JEWISH BULLETIN CORRESPONDENT
Albert Greenberg is obsessed with Jewish identity. But his iconoclastic sensibility — reflected in his upcoming solo performance, “The Fatherless Sky” — derives from very different influences than Yiddish theater, Borscht Belt shtick or Arthur Miller drama.
“This piece is in the Abbie Hoffman-Michael Bloomfield tradition of Jewish life,” the local writer and actor says, invoking memories of both the radical political activist and the brilliant guitarist who rose to prominence in the ’60s with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.
Greenberg dryly quotes Hoffman as remarking there are two kinds of Jews: “Those that go for the money and those that go for broke.”
Blending biting wit and a diverse, wall-to-wall musical score in “The Fatherless Sky,” Greenberg — one of the founders of A Traveling Jewish Theatre — takes a contemporary Jewish man through a succession of alter-egos (an Israeli, a country singer, his father) in his search for identity.
“The central question,” Greenberg says, “is when the last Nazi dies and we make peace with the Arabs, then what does it mean for this character when he’s spent his whole life defining himself through the conflicts that he faced?”
All of Greenberg’s work (especially “Heart of the World,” the extraordinary two- character play he co-wrote and performed with his wife and ATJT member Helen Stoltzfus) wrestles with what it means to be Jewish if one doesn’t lead a Torah-centered life or speak Yiddish or Hebrew.
“Where does Jewish culture exist in the American landscape?” Greenberg muses. “Is planting trees in Israel enough of an identity? Is it donating money to battered women’s shelters? That’s great, but anybody can do that.”
Ultimately, Greenberg is searching for a missing or deeply submerged spiritual context. He blames the malaise on “what a consumer culture has done to us in relationship to the search for meaning.”
The artist explores this phenomenon in “The Fatherless Sky” through imaginary dialogues the character has with his recently deceased father. In addition to the obvious poignant resonances, Greenberg explains that the dead ancestor also represents “the great beard in the sky that no longer creates miracles or salvation.” Or to put it another way, “the absent father in our spiritual life.”
Greenberg started working on the piece 11 years ago, when A Traveling Jewish Theatre was performing in Israel during the Lebanon invasion. He began to hone the play in earnest through 1991 work-in-progress performances at the Marsh and then the Climate Theatre, the latter as part of the annual Solo Mio Festival of solo performance. Even its title has kept changing, from “Blonde Like You” to “The Real World: A Theatrical Confrontation with Music” to “The Fatherless Sky.”
Audiences familiar with Greenberg’s work needn’t fear that the gradual evolution of the new piece smoothed over the actor’s caustic, Lenny Bruce-tinged persona. “I’m less into mother-in-law jokes and more into Zionist or Palestinian jokes,” Greenberg confirms. With tongue only partly in cheek, he concludes, “There’s a whole level of defilement no one’s gotten into yet.”
In the wake of the recent and unexpected peace developments, Greenberg modified a few lines in the show. He eschewed wholesale changes because, although he is optimistic about the Mideast developments, “there’s a difference between stopping acts of war and creating peace. Peace is a long-lasting proposition and time will tell.”
But Greenberg’s main preoccupation is with the role of Jews in America, and this country’s predilection for upside-down logic.
“We dress for fashion and think we’re normal,” Greenberg points out. “But dress for religious reasons and people look at you like you’re crazy.”