Obies Follow Up - Reflecting after the 2014 Awards

So the Obies were Monday night, and the trend that I discussed in my last blog post continues.  In general, approximately 90% of the work rewarded has budgets of $250,000 or more, though the calculations are a bit complicated this year for reasons I’ll get into.

Before I go into that, I do want to mention, as I did last time, that these posts are not meant to denigrate anyone involved, especially the award winners.  I saw and enjoyed a few of the shows honored, and they were all good shows created and performed by talented people.  I know a few people who were on the awards committee this year, and I know their hearts are in the right place.  And I am very fond of Obie chairman Michael Feingold as a critic, I think he did much good over the years.

Which in many ways is what is inspiring me to write.  I think that we all can become prone to a certain sort of narrowness of vision over time that leads us to lose sight of the broader picture.  In this case, many of those serving are frequently working with (or reviewing) the people being honored, and it may be hard to realize that a large and important part of the downtown theater scene is mostly being ignored.

Ironically, this is exactly the part of the downtown scene that most benefits from the awards.  To many receiving the awards on Monday, the award served as a bit of a (deserved) ego boost, but had little or any impact on their career.  But it is the lesser known shows with the smaller budgets that have the artists who truly need the recognition.  And of course, that was the purpose of the Obies to begin with: to recognize those who haven’t been seen and recognized by the mainstream.  In those days, the mainstream was simply Broadway, and the small budget shows were much fewer in number.  Now Off-Broadway exists mostly in the upper middle class of theater budgets, and yet it still persists in looking up at the upper upper class and saying, aren’t we poor?  Meanwhile, the lower class, or even the lower middle class is mostly ignored.

Do we really have to reflect American society that directly?

In regard to Monday’s Obies:  There were 20 awards given to shows, some with multiple recipients.  I face a problem with these calculations about how to group them.  The World Is Round received 3 awards, but they seem to be grouped together.  The Octoroon’s playwright, Brendan Brandon-Jacobs, won a playwriting award that also covered his work on Appropriate.  However, cast member Chris Meyers also received a separate award.

So if you group the awards as Playbill does, you find yourself with 20 awards.  However, the listing on the Village Voice website seems to indicate 26 awards.  The reason the difference creates very different calculations is that two shows, This Was The End and The World Is Round, fall under the $250,000 threshold.  So the result is that either 2 of 20 (10%, right on the average) or 4 or 26 (a surprising 15%) of Obies this year went to more moderately budgeted shows.

Close to the border, I suspect, is NAATCO’s production of Awake and Sing, for which Mia Katigbak won an award.  I am counting it as over $250,000, because of the size of the cast, but I could be wrong there.  Please feel free to correct me if you have contradictory information.

I will also mention $250,000 is a very high threshold.  I have never done a show with a budget over $100,000, the closest I’ve come is around $80,000, and that was officially Off-Broadway (astoundingly little for an Off-Broadway show, but nonetheless…).  With the in kind contributions my theater company has received from the venues/co-producers, that budget has reached a little over $100,000.  I know many, probably the majority working downtown who have never passed the $50,000 mark.  I actually assumed at first the budget for The World Is Round (a show I saw and loved) was over $250,000, but some investigation revealed otherwise.  Good job on their part.  I wasn’t able to discover what support BAM provided that wasn’t on that official budget, but it was a show that easily could have broken the $250,000 barrier regardless. [UPDATE: That includes BAM support]

So, using the more generous assessment, here are the updated totals for the Obies over the last 5 years:

The Public 18, Signature 10, Playwrights Horizons 9, Soho Rep 7, Manhattan Theater Club 6, New York Theater Workshop 5, Lincoln Center 4, Rattlestick 4, BAM 4 (3 of which are for World Is Round), Foundry 3, Ripe Time 3 (also credited for World Is Round), , Elevator Repair Service 2 (both times at The Public),  Classic Stage Company 2, HERE 2, Incubator Arts 2 (counting Three Pianos, on stage at NYTW at that point), Manhattan Class Company 2, St. Ann’s Warehouse 2, Theatre for a New Audience 2.

And those which have won a single OBIE in those years:  Alliance Francaise, Ars Nova (Natasha & Pierre, which had moved to a commercial production), Atlantic Theatre Company, Barrow Street, Baryshnikov Arts Center (Fela, which had moved to Broadway), Bushwick Star/The Debate Society , The Chocolate Factory, La MaMa (Good Woman of Setzuan, moved to The Public), NAATCO, Partial Comfort, Pig Iron, The Play Company, Primary Stages, PS 122, Second Stage, Punchdrunk, 3LD Art + Technology Center (as part of Under The Radar), Transport, Vineyard.

In terms of budget: out of 96 awards, 84 went to shows with budgets definitely over $250,000, 5 were definitely under (3 for World Is Round), and 8 were in the gray area for me (including Awake and Sing).  So the percentage of lower budget shows is between 5 – 13 %.

I would remiss to write all this without suggesting some solutions.  First, a larger Obie committee.  Quite frankly, I think it is unfair to ask to few people to see so much.  There are a number of qualified possibilities, and the number could be doubled, at least. And for those new Obie members: select people who are part of the true independent theater scene.  Second, a clear way to contact the committee and let them know about your show.  Yes, if you have the right press agent who knows the right people to contact, it can be done.  But the contact should be published on the website, and the committee should be announced, as early as possible.  Finally, and most importantly, there should be a commitment from all the judges and the Obies as a whole to seek out those smaller shows.  To see things that you may know nothing about.   I know it’s not all going to change overnight.  But a commitment that, say, 33% of the awards will go to lower budgets shows is not impossible, by any means.  And that commitment in itself will inspire the judges to seek out new work.

It’s not easy.  In response to my earlier post, I had a few people ask me privately, what should I go see?  Here’s my honest answer: Like everyone, I live in my little bubble.  I can tell you about my friend’s plays, some of which are very good.  And occasionally I am drawn to something outside of that bubble. I recently saw Then She Fell, which I thought was amazing (and never won an Obie), but that show has received a fair amount of recognition, which is why I knew about it to begin with.

I do know some of the places where you can find those shows.  Some of them have won an Obie (or two) over the last five years, but considering the number of Obies given and the number of shows at these theaters (which have much busier seasons than the large institutions), most of the shows never get seen at all.  I know, because I have worked at a lot of them (as I warned, of course, it is my friends I know about).

So go to The Ohio, HERE, 3LD, La MaMa, The Brick, Dixon Place, Abrons, The Secret Theatre, The Chocolate Factory, Metropolitan Playhouse, and all the other smaller theaters about town.  And not just when Taylor Mac or Black Eyed Susan or a downtown luminary is performing, do it when a possible future downtown luminary is performing as well.  For my part, I pledge to look beyond those theaters and really try to seek out interesting shows I would not know about, to look at the tiny reviews with only a paragraph or two devoted and think, could that be interesting?

New York is a busy place.  It is hard to see even my friends' work, plus those few shows that have received enough buzz to make them interesting to me.  To venture into the great beyond?  It takes time, and it takes effort.

So I am asking a lot, I know.  But I am asking it because I think it is important.  If you are in any way in a position to influence future awards, please consider it.

How the OBIES are failing New York theater

Let me start by getting one thing out of the way.  I have never won an OBIE.  I doubt that I have ever been considered for an OBIE.  In my 20 years plus of working in downtown theater, I don’t believe anyone from the OBIE committee has stepped foot in the theater for any play I have written, directed, or produced.

So any screed against the current state of the OBIE Awards (and let me make no bones about it, that is what this is) should be read with the knowledge that I, of course, have a personal stake in it.  But if this were pure sour grapes (and I have at times eaten of that fruit), without any implications beyond myself, I would confine myself to my own private 3am anxieties about my life/career and leave it at that.  However, I do think my experience with the OBIES reflects a greater problem with the awards in general, and that is why I am choosing to address it.

I wouldn’t care, of course, if I didn’t think the OBIES were important.  This is the 58^th anniversary of the award, which originally was created to offset the idea that Broadway was the only place interesting and valuable can happen.  That very important work was being done in smaller theaters, with smaller budgets, with fewer commercial interests.  That in fact this is where the heart of theater lay, where the greatest theater could bloom.  The OBIES were the first to embrace the Off-Off-Broadway movement and give an equal weight to those productions.  They have gained their status through good work and high ideals.

And like many esteemed institutions of over fifty years, they have gone to pot, borne down with the weight of their own success.  Somewhere in them is the kernel of that original ideal.  But it is buried, deeply buried.

That is not to say worthy work, inspiring work, does not get recognized.  It does.  I am friends with some OBIE winners, and well do they deserve it.  I would not wish to denigrate anyone’s achievement.  But the awards now have become largely about one thing:  celebrating the achievements of those in institutional theater, perhaps a step below Broadway in budget, but nonetheless work that is highly recognized and highly touted without the help of an additional award.  It has become about the status quo.

Let us examine the awards, by the numbers.  In the last four years (I chose four instead of five because the last four were easier to research, and with the OBIES coming up Monday, I’m hoping to fill out the roster), these are the theaters which have won multiple OBIES, from the most to the least:

The Public 13, Playwrights Horizons 8, Manhattan Theater Club 6, Lincoln Center 4, Signature 4, Soho Rep 4, Foundry 3, Rattlestick 3, Classic Stage Company 2, HERE 2, Incubator Arts 2 (counting Three Pianos, which was actually on stage at New York Theater Workshop at that point), Manhattan Class Company 2, New York Theater Workshop 2 (also counting Three Pianos), St. Ann’s Warehouse 2, Theatre for a New Audience 2.

And those which have won a single OBIE in those years:  Alliance Francaise, Ars Nova (Natasha & Pierre, which had moved on to a commercial production), Atlantic Theatre Company, Barrow Street, Baryshnikov Arts Center (Fela, which had moved to Broadway), Brooklyn Academy of Music, Bushwick Star/The Debate Society , Elevator Repair Service (at The Public),  La MaMa (Good Woman of Setzuan, moved to The Public), Partial Comfort, Pig Iron, The Play Company, Primary Stages, PS 122, Second Stage, Punchdrunk, 3LD Art + Technology Center (as part of Under The Radar…not sure who main funder was…), Transport, Vineyard

Perhaps more tellingly, of 72 productions, I would say 63 unquestionably had budgets over $250,000, 2 probably were under, and 7 fall into the gray area for me.  My guess is less than 10% regardless.  I base that calculation on my years of working as a producer and occasional GM for different levels of production.

So what does all that data tell us, besides that The Public has been winning an incredible number of OBIE Awards.    In the multiple awards category, there are two champions of the indie theater scene, HERE and Incubator Arts.  Wonderful.  Among the others, Bushwick Starr, La MaMa, 3LD, and PS 122 are all represented.  Very happy to see it.  And by implication The Ohio, where Pig Iron put on Chekhov Lizardbrain. One of my favorites.

But it is not enough.  Under 10% with a budget under $250,000 is not enough.  And that is a conservative estimate, for most of these institutions have multimillion dollar budgets to sustain them that don’t even get figured into the production cost.  These are not the productions that the OBIES once endeavored to honor, productions that would be overlooked without the scrappy little awards from a scrappy downtown rag called The Village Voice.  These are highly established theaters with the budget to have themselves be seen, regardless.  The OBIES may be an extra feather in the cap or a moment of downtown cred, but you can find those same productions at the Drama Desk or the Lortel awards.

What the OBIES have done on in the past and can do, could continue to do, is to recognize the small theater productions that it first purported to promote.  And I don’t mean via the $1,000 grants that do sometimes go to small, deserving companies.  I was extremely joyful when Metropolitan Theater, which does quality work on a tiny budget, won their award a few years.  But they have been working over 20 years themselves, and it is telling that they were given an award that should by right be given to the smaller, newer companies.  But since Metropolitan had never been recognized before, the award came, well overdue.

One main reason is that the awards are a closed system.  Only a few judges are chosen, often reviewers who are only being sent to the bigger productions to begin with.  There is no easy way to invite judges in advance, nor any indication that the judges are encouraged to seek out and find the smaller productions.  The awards themselves have become star studded, competing with the Tonys in the recognition value of its presenters.  Here is Anne Hathaway!  Here is Cyndi Lauper!  Here is Meryl Streep!  They too are participating, many of them are eligible for the very same award, by dint of the fact that they chose to perform in a play with a budget of $1,000,000 instead of $5,000,000.

But I will embrace the stars.  I will even pay the $20 I am now asked for as the OBIES turn more into a money making machine and less into a celebration of downtown theater.  I will do all that if I know the names and the money are also being put towards a good cause, finding the seeds of new exciting theater and promoting it.  And I don’t mean as the exception, almost by accident, when it stumbles across a show that has received just the right amount of buzz to draw in a judge or two.  I mean consistently, as a statement of purpose.

I still believe the OBIES are capable of it.  I want them to be capable of it, because frankly no other award has the name recognition to have the same clout.  So perhaps this is no more than a plea, a call in the wilderness.  Come see us in the wilds of indie theater.  There is good work.  There is also plenty of terrible work.  But every so often, there is life-changing work.  If only it could be seen and recognized.

UPDATE: Please read more thoughts (and possible solutions) in my follow up post

Iphigenia in Aulis: Director's Note

-->

art by Eric Shanower

The Director's Note for Iphigenia in Aulis, starting February 14 at LaMaMa:

A few years ago, when reading my friend Eric Shanower’s comic, Age Of Bronze (his epic retelling of the Trojan War),
I came across the story of Iphigenia’s sacrifice.  I vaguely
remembered Euripides' play, but Eric's version highlighted themes that I found both compelling and surprisingly resonant. “It's all in Euripides,” he told me. Reading the text again, there was much more in it than I remembered.

Eric and I started a graphic novel version of the play play, using images from Age of Bronze—and are still working on it. But once I had finished the translation, I wanted to stage it using images from Eric’s work.

Iphigenia in Aulis is an examination of the power of the mob. The antagonists are not onstage: neither the soldiers that force the murder of Iphigenia, nor the prophet Kalchas who incites them, nor the rabble-rouser Odysseus who leads them. Instead we see Agamemnon and Klytemnestra, struggle against fate—a fate determined not by the gods, but by an “angry horde of mortal men.”

As a playwright, Euripides expresses an unusual level of doubt. Doubt about democracy, which is often a small step away from ochlocracy (mob rule) and doubt about religiously inspired violence. Such doubts resonate today, most recently in the revolutions of the Arab Spring and their mixed consequences. Is democracy an unqualified good? When does it become a tyranny of the majority, or worse, a bloodthirsty force of a communal beast?

Although the antagonists are offstage, we see and hear a representative of the mob—the Chorus. The women of the Chorus straddle the border. They are part of “the masses,” yet they also represent the oppressed—women raped or murdered in times of war. Their songs are violent, sexual, and raw, and rock is the obvious style to convey that energy. As a fan of Aldo Perez’s music, I knew his style would allow the Chorus to be visceral, and even bestial, but also sexy and witty.

I deliberately mixed the language in this translation and gave the principals a heightened diction to set them apart from the Chorus. Their masks provide further distance, creating “second selves” that they serenely present in public, even while boiling with emotion inside. Jane Stein designed them to double as objects—a staff, a walking stick, a sword—that also conveyed status. For the faces, she transformed Eric’s images into three-dimensions that play on the historical links between masks, puppetry and comic art.

Euripides’ subject is surprisingly contemporary, and so is the way he tells it. The gods are mentioned, but their existence is ambiguous. Instead he focuses on men and the terrible acts they force each other to commit. This production intermingles the contemporary with the classical because Euripides’ ideas are alive for us today, and just as deadly, as they were 2,400 years ago.

20th Anniversary Memories: Audience

Dan Leventritt, Václav Havel, and Scott Simpson after Havel visits the performance of Audience at the Havel Festival

I have directed Václav Havel’s play Audience twice.

The first time was as part of a double bill, which included Slawomir Mrozek’s Striptease.  It was my first production in New York, and I was not only director, I was stage manager, set designer, lighting designer, costume designer, tech crew and  box office.  The second time was as part of the Havel Festival, and Havel himself attended.  The first time the translation was by Vera Blackwell, and I had found it in a big stack of Samuel French scripts and taken a liking to it, somewhat at random.  The second time the script was by Havel friend Jan Novák, who had been commissioned to translate all of Havel’s Vaněk plays for the festival.  The first time we averaged about eight audience members a show.  The second time we had a relatively full house every night.

Both times, the Brewmaster was played by Dan Leventritt, who seemed to me to be made for the part. Dan’s performance in 1992 stuck so strongly in my memory that I knew I wanted no one else to play the part in 2006.

Audience, for those unfamiliar with it, is a two-hander that introduced the character Vaněk, an alter ego of sorts for Havel.  Like Havel, Vaněk is a playwright who is forced to work in a brewery because the government has declared that he can no longer work as a writer.  I have written a little about the character in my essay that introduces the book The Vaněk Plays (you can find that essay here)

When I first directed the play, I was new to New York. I borrowed money from my father and brother to rent a black box theater for two weeks, but had no money for any other aspect of the production.  We rehearsed Audience in Dan’s apartment on the Upper West Side, where I and the actor playing Vaněk, Moni Damevski, crowded in around a small table.  Fortunately, a small table was about all the play demanded.

Simultaneously, I was directing Striptease with an actor I knew from college, Jason Katz (who now uses the name Jason Harris), and an actor who had appeared in my New Jersey production of Artist Descending a Staircase, Peter Brown.  Both became good friends.  They were game enough to follow me into a little empty space I found that seemed unoccupied, somewhere in midtown.  After a couple of rehearsals, we found out why it was abandoned, when men in protective suits came in and told us they were there to remove the asbestos.

The set included a table (which I found in the theater) and two freestanding doors.  I created the lighting on my own one night during what I loosely called “tech week,” running between the light boot and climbing up ladders to approximate some very basic cues.  I recorded a toilet flushing and used some Michael Nyman music as our only sound cues, except for the mixtape I made for preshow and intermission.

A day before we went up, there were still no doors.  The morning before the first performance I called my friend Mike Nuzzo.  “Can you please help me?” I asked.

 

“Sure,” he said, always game to assist.  “Maybe tomorrow?”

“Curtain is in eight hours,” I said.

He drove in from New Jersey with two doors, and with the help of a little wood from Dykes Lumber, we somehow got them to stand.  When the actors arrived at 6pm, they expressed surprise that we had been able to set up the doors at all.

My brother David, who besides being our major funder/cheerleader was a stagehand/puppeteer for Striptease (there were two giant hands that needed manipulation), came in and learned his part in the hour or so remaining.  Then we opened.

Fourteen years later, at the Ohio Theater, Václav Havel sat in the audience and watched Dan and our new Vaněk, the wonderfully talented Scott Simpson, perform the show.  Afterwards he congratulated Dan and Scott, and I introduced him to our terrific stage manager, Taylor Keith, and the rest of our staff.

It was another small theater in New York, but it was a long journey between the two productions. And I am proud to say, Havel was pleased.

Václav Havel's Vaněk Plays: Audience, Protest, Unveiling, and Dozens of Cousins

Theater 61 Press is releasing five new books of translations of Havel's plays (The Havel Collection)    Here is one of my essays from the collection, about The Vaněk Plays. The website for Theater 61 Press (put up just last month) includes a number of other essays from the collection.

Who is Vaněk? He is an alter ego for Václav Havel, though, like most of Havel’s alter egos, he is an exaggerated reflection of one aspect of the writer. He is a theatrical construct, a foil whose own presumed moral purity inspires his fellow characters to justify their moral breaches. He is a symbol of the struggle against Czechoslovakia’s Communist regime, first employed by Havel, then by Havel’s friends, and even appearing in Tom Stoppard’s Rock n’ Roll (and my own Velvet Oratorio, written to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution).

I first encountered Vaněk during my freshman year in college. I found Audience in a stack of plays at the local library, and I was immediately drawn to the work. I was passingly familiar with the political situation in Czechoslovakia, but the play brought home its human dimensions to me. What struck me at the time was the empathy Havel had for the Brewmaster. The final monologue truly brought home the fact that it is not only the dissidents who struggle within a totalitarian—or rather, as Havel put it, post-totalitarian society. It is also the seeming collaborators, forced by the structure of their society into their roles.

The Vaněk plays (along with all of Havel’s work) were banned in Czechoslovakia when they were first written, but that didn’t prevent people from performing them in their living rooms, copying them surreptitiously as samizdat (illegal, faded copies of banned work), or even recording them on vinyl. These surreptitiously distributed plays helped create Havel ’s reputation, which in turn made him the natural leader for the Velvet Revolution in 1989.

The plays were clearly based on events in Havel’s life, including his own experience in the brewery in which he worked, once working in a theater was no longer an allowable option for him. On the underground recording of Audience made during the Communist years, Havel himself played Vaněk, while his friend Landovsky played the Brewmaster. One year later, Landovsky would go on to write a Vaněk play of his own.

I have directed Audience twice, first in 1993, then in 2006 during Untitled Theater Company #61’s Havel Festival, in which we produced all of Havel’s work. Though removed from the time and place that first inspired their creation, neither Audience nor the other Vaněk plays have lost their power. They all succeed in telling a very universal story about the ways in which we are all susceptible to moral compromise, about the way our own actions can contribute to the very same problems we protest.

The most recent of Havel’s Vaněk plays, Dozens of Cousins, is more of a short, modern epilogue to Unveiling. It is published here for the first time. Despite being set in the post- Communist era, we see the same tropes, the same lying and pretense that are echoes of his earlier work.

One of Havel’s core ideas in his philosophical essays is the concept of “living in truth,” that each small compromise we make with the truth leads to larger compromises, until it snowballs into a society-wide epidemic in which lying becomes the instinctual path. It is a danger in any society, no matter what the government. We all need a Ferdinand Vaněk to keep us honest.

20th Annniversary Memories: The Memo

The Memo was one of the two plays in the Havel Festival I was able to direct myself—no easy task actually, with all the work entailed in producing the festival.  But I very much wanted to have an opportunity to direct a few plays as well as produce.  One play I directed, Audience, was a short two hander, and I had already directed a version of it in 1992 (more about that in an upcoming blog post).  That meant restaging would be relatively simple—if one can ever call doing any show “simple.” The Memo however, was well over two hours in length and involved a large cast and a complex script.  I knew from the top it would be a challenge, albeit a joyful one.

One of the most exciting aspects of working on The Memo was the opportunity to work with the translator, Paul Wilson, on his new translation.  The Memo (then translated as The Memorandum) had been originally produced at The Public Theater in 1967, and Vera Blackwell’s translation had been the only one available before the Havel Festival.  My friend Doug had directed that translation in college (originally we had considered co-directing), so I was particularly familiar with it.

Paul’s translation has a more contemporary, American tone.  Before he became a translator, Paul had had a long personal relationship with Havel.  While living in Prague (he is a native Torontonian), he had been a member of The Plastic People of the Universe, the band whose arrest inspired Charter 77, the civil rights document Havel co-authored.

I cast the play early, since I knew I needed as much done as early as possible as I could manage.  It also allowed Paul to travel down to work with me, our dramaturg Karen Lee Ott, and the cast.  Karen and I had worked on some original translations before, during the Ionesco Festival, and there is something thrilling for me, always, about being part of that process.

One of the things Paul was struggling with at the time was the names of the characters.  Many of the Czech names had been based on the original actors who played the part, but he wanted to anglicize them (Blackwell had kept the names of those original actors).  I suggested he use the names of our actors instead, and he agreed with that idea.  To my surprise, a few of the actors expressed reservations—the idea of playing characters who had their own names didn’t appeal to them.  But I asked them how they would feel watching the play onstage, twenty years in the future, with their role in the original translation immortalized?  That idea seemed to win them over, in the end.

I myself am very much looking forward to seeing The Memo onstage and hearing the names of the cast members in the role.  I think, now that the play has been published, that opportunity may come soon.

The work of the play was very much in the timing.  Entrances and exits are timed like a farce, and indeed much of the play had farcical elements, particularly the scenes in the translation center.  Fortunately I had three excellent comic actors for those roles (Ken Simon, Talaura Harms, and Skid Maher).  The classroom scenes were anchored by Peter Bean and Uma Incrocci, theater company mainstays who I knew would keep the play comic and alive.  And it was great fun as always staging them in them.  The hardest of scenes, I found, were actually the office scenes.  There too I was blessed with a number of good actors, but those scenes have some heavy lifting to do both in terms of exposition and philosophizing.  Those scenes put heavy burdens on the two leads, Andrew Rothkin and Maxwell Zener. But they both worked valiantly to conquer the material.

In retrospect, to be honest, I think I would stage those scenes a bit differently, if I ever revived the piece.  That may have to do with the fact that Havel’s single criticism of my work on the play related to those scenes.  But more on that that later.

The play was barely staged in time.  Tech is always a bit frantic during festivals, but I remember a sense of panic the whole time during our Memo tech.  How we got through the final cue, I don’t know, but we did.

By then, I already knew the Havel would be attending.  In fact, it was his test performance, in a way.  His office told me that they could not guarantee how often he would be able to attend, but that he would definitely be attending The Memo.  It became clear that it was something of a test performance.  If he liked The Memo, he would be back.  If not…I wasn’t sure.

In retrospect, he told me later, he regretted his initial caution.  He was able to attend half the shows, but if he had it to do over again, he would have scheduled in advance to try to see them all.

I had met Havel a few times before the show, and the encounters were pleasant without being particularly personal.  We had a more one on one get together planned, but it would not be until after he had attended.

As I remember, he came to the third performance, so we had had a chance to at least get into somewhat of a rhythm.  I had avoided telling the actors when he was coming, as I didn’t want it to affect their performance, but a few of them figured it out when they glimpsed his arrival.  I had mentioned to some in the festival that he would be coming, to be sure the audience would be full, and they in turn had told others.  To my embarrassment, Havel’s first arrival had a bit of the feeling of a scene from La Dolce Vida.  Cameras were flashing everywhere.

Havel took it all in stride.  As I was to realize much later when I visited him in Prague, this sort of activity was normal for him and didn’t really disturb him anymore.  I grabbed him a beer and sat him down front and center.  A bodyguard requested a seat behind him, which I accommodated.  I was assured that the bodyguard was used to being at the theater and a good audience member.

Then I cowered in the back row and watched.  To my great relief, pretty soon into the first scene, Havel laughed.  And he continued to laugh, even at the little jokes I had put into the staging that hadn’t been in the original script at all.

At intermission, I sat down with him, and for the first time we had a one on one conversation.  He asked me mostly about details of the festival and told me he was enjoying the show, much to my relief.  The second act passed a bit like the first, though I must admit, the timing which had seemed right on target in act one sometimes slipped during act two.  But all in all, I was very proud of the performance.

After the show, Havel posed for pictures with the cast and with Robert Lyons, who ran the Ohio Theater where The Memo was being staged (he runs the New Ohio now, but I will always miss the spacious and beautiful old theater).  And he very quickly told me he would be coming back.

Havel’s one criticism of the production: the silent character, play by V. Orion Delwaterman.  Not Orion’s performance, but my staging of him in the office scenes.  The silent characters, he told me, had been based on the silent government presences, the agents who would stand glowering somewhere in the background but ever present, a menacing mystery of sort.  I staged Orion in a much more active way, a silent but efficient functionary who movements mirrored the antagonist,.

Funny, in two American productions of The Memorandum I have seen since then (Blackwell’s translation) that same character was staged in similar ways.  A cultural Czech/American divide, I suspect.  But of course, that criticism made me rethink the staging of the office scenes, as I mentioned earlier, and I think I have a way to bring that idea to life, should I have a chance to do so again.

It was, of course, an amazing experience.  Paul Wilson also seemed gratifyingly pleased with the performances.  And I still think of that show Havel attended as the beginning of my real relationship with Havel.  I am grateful for it.

Remembrances of Václav Havel

Sometimes, you are lucky.

William Niederkorn and Václav Havel

Sometimes, the man you meet is equal to the man you imagined.

I don’t remember the first time I heard Havel’s name.  Perhaps during a news broadcast.  Perhaps when I read Martin Esslin’s Theater of the Absurd.  I do know that I had read and fallen in love with his work by college, and I was overwhelmed by the idea that an absurdist playwright led a revolution and became the president of a nation.

His play, Audience was the first I directed in New York, the first New York production of my theater company.  For twelve years after that, I admired him from afar.

Then I came up with idea, called the Havel Festival.  My idea was, we would do every play he had ever written.  People now knew Havel the politician so well, I wanted to remind them about Havel the playwright.

I approached his agents.  We scheduled it for his 70^th birthday.  By lucky chance, Gregory Mosher was planning a residency for Havel at Columbia at the same point, which meant he would be in town for the full length of the festival.

Havel with the cast and crew of The Memo

He came.

I met him for the first time at a reception being held by Columbia for his arrival.  I remember chatting with Oliver Sacks, another hero of mine, as I stood about four feet away from him, waiting to shake his hand.  Havel turned and graciously shook my hand.  I tried in the noise to introduce myself, and he nodded pleasantly, but seemed too tired to pick up exactly who I was.

Halka Kaiserova, the Czech consul general, explained it to him.  Suddenly, he beamed.  You don’t know what it means to an author, when you do all of his work, he told me.  Thank you.

I saw him at various functions over the next few weeks, and he would always greet me with a beaming smile.  He assured me he would be coming to see the production of the Memo I directed.  Some others, too, he said at the time, though I wasn’t sure what he meant.

Robert Lyons, me, and Havel at The Ohio

When he arrived at the Ohio Theater, he was surrounded by flashing cameras and attending by an entourage of secret service and dignitaries.  The flashing cameras didn’t affect him.  He was used to it.  He assured me his secret service members knew how to behave in a theater and would not disturb the production.

I remember when I watched him laugh.  It was early on, a small visual joke I had put into the script.  I sat anxiously in the back row and watched him with great relief.  And he kept on laughing, all show long.

He came back again, soon after, to see his plays Audience (which I had remounted) and Protest (directed by Robert Lyons, who runs the Ohio).  He was loved them both and was particularly taken with the actor Richard Toth, who appeared in Protest.

Havel and his wife Dasha with cast/crew of Temptation

He came back again.  And again.  And again.  Till he felt like a fixture in The Ohio and The Brick, where many of his other plays were being produced.

Throughout, he exuded a genuine warmth and a genuine enthusiasm about the work.  We had some celebrities who participated in the festival, but he was not impressed by celebrity.  He was as gracious and giving to every actor as he was to Kathleen Turner or Dustin Hoffman.  He did not care whether he was in a small theater or a large one.  He cared that we cared about the writing.  And we did, deeply.

Henry Akona, me, and Havel

On the anniversary of the Velvet Revolution he came again, and listened as Trey Kay’s band, Uncle Moon, did a tribute to the Velvet Underground.  He brought Madeleine Albright with him and they sat in the tiny Brick Theater and drank and celebrated with us.  At one point he same to the microphone and made a speech in Czech.  Halka Kaiserova translated:

Havel with Trey Kay of Uncle Moon

“There is no place I would rather spend the anniversary of the Velvet Revolution.” It was in a small theater like The Brick where the revolution started, after all.

Havel and me at Joe's Pub

We were able to spend the last evening of the Festival at Joe’s Pub together, as Uncle  Moon played again, and Havel regaled me with tales about Lou Reed and his early experiences in theater.  As we sat together it suddenly occurred to me anew that this was a man who I had idolized from afar, whose ideas and writing had changed a whole country.  But now, he felt like an old friend.

We saw each other occasionally after that.  In London, in Philadelphia, in Prague, and most recently in Brno, when he flew me out the see a production of his newest work (or his reconfigured old work) The Pig.  Somehow, every time I saw him, I suddenly had this fear that this time, I would be disappointed.  This time he wouldn’t live up to the ridiculously high expectations that I had for him.

Havel in Brno (in sunglasses) watching a production of Audience

But when he saw me and welcomed me with a beaming smile, those fears melted away.  For Václav Havel was more than a great leader and a great writer and a great thinker.  He was a true and kind person, who lived the philosophies he preached.  He was the man who would beam at me every time he saw me.  He was a friend.

I will miss him very much.

Drs. Jane & Alexander - bloggers go for free!

My newest show, Doctors Jane and Alexander, is opening this Saturday, in the Festival of Jewish Theater and Ideas. Details below (or follow the links to our exciting new website!)

All bloggers who want to drop by and write about the show are invited for free!

Doctors Jane and Alexander
written and directed by Edward Einhorn
Music by Alexander S. Wiener and Henry Akona
Untitled Theater Co. #61, New York
at Theater Three, 311 W. 43rd St, 3rd Floor

with: Timothy Babcock*, Peter Bean*, Talaura Harms*, Jason Liebman*, Josh Mertz, Phoebe Silva*, Alyssa Simon*, and Maxwell Zener* on May 23

WORLD PREMIERE

Sat 5/23 @6:00, Mon 5/25 @7:30 (followed by a discussion), Thu May 28@9:00, Sun 5/31@5:00, Sat 6/6 @8:30, Sun 6/7 @7:30, Mon 6/8 @7:30, Fri 6/12 @9:00, Sat 6/13 @6:00, Sun 6/14 @1:00

Tickets $18

BUY NOW ONLINE!

or call 212-352-3101

Using found, fabricated, and occasionally finagled text, the playwright explores the life of his grandfather Alexander S. Wiener, the co-discoverer of the Rh factor in blood, through interviews with his mother, a psychologist who recently retired due to a debilitating stroke. An examination of art, science, ambition, and achievement, told with humor and song.

Directing my own play (about me)

I've started rehearsals on Doctors Jane and Alexander, a play about my Mom and my grandfather going up in the Festival of Jewish Theater & Ideas. As I often do with my own work, I am directing it myself.

I have often heard people debate whether a playwright should direct his own play. My approach, when directing my own work, had always been to somewhat detach myself from the role of writer and to become a director. To stop thinking of it as my writing and just think of it as a play. But of course I have a certain freedom I wouldn't have with someone else's play - I can say, that line is just horribly written, it doesn't work at all, let's change it. Often I find I go there more quickly than my actors, who at time protest, no, I can make this work. Which may be true. A good actor can often disguise bad writing. But I try to avoid the bad writing altogether.

The one nice thing I find when someone else directs a play of mine is that I can really concentrate on rewriting during rehearsals - and I do mean during rehearsals. During Golem Stories, I would rewrite the play as they rehearsed, so that the new lines would come by the end of rehearsal, and I could hear them. And having a director with strong opinions (Glory Bowen in that case) is very helpful - unless I completely disagree, I suppose. I occasionally disagreed with Glory, but the play came out much better by the end of rehearsals, thanks in good part to her feedback.

Doctors Jane and Alexander has gone through many iterations. It was a ten-minute piece, written in 24 hours, for my 24/7 Festival. Alex Roe (of the Metropolitan Playhouse) did a fabulous job with that little piece, and staged it in ways I didn't expect and found very moving. Then it became a one act in NEUROfest, and Ian W. Hill directed it, once again doing a fabulous job with it. Both times, I was grateful to have an outside director, because the play is so personal - I'm a character, my Mom is a character, my grandfather as well, and in the latest incarnations, my brother too. It was interesting to have an outside eye who didn't have all the inside information.

When Ensemble Studio Theater gave me a Sloan Grant to develop the piece into a full length (and present it as a reading) I decided to direct it myself. It's partly because I enjoy directing, and it was a piece I thought would be fun to direct. But it was also because, having seen other directors work with it, I felt I was ready to direct - and even more, at the time, there were some actors I really wanted to cast in the reading, and I had the luxury of determining the casting as the director.

Now I have reached the fully staged version, and I am directing again. I have to say, it has been an unusual process for me, in the early rehearsals. Before we began, I urged the actors not to worry about the reality of who I am, who my mother is, etc, but just to perform the play (much of which is found text, from actual conversation) and interperet them. And I still urge them to do so. But as a director, my instinct is to insert my own experience. And my own experience, of course, come from the reality of my experiences with my Mom and others.

At first I resisted injecting that reality into the play, but the actors had questions from day one, and really, the answers that I can give are just based on my own life. So I find myself selectively injecting a little more reality into the show.

I do simultaneously have some strong feedback about the show. Henry Akona, who is composing music for the play, or rather taking my grandfathers relatively simple compositions and filling them with ornate, complex, and clever harmonies, has been giving me feedback since the reading at Ensemble Studio Theater, and with such a personal piece, it's particularly good to have an outside eye. Henry's also a director (he has been workshopping another play of mine, Rudolf II, for years) and someone whose opinions I greatly respect.

But the difference, in the end, between directing one of my own plays myself and having someone else direct is this: when I direct, I know that everything that's really important to me will happen on stage. All the reasons I was inspired to write the play will be directly in front of the audience. I feel relatively confident about my directing, so the chance are good I will like the end result. And I will have the enjoyment (as well as the work) of putting it together.

When someone else directs, something or other that I found important in the text will inevitably missed. But with a good director, some things I didn't even realize were there will be found. Which is exciting. And I get to focus on honing the script all the more. And that is also enjoyable.

ButI won't get to discover the play as a director. And that, for me, is the real joy of directing my own script. When I write, I deliberately only include minimal stage directions. First, I don't enjoy writing them. Second, I feel like it is up to the director to fill those moments in, while it's up to me, as a writer, to give the director dialogue, with only the occasionally comment, to make the meaning clearer. And the staging that works in one theater, with one set of actors, won't necessarily work in another.

But now, as the director, I get to discover daily what staging works and doesn't work with my particular actors, discovering the transitions, the flow of the piece, etc. And it's fun. Frustrating, sometimes, when I feel the flow isn't working. But almost an extention of writing, like I have taken a work half finished and now I'm providing the other half. Because there's only so much one can express in words. And I'm not always good at explaining I mean. But showing what I mean, by moving actors in space - that, I'm good at

Shows announced for Festival of Jewish Theater and Ideas!

We are working hard on the website, but for those who read my blog, here's a preview! Here are all the shows in Untitled Theater Company #61's upcoming Festival of Jewish Theater and Ideas!

The Burning Bush
by Tracey Erin Smith
directed by Anita La Selva
Burning Bush Productions, Toronto, Canada
at Theater Three, 311 W. 43rd St, near 8th Ave.

Tickets online or at 212-352-3101

Wed 6/3 @9:00, Fri 6/5 @8:30, Sat 6/6 @11:00, Thu 6/11 @10:00

Yentl meets Showgirls in this award winning one-woman traveling spiritual roadshow. Rabbinical student Barbara Baumowitz teams up with exotic dancers to spread their religion in this new version of an old-time revival. Critics Pick in Backstage, Audience Choice Award in Frigid NYC and Best of the Toronto Fringe Festival.

Burning Bush Productions has produced award-winning theatre in New York City and across Canada. BBP also delivers workshops across North America in creating solo theatre based on personal life experience for both professional artists and lay people. We are currently developing our first feature film, based on ‘The Burning Bush!’ with Mr. Jackie Mason on board to play himself.

Cities of Light
assembled by Rebecca Joy Fletcher
directed by John Richard Thompson
Open Hart Productions, New York
at 92Y Tribeca and the Center for Jewish History
WORLD PREMIERE

Wed 5/20 @7:00 at 92Y Tribeca, 200 Hudson St Tickets online or at 212-415-5500

Tue 5/26 @7:00 & Sat 5/30 @8:30, Don’t Tell Mama, 343 West 46th Street Tickets online or at 212-757-0788

Wed 6/10 @6:30 at Center for Jewish History. 15 W. 16th St Tickets online or at 212-352-3101

Light and dark in 1930’s Berlin, Yiddish Warsaw, Paris & Tel Aviv. Blinding lights, brazen comedy, cabarets of yearning and bite. An astounding era; a time of Jewish artists on the move. No need to brush up on your languages; these songs are mostly in English!

Open Hart Productions is the brainchild of playwright, performer, cantor, and scholar Rebecca Joy Fletcher. Founded in 2007, Open Hart is dedicated to researching and reviving the lost art of International Jewish cabaret. Currently focusing on Warsaw's and pre-state Tel Aviv’s cabarets, Open Hart also presents lectures and workshops. Fiscal Sponsorship: The Field. .

The Dig: Death, Genesis & the Double Helix
by Stacie Chaiken
What’s the Story?, Los Angeles
at Theater Three, 311 W. 43rd St, near 8th Ave
WORLD PREMIERE

Tickets online or at 212-352-3101

Wed 6/3 @7pm, Fri 6/5 @10:30, Mon 6/8 @10:00, Thu 6/11 @3:00

An American archaeologist is summoned to a dig in the ancient Arab-Hebrew town of Jaffa. They've found something big—something that could change everything—and she's the only one who can tell them what it is. And her mother just died. And there's a lizard in her bathtub. The Middle East. Matriarchs. Cruelty. It's a comedy.

What's the Story? was founded in 2001 as a workshop for writers and performers who are struggling with personal story for the stage, the page and the screen. The workshop produces a biennial festival of new solo plays, regular public showings of works-in-progress. As of April 2009, What's the Story? is in residence at the Odyssey Theatre is Los Angeles.

Doctors Jane & Alexander
written and directed by Edward Einhorn
Music by Alexander S. Wiener and Henry Akona
Untitled Theater Co. #61, New York
at Theater Three, 311 W. 43rd St, near 8th Ave
WORLD PREMIERE

Tickets online or at 212-352-3101

Sat 5/23 @6:00, Mon 5/25 @7:30, Thu May 28@9:00, Sun 5/31@5:00, Sat 6/6 @8:30, Sun 6/7 @7:30, Mon 6/8 @7:30, Fri 6/12 @9:00, Sat 6/13 @6:00, Sun 6/14 @1:00

Using found, fabricated, and occasionally finagled text, the playwright explores the life of his grandfather Alexander S. Wiener, the co-discoverer of the Rh factor in blood, through interviews with his mother, a psychologist who recently retired due to a debilitating stroke. An examination of art, science, ambition, and achievement, told with humor and song.

Untitled Theater Company #61 is a Theater of Ideas: scientific, political, philosophical, and above all theatrical. Past projects include the Ionesco Festival, the NEUROfest, the Havel Festival, and the Off-Broadway production of Fairy Tales of the Absurd. Most recently, they produced a calypso musical version of Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle.

Emma
by Howard Zinn
directed by Martina Plag
stadium-praxis, Philadelphia
at Theater Three, 311 W. 43rd St, near 8th Ave
NEW YORK PREMIERE

Tickets online or at 212-352-3101

Thu 6/4 @7:00, Sat 6/6 @3:30, 6/7 @5:00

This toy-theatre adaptation uses wit and humor to illuminate history from below. Through innovative storytelling and theatrical devices everyday objects transform to reveal and celebrate the life of the remarkable “Emma” Goldman; the anarchist, feminist, and free-spirited thinker who was exiled from the United States because of her outspoken views.

stadium-praxis Strives to explore the point where theory and practice intersect to [in]form action. We create puppet artistry for adult audiences. As an art rich in ancient, folk and popular theater techniques, we use puppetry to address contemporary issues and advocate social change and awareness. We approach the puppet as metaphor.

Hard Love
by Motti Lerner
directed by Susan Reid
Genesis Stage, Atlanta
at Theater Three, 311 W. 43rd St, near 8th Ave

NEW YORK PREMIERE

Tickets online or at 212-352-3101

Fri 6/5 @6:00, Sat 6/6 @5:30, Wed 6/10 @3:00, Thu 6/11 @7:30

In this fiercely romantic drama, Hannah and Zvi are reunited after divorcing twenty years earlier. Raised in Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox Mea Shearim, the couple ended their marriage when Zvi turned his back on Judaism and Hannah did not. Now the teenage children from their second marriages have become romantically involved, forcing Hannah and Zvi back into each others’ lives The first-ever full staging in New York of the work of noted Israeli playwright Motti Lerner.

Genesis Stage produces works of theater which are relative to the Jewish experience and reflective of the universal human condition. Genesis strives to challenge, enlighten, and entertain Atlanta audiences with world and regional premieres, as well as seldom-seen plays, which investigate the past, reflect on the present and envision the future.

The Jewbird
Created by the Northwoods Company
based on the story by Bernard Malamud
directed by Annie Levy
Northwoods Theater, Conover, Wisconsin
at Theater Three, 311 W. 43rd St, near 8th Ave

Tickets online or at 212-352-3101

Fri 5/29 @5:30, Sat 5/30 @5:00, Sun 5/31 @2:00

In this modern fable originally penned by Malamud, an unexpected visitor flies through the fifth floor Lower East Side apartment window of Harry and Edie Cohen and their young son Maurie. The small, scrawny bird plops down on the kitchen table in the middle of dinner, and begins to speak. What follows exposes the family’s uneasy tension between Jewish identity, past and present.

Northwoods Theatre Company is an ensemble group dedicated to creating and developing new work relevant to the Jewish experience of all ages. By treating source texts as it would sacred texts and working them into the script, Northwoods Ramah Theatre Company aims to make the connection between the story and Jewish teachings more apparent and accessible.

Jolly Good Fellows
by Steve Feffer and Tucker Refferty
directed by Mark Liermann
Whole Art Theater, Kalamazoo, MI
at Theater Three, 311 W. 43rd St, near 8th Ave
WORLD PREMIERE

Tickets online or at 212-352-3101

Fri 5/29 @7:00, Sat 5/30 @11:00, Sun 5/31 @3:30, 6/1 @7:30

A dark comedy about two immigrant actors from New York in the 1890’s who make their living performing a stereotypical “Jew” and “Irishman” in the grotesque styles of the variety stage. They enter into a contract of convenience to keep up with the changing times, despite the personal costs of such performances. Songs and sketches from the period are included.

The Whole Art Theatre Company offers unique theatrical experiences, including the fostering of new work, that brings socially significant issues to the forefront. In 2007, they received a Foundation of Jewish Culture grant for Steve Feffer’s new play Ain’t Got No Home, the true story of the legendary Chess Records.

Laughing Fools
“Laughing at the Speed of Light”
written, illustrated and performed by: Flash Rosenberg
“Village of Fools”
adapted, directed and performed by: Stephen Ringold and the Grand Falloons
From stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer
at JCC Manhattan, 334 Amsterdam Avenue, near 76th St

Tickets online or at 505-5708

Mon 6/8 @8:00, Tue 6/9 @8:00

Flash Rosenberg and Stephen Ringold mingle their two distinct shows into one tasty evening. By the same unlikely logic that landed smoked fish in a bagel, Ringold’s vaudeville puppet theater “Village of Fools” will suddenly be served in the middle of Rosenberg’s comic slide romp “Laughing at the Speed of Light” to create a posh nosh and frolic of Jewish culture.

The Grand Falloons is an ensemble of theatre, vaudeville, and design professionals who have all worked with the Big Apple Circus for 20 years, as well as on the New York stage, on national television, and in opera houses, schools, museums and theaters across the country.

The Legacy Project: Echoes
Featuring the WORLD PREMIERE of Tikkun with choreography by Carolyn Dorfman and music by Greg Wall
Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company and Bente Kahan, New York
at NYU Tisch, 111 2nd Ave, 5th floor

Tickets online or at 1-800-838-3006

Fri 5/29 @7:30, Sat 5/30 @7:30

The Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company and actress/vocalist Bente Kahan present The Legacy Project: Echoes, an evening of dance, theater and live music incorporating the best of the artists’ individual repertoires, their collaborative piece Silent Echoes and featuring the world premiere of Tikkun with commissioned score by renowned jazz and Klezmer musician Greg Wall.

Since 1983, Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company’s high-energy and technically demanding repertory uses movement as metaphor to take audiences on “intellectual and emotional journeys” (Observer Tribune). Led by artistic director Carolyn Dorfman and her creative drive to communicate human experiences, interactions perceptions, and truths, CDDC’s twelve dancers display extraordinary physical, technical and dramatic range.

Mentshn
by Sholem Aleichem
Translated by Ellen Perecman & Yermiyahu Ahron Taub
Adapted by Ellen Perecman & Clay McLeod Chapman
Directed by Marc Geller
New Worlds Theatre Project, New York
at Theater Three, 311 W. 43rd St, near 8th Ave
ENGLISH-LANGUAGE PREMIERE

Tickets online or at 212-352-3101

Sat 5/23 @8:30, Tue 5/26 @7:30. Fri 5/29 @9:00, Wed 6/3 @5:00, Sat 6/6 @2:00, Wed 6/10 @10:00, Fri 6/12 @7:00, Sat 6/13 @2:00

On playwright Sholem Aleichem’s 150th birthday, the first English translation of an old play: Jobs are hard to come by, so Madame Gold’s servants have limited options. To keep their jobs, they have to be willing to maintain the status quo by relinquishing their self-respect and free will. But how much abuse can they be expected to tolerate? Servants are people too, aren't they?

New Worlds Theatre Project is dedicated to bringing imagination and artistic excellence to English adaptations of Yiddish plays, and in so doing, to bringing dignity to the literary legacy of Yiddish culture.

The Most Radiant Beauty
written and directed by Tanya Khordoc & Barry Weil
Evolve Company, New York
at Theater Three, 311 W. 43rd St, near 8th Ave
WORLD PREMIERE

Tickets online or at 212-352-3101

Sun 5/24 @3:00, Wed 5/27 @7:00, Thu 5/28 @7:00, Sat 5/30 @8:30, Thu 6/4 @9:00, Sun 6/7 @3:00, Wed 6/10 @ 8:00, Sat 6/13 @10:30

A one-act to be performed with Six Scenes from a Misunderstanding (below).

God said “Let there be light.” Einstein showed us what it could do. In this multimedia collage, puppeteers Khordoc and Weil use found text to explore Einstein, Genesis, the Atomic Bomb and the life-altering power of knowledge.

Evolve Company has been playing with puppets very seriously since 1996. Productions include Evolution, Brains & Puppets and Secrets History Remembers. They were also given the honor of creating the world premiere production of Motormorphosis, a play by former Czech President Václav Havel, as part of UTC #61's Havel Festival in NYC.

Rat Bastards
by Julia Pearlstein
directed by Eureka
Dixon Place, New York
Theater THE, associate producer
at Dixon Place, 161 Chrystie St., near Delancey

Tickets online or at 212-219-0736

Wed 6/3 @8:00, Thu 6/4 @8:00, Fri 6/5 @8:00, Sat 6/6 @2:00 & 8:00, Sun 6/7 @5:00

Venice, 1630. First it was the Jews, now the Muslims are moving in—and they're threatening to interbreed! If the Inquisition won’t stop them, Arlecchino will. When plague breaks out, holy hell breaks loose. A new Commedia on an old theme … because some things never change. With scene design by artist Philip Pearlstein.

Dixon Place is a home for performing and literary artists, is dedicated to supporting the creative process by presenting original works of theater, dance and literature at various stages of development. An artistic laboratory with an audience, we serve as a safety net, enabling artists to present challenging and questioning work that pushes the limits of artistic expression.

Scenes from a Misunderstanding
by Carey Harrison
directed by Henry Akona
WalkingShadow, New York
at Theater Three, 311 W. 43rd St, near 8th Ave
WORLD PREMIERE


Tickets online or at 212-352-3101

Sun 5/24 @3:00, Wed 5/27 @7:00, Thu 5/28 @7:00, Sat 5/30 @8:30, Thu 6/4 @9:00, Sun 6/7 @3:00, Wed 6/10 @ 8:00, Sat 6/13 @10:30

A one-act to be performed with Most Radiant Beauty (above)

The simmering differences between two professors come to a head: has one of them delayed replying to a letter on the subject of religion, or did the original letter-writer delay posting it? What would such delays signify? From humble beginnings, titanic quarrels are born - especially when the aggravated parties are Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.

10 Imaginings of Sarah & Hagar
by Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer
music by Juliet I. Spitzer
directed by Deborah Baer-Mozes
Theater Ariel, Philadelphia
at Theater Three, 311 W. 43rd St, near 8th Ave
WORLD PREMIERE

Tickets online or at 212-352-3101

Sun 5/24 @7:00, Sat 5/30 @6:30, Tue 6/2 @7:00, Tue 6/9 @7:30, Wed 6/10 @6:00, Sat 6/13 @4:00

A theatrical interpretation in ten scenes (“imaginings”,) of the story of the mothers of two great nations. Sarah and Hagar. 10 Imaginings is journey through the complex relationship between these two women, their man and their sons, exploring themes that continue to take center stage in the world today.

Theatre Ariel is dedicated to illuminating the rich social, cultural, and spiritual heritage of the Jewish people. Theatre Ariel produces work that serves as a prism through which we can view the varied colors of the American Jewish experience and new work that draws its inspiration from classic Jewish texts or contemporary Jewish literature: reflecting on the past, examining the present and envisioning the future.

To Pay The Price
by Peter-Adrian Cohen
Directed by Robert Kalfin
Theatre Or, Durham, North Carolina
at Theater Three, 311 W. 43rd St, near 8th Ave
WORLD PREMIERE

Tickets online or at 212-352-3101

Sat 5/23 @10:00, Sun 5/24 @5:00, Wed 5/27 @9:00, Sat 5/30 @2:00, Sat 6/6 @Noon, Tue 6/9 @9:30, Sat 6/13 @8:30, Sun 6/14 @3:30

Based on the life of Yoni Netanyahu, killed in action at age 30, the play illuminates the toll to a nation of a never-ending war.

Theatre Or (“or” means “light” in Hebrew) is a North Carolina-based professional theatre company developing a niche for producing American premieres of Israeli plays. Chicago's Tony Award recipient Victory Gardens Theater hosted Theatre Or's North Carolina English language premiere of Motti Lerner's Hard Love in 2006 as well as their OnStageIsrael Festival of staged readings of Israeli plays in 2008.

Readings:

Golem Stories
written and directed by Edward Einhorn
at the Center for Jewish History, 15 W. 16th St, near 5th Ave

RSVP online or at 212-352-3101

Wed 5/27 @7:00

A retelling of the legend of a clay man in 16th century Prague. Rabbi Loew creates a Golem to defend the Jews, but this Golem seems more interested in listening to the Rebbetsin's stories and falling in love with the Rabbi's daughter. Is he the reincarnated spirit of her murdered lover? Or does his childlike façade hide the face of a demon?

Pangs of the Messiah
by Motti Lerner
at Theater Three, 311 W. 43rd St, near 8th Ave

RSVP online or at 212-352-3101

Sun 5/31 @7:30

Set in 2012 amidst the signing of a peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians, this is an apocalyptic yet fiercely humane drama about eight West Bank Jewish settlers pitted against an Israel they feel betrayed by.

Playwright’s Forum
Various playwrights and directors
at Marymount Manhattan, 221 E 71st, near 3rd Ave

RSVP online or at 212-352-3101

Sun 6/7 @ 7:00
Seven minute excerpts of plays by member playwrights of the Association of Jewish Theater

Talk:

How Some Jews in Chicago Re-Invented Comedy in Time For the Sixties
Presented by Jeffrey Sweet
at Theater Three, 311 W. 43rd St, near 8th Ave

RSVP online or at 212-352-3101

Tue 6/9 @6:00

Jeffrey Sweet (author of SOMETHING WONDERFUL RIGHT AWAY, an oral history of the Compass Players and Second City) gives a funny talk about how and why Paul Sills and some other young iconoclasts who hung out in Hyde Park (Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Barbara Harris, and Shelley Berman among them) created modern improvisational theater and changed the look of American comedy.