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.”
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