip in WELCOME TO MY RASH, by Wendy Wasserstein, directed by Michael Barakiva

Scene from WELCOME TO MY RASH
(c) Wendy Wasserstein, 2004
All rights reserved

SCENE SIX
(Kipling is at his desk, looking at papers. Flora walks in with a portable drip on wheels. She is wearing a suit.)

FLORA
Dr. Kipling?

KIPLING
Yes?

FLORA
Excuse me. I have something for you. I didn’t want to miss you.

KIPLING
Sorry I haven’t seen you. I was in Uzbekistan last week.

FLORA
Men are always saying that to me.

KIPLING
I heard your lip is still moving.

FLORA
Still moving.

KIPLING
And your feet?

FLORA
Still tingling. And my eyes still kaleidoscoping.

KIPLING
I was just looking at your blood counts. They are much better. I’d like to do a bone marrow at the end of eight weeks and see where we are.

FLORA
Fine.

KIPLING
You look very dressed up today. Are your reviewers coming?

FLORA
Oh, I’m just off to speak to the Jews.

KIPLING
The Jews?

FLORA
Yes. I’m urging them to leave Egypt.

KIPLING
Again?

FLORA
This time it’s the Beverly Hills Jews.

KIPLING
They already brought the Pharaohs with them.

FLORA
I’m the Hadassah author luncheon speaker. Alan Dershowitz cancelled.

KIPLING
And you are going there right after treatment?

FLORA
I thought it might be easier on a little Demerol.

KIPLING
You have great courage.

FLORA
It did occur to me to appear there with my partner here. “Good afternoon, ladies of Beverly Hills. I’d like you to meet my companion, the drip. We met at Cedars Sinai. So he comes from nice people. He’s very attentive and makes a nice living. I was waiting for the right relationship to come along, and now we’re announcing our commitment in the New York Times. My mother is thrilled. At least it’s someone in the medical profession. And it’s one of us.”

KIPLING
I’m glad after all this you still have your sense of humor. I would call my wife to go to your luncheon, but she hates those things. Hadassah used to harass her all the time.

FLORA
Why would Hadassah harass your wife?

KIPLING
My wife is Jewish. That’s how she first came across your work. When her sister read “Vicky The Magnificent” she called up right away to say, “Nancy, that’s you!” I think to my wife’s family, marrying me was like running off to join the circus. So do you speak to the Jews often?

FLORA
Only when they summon me. I went to Yeshiva as a child.

KIPLING
And now you are an atheist?

FLORA
Sometimes I wish I were. It would have made all of this a little easier. God’s will and all that. But, unfortunately, I like pork too much for that.

KIPLING
I’m not religious either. My father was a very strict Sikh. And you’re right – in some ways it would make it all so much easier. But any fundamentalism gets the world in serious trouble, don’t you think? No one is right with God on their side.

FLORA
Have you ever been to Israel?

KIPLING
Unfortunately, no.

FLORA
In Jerusalem, the Wailing Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Dome of the Rock Mosque form a perfect triangle. In other words, there is obviously no one-sided solution.

KIPLING
I think the same is true with India and Pakistan.

FLORA
The day after September 11th I went to watch my daughter playing in her schoolyard. I suppose hope is always for solutions in the next generation. If the world survives.

KIPLING
None of us will survive. But we can try to extend our stay. Can I see a picture of your daughter?

FLORA
I’ve never shown you one?

KIPLING
You’re too busy writing Julia Roberts movies.

(She hands him a photograph.)

FLORA
This is Antonia.

KIPLING
She’s beautiful.

FLORA
Yes, she is. And very kind.

KIPLING
Like her mother.

FLORA
Kinder than her mother.

KIPLING
I’m sure she’s very bright.

FLORA
Brilliant. She likes to pretend she’s a contestant on American Idol. That’s a clear sign she’ll be president of M.I.T.

KIPLING
Is that what you’d like her to be?

FLORA
She can be a doctor. Or have five children with an Iowa farmer.

KIPLING
Why not be a writer?

FLORA
Too random. Too many opportunities to develop an intolerance to oneself.

KIPLING
Doesn’t every artist have to regenerate? I know a good scientist does.

FLORA
If you believe it still matters that you can.

KIPLING
Of course it matters. You can’t believe that it doesn’t.

FLORA
Doctor Kipling, I have come to the conclusion that I am allergic to my own bitterness. I believe it is my bitterness and not my white cell count that is the true Occum’s Razor here.

KIPLING
You’re not bitter. That’s not been my experience with you. I believe you have great courage and humanity.

FLORA
Well, there’s a thin line between complexity and ambiguity. I never knew what the hell that meant.

KIPLING
Neither did I. Flora, I think you are an extraordinary woman.

(He touches her hand.)

FLORA
Thank you.

(She suddenly cries and covers for herself.)

Well, the Jews are waiting for me.

KIPLING
I’d much prefer you to Alan Dershowitz.

(She takes out two books from her purse.)

FLORA
I almost forgot. These are for you.

(She hands him the books.)

FLORA
Vicky The Magnificent and Other Death Defying Stories. And The Complete Works of Veronica Geng.

* * *

(parts ii, iii & iv to be continued…)

So we closed LOST IN YONKERS back on Sunday. On Monday, headed up to New York Theatre Workshop to see an afternoon reading of an even-more improved version of BENEDICTUS, the Motti Lerner script based on his collaboration with Iranian theater artists Mahmood Karimi-Hakak and Torange Yeghiazarian. It was wonderful to meet with Motti over dinner after and talk about his new project, a potential collaboration involving Theater J and one of Israel’s most distinguished flagship institutions. It’s too soon to share more details. Suffice to say, the collaboration lives on as we continue to support this brave and prolific Israeli writer on new works as well as pushing recently produced work onto next productions in New York and beyond.

After returning to DC Tuesday morning for IN DARFUR production meetings and some catch up time with my family, I was back on the bus to New York on Wednesday for the start of rehearsals for Judy Gold’s new show. Judy’s collaborator on 25 QUESTIONS FOR A JEWISH MOTHER, Kate Moira Ryan, has been brought into the collaborative process and has helped to focus, punch, and make more poignant the journey Judy goes on in her latest iteration of MOMMY QUEEREST (now with the additional sub-title: “IT’S JEWDY’S SHOW”) which is the running bit in this very funny frame for Judy’s journey; that she’s consumed with getting her own TV Sitcom so that her two kids can see their lives reflected and finally accepted by mainstream culture. Judy grew up a bit of a misfit, towering over her peers and proverbially out of place and sought refuge and quick emotional fixes in the sitcoms of the 60s and 70s. Her kids seek the same. But is America ready for a gay, feminist, kosher SEINFELD? Why can’t Judy get legally married in the Jew state of New York? Pungent and funny and revealing, the play’s a brand new work of art, wildly different from the version I saw at Joe’s Pub 8 months ago. And so, willy nilly, we’re working on a new play with a great team and it’s a lot of work in a hurry and a very exciting time to be launching a culturally up to the minute new show starring an indomitable talent. And I’m not even talking about Sandra Bernhard right now! It’s JEWDY’S SHOW, damnit (as she’s no doubt punctuate it).

And guess what? I’m heading up again right now, as I type this, for rehearsal #3 now that Kate has sent a top to bottom rewrite after Monday’s excellent rehearsal and feedback session.

* * * And here’s the update: I’ve read the script on Megabus – Laughing Out Loud throughout – Cried twice – show’s in great shape! Great meeting just now (I’m revising this in nyc) with director Amanda Charlton while Judy keeps practicing the piano – couldn’t be happier! So much for the update.) * * *

Tonight I finally see ZERO HOUR in its New York iteration. I’ll be seeing the show with RISE AND FALL OF ANNIE HALL playwright Sam Forman (who has a new play he just sent me, I’ll be reading it as soon as I’m done reading the rewrite of Jewdy!) And herein I share with you video from the opening night of ZERO HOUR, courtesy or our superstar buddy, Steve Schalchlin.

Finally, I share with you a bundle of encomiums from LOST IN YONKERS. Check out this Final Round Up of Wonderful Words from Audience members writing into Becky:

I was visiting DC from Alabama. But next time I am in DC I will be sure to come for another performance at theatre J. It was wonderful.
-Betty Massey

-Dean Rudoy

From: djhoffmanscreen
Sent: Thursday, November 26, 2009 9:15 AM

On LOST IN YONKERS and MOMMY QUEEREST

Diane Perleman and I together were completely privileged last night to have seen your wholly humane and richly comic and touchingly wonderful production of the Neil Simon classic “Lost in Yonkers,” so obviously the choice for both Tony and Pulitzer status on Broadway in 1991.

You have all surely reminded us of Simon’s stature as a great American “dramatic” playwright individually, who ought not be confined to the category of comedy alone, and also of the status of this play in particular in the canon of Broadway and even beyond the Great White Way in the tradition of thoughtful, indeed no-holds-barred exploration of family and character, the very human fundament beneath all ethnic or religious surfaces, whether Jewish-American or anything-American.

Bravo to you Ari as Theater J’s artistic director and also to Jerry Whiddon the director of this play, and the two marvelous boy actors: the seriously gifted Kyle Schliefer and sweet-faced and future Tony-award-winner Max Talisman, and also for stealing more than his share of the show, to the sly Uncle Louie of Marcus Kyd. Every boy should have an Uncle Louie — or just fuggetaboutit.

And of course a myriad of bravas go to the play’s mother-daughter acting twins, that brilliantly talented pair together again, of Holly Twyford — who is easily the equal of that other classic character of drama, the fragile yet steely daughter, Laura, in Williams’ Glass Menagerie – and finally Herself, forever-Grandma-cold-but-underneath-it-all-just-barely-vulnerable: the formidable Tana Hickern. I would eat Her soup and like it!

If only I had seen your play when there was still time for me to review it for the 160,000 households in northern Virginia which are delivered the FAIRFAX COUNTY TIMES (a weekly newspaper now owned by the Washington Post-Newsweek company), it would have been reviewed there properly of course! But our next issue doesn’t come out until next Wednesday, after “Lost in Yonkers” has, alas, closed.

So let the aforementioned thoughts stand as the review – in part – that I would have written had our printing presses been better timed to help shower “Lost in Yonkers” with the kudos it so richly merits. There is a huge potential audience in Fairfax County that deserves to be alerted to the incredible corpus of work at Theatre J! In the future, so let it be said, so let it be written!

Nearly finally, I want to see your next production — “Mommie Queerest” (running December 16-January 3) — this time well in time for review in the paper, at its Press Night Sunday, December 20 at 7:30 PM!

And – now – finally, I’m just glad that I met Ari and Shirley at J Street, which I attended courtesy of Diane Perleman’s earlier heads-up, though I had in fact known Jeremy, when he was Policy Director, from the days of mutual work on Howard Dean’s presidential campaign in 2003-2004.

thanks again,
David Hoffman

and yes, feel free to use anything written above as you may see fit in any future promotional materials.

Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 7:58 PM

To: DCJCC Information

Subject: TheaterJ – Lost in Yonkers

Hello,
At the suggestion of a friend, who’d seen the show, I bought a last minute ticket to LOST IN YONKERS and was in the audience on Sunday afternoon. I am sorry to say that it was my first visit to the restored JCC. Its a very inviting and well-maintained facility. The box office attendant asked if I was eligible for a senior price for my ticket. Should I be annoyed that she though I was older than I am – I’m 58? Or delighted that she wanted to give me the best deal that she could? LOL.

I make the comment about the senior discount because I believe it was the latter rather than the former and applaud anyone who tries to do their best for a customer. The other attendants were similarly customer friendly. The theater itself is welcoming and intimate. That, by itself, makes me want to attend future performances.

And the production? Its always hard to lose with a Neil Simon script. But wow! Maybe it wasn’t worthy of a Tony, but it was excellent. The set and costumes were perfect. All of the performers were at least very good, and three – the two female leads and the younger child – were superb. Kudos to TheaterJ.
Plus I had the good fortune to bump into a man during intermission who was my very good boss 20 some odd years ago! I’ll be paying more attention to what the JCC has to offer.

David…
Attorney at Law

* * *

David,

What a great Thanksgiving gift to us! We so appreciate the feedback – everyone at Theater J works very hard to create a sense of community and family. We welcome you into the fold.

Have a lovely Thanksgiving holiday and we look forward to seeing you soon at the 16th Street J. Check out all our other programs at www.washingtondcjcc.org .

Until then,
Margaret Hahn Stern
Chief Operating Officer, Washington DCJCC
Creativity, Community and Connection—find it all at the 16th Street J—your Center in the City.


* * *

Dear Margaret,

I mentioned my experience to a co-worker today who also saw the show last weekend. He agreed with my assessment. Throw that into your gift package!

People who do good work are too often under-appreciated. And others too often fail to express appreciation.

David

Here’s a lengthy, generous interview from DC Theatre Scene’s Joel Markowitz with Lost in Yonkers’ cast members Holly Twyford, Kyle Schliefer, and Max Talisman. We’ll excerpt a bit here and encourage you to read the whole megillah at dctheatrescene.com. Great stuff!

Lost in Yonkers: Holly Twyford, Max Talisman and Kyle Schliefer

November 20, 2009 by Joel Markowitz

In his autobiography “The Play Goes on”, Neil Simon talked about creating the role of Bella. “The boys (Arty and Jay) needed a confidant, someone who would be a buffer between them and their grandmother. I invented Aunt Bella. About thirty-six or thirty-seven, and still living with her mother, working in the candy store from the early morning till closing time; even giving the back rubs and leg rubs to ease her pain. There would have to be something wrong with Bella as a sweet, shy, and nervous woman, but loving her two nephews. It wasn’t enough. With a mother whose only concern is that her children survive, without love, without warmth, without affection, they would have to become a dysfunctional family.

In the next draft, Bella changed. She was almost retarded, but not in a clinical way. Her growth as a human being was stunted. She became a fifteen-year-old child in the body if a thirty-eight-year-old woman, with all the desires and needs of a mature woman, but with the inability to understand these desires. With Arty and Jay moving in, we see Bella happier than she’s ever been before, even though Jay, fourteen, and Arty, about twelve, seem more grown up than she is.”

Who better than to play the difficult role of Bella than three-time Helen Hayes Award winner Holly Twyford? Holly wraps her arms around Theater J audiences, cuddles them, and never lets go. You laugh and cry, and cheer as she becomes more confident and finally takes on the “matriarch from hell”. It would be easy to overact in this role, but Holly never does, and that’s why critics and audiences are raving about her heart-warming, assertive, and zany performance.

Joel: What is Lost In Yonkers about from Bella’s point of view?

Holly: Bella’s attitude is that to which we should all aspire … she wants to be happy. She’s not sure how to get there, but she knows that something has to change. When the boys arrive, I think she sees a chance, when she forces her mother to take them in, it’s not just for them and for Eddie, it’s because Bella knows that some sort of change can maybe begin with their presence.

Joel: How do you relate to Bella?

Holly: A professor in school used to say “find the love in the scene”, and he didn’t just mean in the scene or the play but in the character … one always needs to fall in love with the character. I’m sure there’s a bit of Holly in all my characters, hopefully more on the inside, and not the outside.

Joel: How did you prepare for the role?

Read Holly’s answer and the rest of the interview here.

* * *

How did Neil Simon create the two brothers Arty and Jay in Lost in Yonkers? In the opening scene where we are introduced to Grandmother, it was originally planned that there would be just one son – Jay. “This leaves the young boy, Jay, sitting by himself in the living room, not even knowing his life is being discussed a few feet away from him. But how do we know what his thoughts are? What fears he has? No problem. I give Jay a younger brother, Arty. Now they can discuss at length how much they fear the grandmother and hope that Pop will come out soon, so they can all leave. We’ve not only established the brothers and their plight, we know a great deal about Grandma Kurnitz long before she makes an appearance.”
Who better than to play Arty and Jay than two friends who have appeared on the stage together in the past – Max Talisman and Kyle Schliefer?

I’m a big fan of Max and Kyle. I saw them perform together at Musical Theater Center, and have followed their careers closely, because these are two talented young actors who have a bright future ahead of them.

Many theatre goers will recognize Max from his astounding vocal performance as Noah Gellman in Studio Theatre’s Helen Hayes Award winning production of Caroline, or Change. This is the first time he’s appeared in a non-singing role. Audiences will remember Kyle as Eric in Round House Theatre’s production of Lord of the Flies, and Rooster in Classika Theatre’s production of The Bremen Musicians.

Joel: What is Lost In Yonkers about from the point of view of Arty and Jay?

Max: Lost in Yonkers from the point of view of Arty is a tale of brotherhood. Arty and his brother Jay are best friends. The play is about how they stick together through tough family trials. The brothers stick it out through the crazy – but loving – Aunt Bella and the scary and intimidating Grandmother. For me, Arty’s story is also Jay’s story, because they stick together, and their friendship and love for each other grow deeper.

Kyle: From Jay’s perspective, Lost In Yonkers is in one sense his transition from boyhood into manhood. At the beginning of the play, Jay is left in a situation completely out of his control. He feels the solution is finding Grandma’s money, and bringing his father back home. What he ends up learning, and what actually starts his transition into manhood, is the importance of family. He gets many lessons from his encounters with Aunt Bella, Louie, Gert, and even Grandma. He ends up loving people and accepting them for who they are. At end of the show, he even tells Grandma he has learned a lot from her. “some good, and some bad,” but he got the lessons.

Read the rest of Joel’s interview with “the boys” here.