Report from Our Trip East

This is Corey writing again. In the previous post, we told you, among other things, about the origin of the Prayer Project, our collaboration with Liz Lerman (that’s her on the left) and her company, the Dance Exchange (D.E.). On November 12, Aaron, Naomi and I traveled to Washington D.C. to spend a week with Liz and members of her company learning more about the ways each group worked and planning the future development of the piece.

Our visit coincided with an “Institute” that the D. E. was conducting. We would participate in parts of it, joining the dozen or so other participants and three D.E. members Cassie Meador, Elizabeth Johnson and Matt Mahaney who were co-leading with Liz. The rest of the time we’d work in another studio with one or more of the leaders developing some material we had brought with us.

The Institute was close to what we might call a workshop. It combined instruction, research, improvisation and group process. For the D.E., institutes are an opportunity to begin exploring a new area – like prayer – and to teach the very special compositional tools they have developed as well as to bring in some needed income. The participants came from D.C. and elsewhere and included a couple of experienced young dancers, a retired school teacher who used a wheelchair, one of D.C.’s most respected actresses, an African-American museum curator, several students, an academic, a writer and a woman who created and taught Kabalistic chants. All of them had worked with Liz or her company members before and had a deep appreciation for Liz’s values and processes and for the D.E.’s performance work.

Someday I would love to sit at Liz’s feet and hear the story of how she came to know what she knows. In the meantime, I refer you to the Dance Exchange website where you’ll find one of several thought-provoking essays. (You'll need to register once you get there.)

In our first work session we showed a movement score that we had developed during the past two weeks of work back home. It was derived from the shapes of the Hebrew letters that make up the Sh’ma, one of Judaism’s central prayers, which says: “Listen, people of Israel (lit. those who struggle with God), God, your God is One.” The Sh’ma can be translated to emphasize either the monotheistic aspect of Judaism – “Listen, Israel, the Lord alone is our God” or the non-dual nature of divinity: “God is one.”

After running through our score, in unison, Elizabeth, Cassie and Matt began work with us to find ways of partnering each other and a greater dynamic range of movement. We were immediately stuck by the ease in which these three young artists were able to share the role of director, effortlessly passing the leadership between themselves, building on each other’s ideas with no sense of ownership of those ideas, no ego and no attachment. In the D.E.’s process, the work “belongs” to no one or to everyone. The creative space is a commons. After working for three hours or so we had evolved a much more complex and fugue-like score that included lifts and carries, surprising shifts in tempo and movements that were different from any we had ever done. Cassie, Elizabeth and Matt were able to work with each of us in ways that both supported our strengths and challenged us to stretch our individual, often self-imposed, limits.

The next day we worked with Liz on personal stories each of us had begun to develop in SF as short, solo hybrids of language, narrative and movement. Liz was incredibly quick to grasp the heart of each story and to build on what we had done. One of her principles became very clear: let the movement and the language each do something different; verbal and movement languages can each give different information and thus create a kind of tension that can open up a third space in the consciousness of the audience. For example, working with my story of the open-heart surgery I had two and on half years ago, she had me unhook my voice from any attempt to carry the emotion. Working with opposites: using a casual, unemotional voice while the movement became increasingly charged. (All this, of course, is much harder to “get” from a verbal description than it is from seeing it. For that, you’ll have to wait until spring, 2008, or until we have time to upload some video.)

Aaron and Naomi and I also had various experiences outside the studio that informed our work. At an exhibit at the Smithsonian, Aaron was deeply moved by a photograph of the Cambridge scholar of Judaica, Solomon Shechter, in the process of sorting through hundreds of thousands of scraps of damaged, flawed or superannuated Hebrew scriptures that had been acquired from the Cairo Genizah, the repository for sacred texts waiting to be buried in a special ritual for that purpose. He took that image of the bearded old man intensely absorbed by fragments of the sacred into the studio where Liz guided him into ways of connecting with the image in movement.

I had begun trying out a prayer practice suggested by Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav in the late eighteenth century. Simply talk directly to “God” (my strongly secular upbringing still has me putting that word in quotes) pour your heart out to him/her/it. This did not come easily to me, but when I really allowed myself to do it, I was invariably brought to tears. More from relief and release than from sadness. So I began to wonder if that phenomenon had something to do with a “God”-given faculty, perhaps a faculty of imagination, that allows us to create an inner space from which its possible to pray. When I related this to Liz, she asked me to imagine a beam of light emerging from the crown of my head and then moving that light to different spots of the walls and ceiling. Immediately, I felt my neck lengthen and soften. I experienced, in my body, that same sense of space I had been talking about.

Naomi had been concerned that as the oldest in the company, she might not be up to the physical demands of the work. She was perhaps a little reassured that, she could easily outlast me, stamina-wise even though I may be fourteen years younger. But she was still troubled by the issues of moving down to and up from the floor, of giving and taking a partner’s weight. After working with Matt, though, who is a master at helping people work with lifting, carrying and sharing each other’s weight, and the others, she gained a new confidence and ease in all those areas which we all celebrated. That’s how it was. Every time anyone made a discovery or moved someplace new the joy of it came to all of us.

During the times we participated in the larger Institute, we made duets and solos, told stories, improvised and explored exercises all somehow connected to the idea of prayer and, particularly in this Institute, prayer as radical action. Another of Liz’s core ideas emerged: “Turn discomfort in inquiry.” We began to learn to ask the questions that would help the work move where it needed to, Again, we were – it’s not too strong a word – awestruck by the profound attitude of service, the whole-hearted generosity that Liz, the D.E. members, and the work itself came from. I felt that I was part of an expedition to a remote territory where the weather was completely unpredictable. Its success depended on the ability to fully experience the other: to listen and sense, to respond and support.

So you see how intensely. we had all bonded by the end of our time in D.C. The planning session – which we had not exactly been looking forward to – went smoothly and gracefully. Peter Di Muro, the Producing Artistic Director of D.E. who quietly took care of us all week, and Jane Hirschberg, their Managing Director, joined the rest of us in mapping out the next year and a half of work. Liz, Cassie, Elizabeth and Matt will be making several trips to San Francisco starting in September 2007 and culminating with the work’s premiere in April, 2008. In one sense, we’ve hardly begun: we have no idea what form the finished work will take, what it will look like, we have only a few elements that might actually wind up in it, From another angle though, we’ve found new ways of working, of relating to language and movement and, most importantly I think, to each other. We have questions.

We took the train to New York, feeling very satisfied and very sore.

In New York, the highlights were our meetings with Isaiah Sheffer, (R) artistic director of Symphony Space (and producer of NPR’s Selected Shorts) and with Elise Bernhardt, the first new executive director in many years of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture.

Isaiah regaled us with a number of stories from his unusual and colorful life. I was particularly knocked out by the one about his having been an understudy for the role of Happy in the legendary Yiddish translation of Death of a Salesman that I refer to extensively in the previous post (Why a Jewish Death of a Salesman?). He went on for several performances. Isaiah and his team have transformed the Symphony Space on Broadway and 96th from a derelict barn of a building into a beautiful and inviting performance space with two theatres and a café that is both a national and a community resource. We’re hoping that Isaiah will be able to present TJT’s Family Alchemy there in sometime in 2007.

Our meeting with Elise Bernhardt made us feel very hopeful about the future of the NFJC. She wants the foundation to focus less on producing conferences and other events and more on creating a meaningful source of financial support for Jewish artists. She also has a great sense of humor and a strong background in the performing arts.

Please post your “comments” using the link below.

For my personal account of the New York portion of the trip, visit my blog at www.fromcorey.blogspot.com

Welcome to TJT’s blog. We hope that this new experiment will allow our community a closer look at our life as a theatre. In it, we’ll tell you about the current goings-on and about new ideas as they emerge. We’ll invite your responses to questions that arise and try to answer questions that you might pose. We’ll point you toward the materials that inspire us and ask you to do the same. When we’re in rehearsal, we might try posting logs of the process; when we’re in production, the blog can be a place to continue and deepen the post-show discussions we often hold in the theatre.

Different members of TJT will post at different times. I (Corey Fischer) am starting things off with, first, an overview of the three major projects we’ll be developing over the next three years and, next, some thoughts about our production of Death of a Salesman which will open at the beginning of April, 2007. We’ve also just updated our website (www.atjt.com) and restored some pages that had gotten lost in a redesign a while back (history of TJT, ensemble biographies, etc.).

Your participation will contribute to the direction the blog takes and will, when all is said and done, determine the success of the experiment.

To start, let me locate you in TJT’s day-to-day. Last night, we finished the second of two workshop/readings of co-founder Naomi Newman’s new play Torn Ribbons. TJT Associate Artist, Jeri Lynn Cohen and I joined six guest actors under Jayne Wenger’s direction and spent three half-days sketching out a simple, script-in-hand presentation of Naomi’s intense and surprising new work. This was the first time in our 28 years that Naomi worked only as a playwright, neither acting nor directing. Those of you who were able to see the readings in San Francisco or Berkeley know how moving the play is. After another reading (at the Actors Studio in New York, directed by Ellen Burstyn), Naomi will continue developing it. Since there is nothing overtly “Jewish” about the play, we’re asking ourselves (Naomi most vocally) whether it’s something TJT should ultimately produce. We’ll keep you posted. If you have any thoughts on the subject, post a response.

Tomorrow, we begin preparing another new play, Who by Fire (formerly, Moving), by TJT Artistic Director, Aaron Davidman and Israeli playwright, Ro’I Rashkes, for a workshop/reading next weekend in Mountain View and SF (the details on our website). These workshops have been supported by the Magic Theatre and the Z Space’s initiative for new play development.

Three mainstage projects over the next three years

What follows are brief descriptions of the three main projects that will be occupying us through 2009. What’s not mentioned here is this year’s production of Rose by Martin Sherman, featuring Naomi Newman and directed by Joan Mankin. You can find out more about it on out website

Death of a Salesman (Opens April, 2007)

In February, 2007, TJT begins work on a breakthrough production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman that will reclaim the Jewish context that Miller, writing in 1949, felt constrained to “censor out,” attempting to create an ethnically unmarked family whose struggles would have “universal” appeal.

Our production will be directed by our Artistic Director, Aaron Davidman. Corey Fischer and TJT Associate Artist Jeri Lynn Cohen will play Willy and Linda. Scenic design will be done by Giulio Cesare Perrone (designer of our productions Opening to You and Isaac). Jess Ivry, whom TJT audiences will remember from The Bright River, will perform her original, solo cello score live throughout the run.

Why a Jewish Death of a Salesman?

TJT has always held, as a working principle, that universality can only come from specificity. We’re certainly not alone in this view; more and more late 20^th and 21^st century writers, artists and thinkers have moved beyond the notion that specific ethnic or cultural markers needed to be jettisoned in order to create works of a truly universal value. This mid-century notion may have been a reaction of second generation immigrants to the limitations of the “old world.” What I find fascinating is that, almost in spite of himself, Miller created a character (Willy Loman) who is caught is that very struggle to assimilate, to re-invent himself as an American free of the poverty, backwardness and isolation of the shtetl or the ghetto. But Miller, in 1949, was perhaps – as a writer, anyway – caught in that struggle himself and felt bound to make Willy a generic American.

Willy Loman was recognized as a crypto-Jew as far back as 1951, when one of the most accomplished actors of the Yiddish theatre, Joseph Buloff, translated the play into Yiddish and played the role of Willy. The production was a huge success in New York and on tour. George Ross wrote, in a review of the Yiddish Death of a Salesman:

“The great success of Joseph Buloff's production is that it brings the play "home." The effect is remarkable. Buloff has caught Miller, as it were, in the act of changing his name…”

And just last year, the contemporary Jewish playwright Karen Hartman wrote,

“Death of a Salesman suggests but does not explain an immigrant anxiety, the fallout from Anatevka with all clues removed. The Lomans seem alone in the world, or at least in Brooklyn. The sense of them as a displaced family comes through the absence of any other relatives (Willy, the son of an unnamed Midwestern peddler, has lost his only brother two weeks before the play begins) or history, rather than culturally specific referents—no pogroms, no old country yarns, no particular cause for feeling "kind of temporary" about oneself. The play's Judaism, like that of its characters, lies in its not being anything else—not rooted New England, not a sweetly rotting South. Details have been erased, leaving a sparse, attenuated world that is universal and also incomplete.

I'd suggest that the psychically fluid structure of Salesman tends to stick for contemporary playwrights, while its resistance to naming Jewish content has changed for now. For example, it's impossible to envision the shifting structure of Angels in America without Death of a Salesman, but equally difficult to imagine Tony Kushner holding back cultural detail.” (http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=131)

So the intention behind our production is to restore those missing “clues.” Unlike the infamous production of The Crucible by New York’s Wooster Group (it was subject to a cease and desist order initiated by Arthur Miller) TJT will take no liberties with the text, but will, rather, explore it from its own particular perspective and esthetic – that of a contemporary Jewish ensemble theatre.

As Karen Hartman points out, Miller was not entirely successful in purging all yiddishkeit from his play. It reveals itself in the monitory cadence of a line like “Attention must be paid..” Ross, referring to this line, writes: “Here, and in many places, one felt in the English version as if Miller were thinking in Yiddish and unconsciously translating…and sometimes when his English filters through the density of his background, it succeeds in picking up flavor on the way.”

For a company who has based its 28 year-old reputation on the creation of original work and the development of new plays across a variety of forms, engaging with an iconic American play can be seen as a radical new direction. Likewise, realizing that the largest part of its work has looked toward the Eastern European Jewish Diaspora, the Shoah, the Middle-East for inspiration, we want to explore the American Jewish experience of the last few decades; the period in which American Jewish identity went through such surprising transformations.

An interesting side note to the 1951 Yiddish production by Joseph Buloff can be found at: http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=331. Chloe Veltman interviewed Luba Kadison, Buloff’s widow and an important yiddish theatre performer in her own right. Veltman says:

“Arthur Miller was delighted with her portrayal of Linda in a Yiddish version of Death of a Salesman at the Parkway Theatre in Brooklyn in 1951, as was the scholar Harold Bloom, who wrote to Kadison just a few weeks before her death, saying her Salesman was the most moving he'd ever seen.”

The Prayer Project (Title TBD) (Opens April, 2008)

Since we first met nearly twenty years ago, at a theatre festival in Stockholm, TJT and Liz Lerman have been drawn to the possibility of collaborating together. In 2005, Liz proposed that by “using personal story, or by placing unusual events side by side, or by retrieving rituals from our past, or by listening to our young people recount their futures,” we create a work “that lets our bodies be the healing landscape for some of our divisions.” Together, we agreed to build a work that would explore the meaning of prayer in human experience with Liz directing and co-creating the piece and TJT core ensemble artists, Aaron Davidman, Corey Fischer and Naomi Newman co-creating and performing it. The notion of working with prayer comes from our shared sense that we urgently need an alternative to the dangerously polarized and contentious relationships that exist between different communities of belief (or unbelief) in our post 9/11 world. As Rabbi Michael Lerner writes in his new book, The Left Hand of God:

It is the search for meaning in a despiritualized world that leads many people to right-wing religious communities because these groups seem to be in touch with the sacred dimension of life. Many secularists imagine that people drawn to the Right are there solely because of some ethical or psychological malfunction. What they miss is that there are many very decent Americans who get attracted to the Religious Right because it is the only voice that they encounter that is willing to challenge the despiritualization of daily life, to call for a life that is driven by higher purpose than money, and to provide actual experiences of supportive community for those whose daily life is suffused with alienation and spiritual loneliness.

Theatre can mount a powerful challenge to “the despiritualization of daily life,” not in any sectarian or doctrinaire way, but by inviting audience members to become part of an— albeit temporary—community of imagination and possibility, by offering metaphor as a balance to an overly literal understanding of life. TJT has always sought to fulfill this potential, often exploring the “sacred dimension of life” in unconventional ways that speak to Jews and non-Jews who may have no affiliation with any particular religious institution, but whose values, nevertheless, cannot be dismissed as merely materialistic.

In the proposed collaboration, Liz Lerman and TJT seek to create a context in which non-threatening interaction between people of various religious and secular orientations can happen; in which people who identify with a particular religion and people who do not will both be able to recognize the impulse to find a connection to the sacred—the primal human impulse to pray.

We perceive an unmet need among people who are not affiliated with any particular religious institution to still be able to speak about prayer, about God, about soul and spirit, for, as Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum writes, “…the American religious right has totally hijacked the language of religion and spirituality to promote the values of its reactionary political agenda.” And without a language in which to express a spiritual dimension of one’s life, the experience itself becomes less possible, less real.

Corey, Aaron and Naomi have been learning some of Liz’s tools for devising choreography from various sources that she introduced to us last May and with which we’re continuing to work in September and November. Also in November we’ll be spending another week with Liz (in D.C. this time) to continue work. We’ll have to put the project on ice for the rest of this season and will pick it up in the summer of 07 and again in January ’08 until it opens in April ’08. We have no idea what the piece will be like other than very physical. We’ll be using texts from various sources – extant writing, original writing, interviews with people – In various ways and will most likely work with a sound design that uses recorded sound and music, found and original.

Odets/Group Theatre (Opens in 2009)

TJT, in collaboration with the South Bay’s resident theatre, Theatreworks (at least for some of the early development), will create an original theatre-piece that explores the creation of the Group Theatre’s two most explosive and influential works—which premiered within weeks of each other in 1935—Waiting for Lefty and Awake and Sing. As scholar Nahma Sandrow has written: “[Odets’ plays] translate the Yiddish theatre’s leftist passion for social reform into an English with Yiddish inflections.” The story of how this historical moment came to be has the potential to illuminate the ways in which the energy, ideals and rhythms of Eastern-European Jewish immigrant life suffused a nascent American culture as the country struggled with a broken economy and the new threats to democracy posed by fascism. For the first time in nearly three decades of theatre-making, TJT will use its innovative ensemble processes to explore a cluster of deeply American themes. By bringing theatrical life to specific characters, landscapes and events: the minute particulars that form a narrative fabric, the new work will investigate American culture as a culture of immigrants; the relationship of democracy, art and social change; the ongoing relevance and resonance of this early experiment in visionary, non-commercial theatre by a largely Jewish group of artists. Corey will be lead writer on this one.

This is more than enough for one post. We look forward to your responses.