The Jewish Theatre Creating Contemporary Theatre for Over 30 Years

Sf Weekly Best of San Francisco ® 2010
Best Theater Company - 2010
The Jewish Theatre San Francisco

The Traveling Jewish Theatre is itinerant no more. Founded in 1978, the company began by roaming to dozens of cities worldwide before establishing a venue of its own at San Francisco’s Project Artaud Studios in 1994. Last fall, the theater finally changed its name to acknowledge its status both as a permanent fixture in the Mission and as a major player in the local arts scene. It’s now the Jewish Theatre San Francisco — and while the name may have changed, the theater hasn’t. The company opened its 2009-2010 season with a smart exploration of the affinities between vaudeville and hip-hop, continued with a puppet show about the Holocaust, and closed with a one-man comedy about Andy Warhol’s influence on the Jews. Even if you don’t love everything the Jewish Theatre does, you have to admire its singular devotion to producing some of the most fiercely inventive shows in town.

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Traversing Joe Turner’s Come and Gone and The Last Yiddish Poet

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

By Robert Avila

The great Langston Hughes titled a volume of his autobiography I Wonder as I Wander, invoking the notion of the poet in terms entirely personal and inevitably representative of a whole people, violently unsettled by history and restlessly searching for meaning, home, dignity — in short, for themselves. In Hughes’ art, this dovetailed with the image of the poet as blues singer and the blues singer as poet. His writing signaled that vernacular music as secular and sacred verse to a population caught up in forces larger than itself, but marked nevertheless by millions of singular experiences given individual voice in song.

The same themes of displacement and song run compellingly throughout the late August Wilson’s magisterial 10-play cycle of the African American 20th century, and rarely as forcefully as in 1988’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, currently receiving director Delroy Lindo’s fine, impressively cast production at the Berkeley Rep. But Hughes’ title applies readily to another great historical population as treated in another revival this month, making the stories evoked in Joe Turner and Traveling Jewish Theatre’s less successful The Last Yiddish Poet touchstones of broadly but pointedly similar significance.

Set in 1911 during the great migration of African Americans northward, Joe Turner’s action unfolds in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. The setting is a boardinghouse operated by the basically decent but huffy Seth Holly (Barry Shabaka Henley) and his kindhearted wife, Bertha (Kim Staunton). Into this warm, burnished house comes a small assortment of transient borders, all more or less fresh from the South: the headstrong guitar player and manual laborer Jeremy (Don Guillory), the lovelorn Mattie (Tiffany Michelle Thompson), and the fiercely independent beauty Molly (Erica Peeples).

They join a more permanent lodger, pigeon-catching backyard shaman Bynum Walker (Brent Jennings). The Hollys are descendants of Northern freemen, but the others are a mere generation from slavery — possibly excepting Bynum, old enough to have been born a slave, and not counting the play’s lone white character, merchant Rutherford Selig (Dan Hiatt), who, as a descendant of slave catchers, has adapted unselfconsciously as a “people finder” among rootless African American migrants.

The main plot of Wilson’s evocative, earthy, and humor-laden tale of disunion, reunion, and fractured identities takes hold with the arrival of the grimly forlorn, vaguely menacing Herald Loomis (Teagle F. Bougere). Loomis’ story makes bitter sense of the play’s title, a blues lyric repeated throughout by Bynum and fashioned by Southern women whose men were disappeared and forced into labor by the infamous Joe Turner. Since his release from bondage, the anguished and haunted Loomis, a former deacon, has searched with trancelike focus for the mother of his shy daughter (Inglish Amore Hills, alternating with Nia Reneé Warren). The Hollys’ boardinghouse takes on the baleful aspect of Loomis‘ entombed soul as his violent outbursts of protest and revelation — and the mediating, ministering wisdom of the perspicacious, wondering Bynum — edge the play beyond naturalism toward a mythopoesis of half-submerged history.

The resurrection of history and half-buried tradition, as well as the literal voicing of experience and identity, is also at the center of The Last Yiddish Poet, an otherwise very different kind of play from Joe Turner. Originally produced by Traveling Jewish Theatre in 1980 and now revived to lead off its 30th-anniversary season, the production is aptly peripatetic in structure as well as theme: two actors in vaudevillian comic getup (artistic director Aaron Davidman and TJT cofounder Corey Fischer, also the play’s cocreator and half of the original cast) roam about a limbolike white-on-white set scattered with occasional detritus, most particularly and strikingly a pyramidal display at the far left of the stage on which a mound of books lie in disarray. The actors eventually mount a low stage within the stage, behind a row of modest footlights composed of painted tin cans, and amid knowing cornball lines they announce that they are speaking in “Yiddish” accents, despite not knowing Yiddish, so that the audience will recognize their Yankee selves as Jews.

What follows is a reclamation of the language as a search for identity and authenticity, in several dramatic and musical modes and moods and in struggle with manifold forces of history, from assimilation to persecution to the blunt inconstancy of time itself. Director, cocreator, and TJT cofounder Naomi Newman admits in her program notes that reentering the play after many years was not as easy as expected. Much has changed with respect to the place of Yiddish in Jewish lives. There is a quality of hesitation in the updated staging, which undermines some of its poignancy, although the awkwardness disappears at key moments, including Fischer’s hulking, half-masked portrayal of Nakhman — the rebbe known for contributions spiritual and literary in Yiddish — and second-generation TJT artist Davidman’s channeling of formerly unfamiliar Yiddish verses, in what amounts to an act of possession in at least two senses. *

Posted under Press, Reviews

Traveling Jewish Theatre’s homage to Yiddish is nothing to kvetch about.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

By Nathaniel Eaton

Yiddish, in the perception of today’s popular culture, often seems to be an odd collection of endearment terms (bubbe, mensch) and, of course, a fun collection of complaints and insults (kvetch, bubkes, schmuck, feh!). Many words have slipped into everyday English vernacular (schlep, schlock, schmaltz, schmooze) and even into TV theme songs (remember the Laverne & Shirley theme, “Schlemiel, schlimazel, Hasenpfeffer Incorporated”?).

For younger generations, Hebrew is most often considered the language of the Jewish people. Even just recently Aaron Davidman, artistic director of San Francisco’s Traveling Jewish Theatre, believed that “Yiddish was for bubbes in old age homes.” But it should be noted that at the start of the 20th century there were 11 million native speakers worldwide, according to the program notes.

To kick off its 30th season, Traveling Jewish Theatre is revisiting one of its first plays, an original script by co-founders Naomi Newman, Corey Fischer, and Albert Greenberg that Fischer said he wrote to “explore Yiddish without nostalgia, sentimentality, or trivialization.” It focuses on the notion of an archetypal “last” Yiddish poet wandering through an abridged history of the Jewish people, from the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai through the stereotype of the Jewish immigrant to the gassing of the Jews in Lublin, Poland. Even in covering this sometimes somber and troubling history, the play is grounded with a subtle sense of humor and almost-magical whimsy — much like the Yiddish language itself.

Fischer and Davidman spend much of their time onstage playing Jewish comedians with humorously enlarged noses and exaggerated accents, confronting and playing with stereotypes, and pulling out plenty of Marx Brothers physical shtick (hey, there’s a Yiddish word I use all the time). These bits, while a nice respite from the heavier material, feel somewhat forced and reflect a slapstick style from a long-ago era. They elicit smiles, but little laughter. This structure feels more like a Yiddish revue than a structured narrative, though that’s probably the point.

Much of the beauty and resonance of the play, as well as the spoken Yiddish, comes from Davidman’s assured and gentle portrayal of the Poet, and Fischer’s ominous and tired Nakhman (a historical Hasidic rabbi). One standout scene has these two characters at New York’s Cafe Royal, once a favorite hangout for Jewish intellectuals and artists, passionately writing poetry on napkins and hilariously attempting to compose a manifesto expanding the boundaries of Yiddish writing. Their dialogue, a fervent exchange of ideas woven into a tapestry of Yiddish and English, poetry and song, captures the true essence of this play — a beautiful celebration of a dying language’s life and soul.

Posted under Press, Reviews

Friday September 26, 2008
by Dan Pine staff writer

After a scary intermission, it looks like there indeed will be a second act for Traveling Jewish Theatre.

Saddled with a $400,000 debt, the venerable S.F.-based theater company suspended its season last June, let go most of its staff and launched a make-or-break fundraising campaign. If the $300,000 target could not be reached, Traveling Jewish Theatre would likely have had to close.

Cancel that moving van. TJT’s summer fundraising effort went well. Theater administrators report they’re just $4,000 shy of their goal, have reinstated staffers and have planned a 2008-2009 season.

“We’re very happy with the way the community rallied around the company,” says Sara Schwartz Geller, TJT’s executive director, “and thrilled that when we asked the question, ‘Do you want to keep Jewish theater in the Bay Area?’ the answer came back, ‘Yes.’”

Geller says the funds were collected in stages, with half coming from foundation funders, the rest from individual donors, some giving as little as $50. Others gave more, like San Francisco philanthropist Warren Hellman, who put up a successful $25,000 matching fund.

“[Hellman] has given to us in the past,” notes Geller, “but he really stepped up in a big way because he believes in the vision we put forward.”

Though TJT dodged a big financial bullet, the company will make changes in its way of doing business. For starters, four new directors have been brought onto the TJT board.

“This really shows community leadership the company needs at this time,” says TJT artistic director Aaron Davidman. “That people are willing to step up means the company is valued by the community, and we can move more toward the center of Jewish life in the Bay Area, which is what we need to be a thriving organization.”

As for the revitalized season, TJT will mount at least four productions in the months ahead. Opening in November will be a revival of “The Last Yiddish Poet,” a 1980 TJT original written by Corey Fischer, Naomi Newman and Albert Greenberg, the company’s founders.

Next February, TJT will partner with Word for Word and the JCC of San Francisco to reprise “Two by Malamud,” two one-act plays based on Bernard Malamud short stories, followed by “The Model Apartment” in March. The company will also co-present two theater projects with the Hub: “Fabrik” and Dan Wolf’s “Stateless.”

In a concession to leaner times, Traveling Jewish Theatre will have to ease up on the traveling for now. All upcoming productions will be presented only at TJT’s Florida Street theater space in San Francisco.

But considering what might have been, this is a small price to pay for survival.

Says Geller, “We’re just incredibly grateful to the community, who rallied around us during a difficult moment, and personally gave us the strength to move ahead.”

Posted under Press

Saturday, July 5, 2008
Robert Hurwitt, Chronicle Theater Critic

The show will go on. Probably.

Traveling Jewish Theatre has surmounted the first of three financial hurdles it had set for itself this summer - raising $100,000 from its supporters by June 30 - and appears to be on track to meet the rest: another $50,000 in gifts from private donors by Sept. 30; and $150,000 in added support from foundations beyond their ongoing support of the company. According to TJT Executive Director Sara Schwartz, the company has raised $104,000 in about six weeks.

“At this stage, we’re moving on to the next season,” says Artistic Director Aaron Davidman. “But I think what we’ve learned is that in order for the company to grow forward, it needs more community stakeholders.”

A small company with a large national reputation, TJT has never been on firm financial footing. That wasn’t a big problem in its formative years as a three-person ensemble, creating and performing works - “Coming From a Great Distance,” “The Last Yiddish Poet,” “A Dance of Exile” - using experimental, interdisciplinary techniques to explore aspects of Jewish culture. The company toured nationally and internationally, from a home base in Los Angeles and then San Francisco (where it moved in 1982).

By the mid-’80s, the hand-to-mouth, touring existence was becoming more problematic for its now four-person ensemble - Helen Stoltzfus had joined founders Corey Fischer, Albert Greenberg and Naomi Newman - and small administrative staff. In the mid-’90s, it addressed those problems by securing its own space in the Project Artaud building and launching a capital campaign to build a small, handsome theater.

“We incurred a $200,000 debt from that project,” Davidman says. “That’s a big nut for a little company with a $700,000 budget and an 88-seat theater. It left very little margin for error.”

TJT’s artistic identity was evolving as well, at first with the addition of new ensemble members. The biggest change came in ‘02, when the group abandoned its collective artistic leadership and disbanded its ensemble. Greenberg and Stoltzfus left. Davidman, who had joined two years earlier, was named artistic director, with Fischer as his associate and Newman in an advisory role.

“When I became artistic director,” Davidman says, “I was given charge of this new strategic plan, which had to do with growing the company, raising the earned income and individual contributors. The context was moving from an organization that existed to support the vision of its founders to a real community organization. At first we thought we’d succeeded in that transition. What we’re waking up to is that it’s a longer process.”

Some of the problems stemmed from initial success, Davidman admits. He revived TJT’s former “traveling” identity, moving shows from its home to the much larger Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts and Berkeley’s Julia Morgan Theater, after a hit adaptation of Chaim Potok’s “The Chosen” was a big box-office success in those venues in ‘03. Subsequent shows lost money, due to the costs of moving and renting the spaces, however, eating into TJT’s production budget, which in turn meant having to postpone or curtail seasons.

The long-simmering crisis reached a head this season, with the cumulative debt having grown to almost $400,000. TJT laid off all of its staff except Schwartz, with Davidman going part time (he’s now back on a full-time basis), and canceled the second show of a two-play season. Faced with the prospect of having to sell its theater and close, Schwartz and Davidman met with TJT’s major funders, as a group, and developed a plan to save the company.

Before the foundations would commit to extra funding, though, “they wanted to make sure that TJT, or Jewish theater in general, was something that the Bay Area community still wanted,” Schwartz says. “They wanted us to reach this $100,000 goal by June 30 as a demonstration of that.”

That’s also, Davidman explains, why the 30th season contains not only an early classic TJT show and a local premiere by Donald Margulies (”Dinner With Friends”), but also Woody Allen’s old-fashioned “The Floating Lightbulb.”

“Woody Allen is a way for us to come out and say we’ve got something for everybody,” he says. “TJT’s early works really pushed the edge of the field. Nobody else was exploring Jewish content with those experimental tools, and that was very important. Now, it’s hard to define what experimental means anymore. The artistic vision will continue to be a mix of original works and ones that have a proven track record. Corey and Naomi are still very much involved, and we want to go deeper in cultivating younger artists. But it also means doing work that will attract a broader audience.”

“We need to start acting like that sort of company and not like a small ensemble anymore,” Schwartz adds. “The vision we have is to evolve into the flagship Jewish theater company of the West Coast.”

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