Vivian DeGain Better at 50 Blog
Columnist and arts writerArchive for Lifestyles Column
DETROIT ARTS LIVE AND WORTH WATCHING: Jerusalem at the JET
‘New Jerusalem: The Interrogation of Baruch Spinoza at Talmud Torah Congregation: Amsterdam, July 27, 1656’ top notch at the JET
***** FIVE Stars out of FIVE
By Vivian DeGain
Arts reviewer
The new production at Jewish Ensemble Theatre is both a Midwest premiere and the most exciting play on stage this season in Metro Detroit. The historical drama with a long name that frames it, “New Jerusalem: The Interrogation of Baruch Spinoza at Talmud Torah Congregation, Amsterdam, July 27, 1656” is described by the JET as a “intellectual comedic drama that addresses freedom of expression and religion and what our religious and cultural affiliations mean to us in the grand scheme of the universe.”
Easy for them to say.
Yet, as JET Artistic Director David J. Magidson directs the play and a first-rate cast, Magidson is delivering on his promise to bring the fresh, the invigorated and the inspired to his stage.
Interestingly, the new is created from a story nearly 500 years old about a young philosopher judged as either a heretic, a brilliant innovator, or both.
Baruch Spinoza (Hebrew) was born Bento de Espinosa (in Portuguese) November 24, 1632 – February 21, 1677. Deemed one of the most significant philosophers – “and certainly the most radical of the early modern period, his extremely naturalistic views on God, the world, the human being and knowledge serve to ground a moral philosophy. Of all the philosophers of the seventeenth-century, perhaps none have more relevance today than Spinoza,” http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza/.
In the JET’s “New Jerusalem” Mitchell Koory is Spinoza and is every bit as charming and as provocative as we imagine Spinoza was. While the other characters in the play gather in scenes and dialogue, Koory’s lines seem to last the entire two hours nonstop but never with a feeling that we a observing a manuscript – just the original.
The cast also highlights the excellent work of Loren Bass as the defending Rabbi Saul Levi Mortera, Hugh Maguire as the prosecuting Abraham van Valkenburgh, Phil Powers as ben Israel, Rob Pantano as de Vries, Christina Flynn as Clara van den Enden, and Caroline Price as Rebekah de Spinoza.
‘New Jerusalem…’ by David Ives premiered in New York in January 2008. Ives, born in 1950 in Chicago attended Northwestern University and the Yale School of Drama, where he received an MFA in playwriting. He also studied at a Catholic seminary, served as editor at Foreign Affairs magazine and was a contributing editor for Spy Magazine, the New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker.
In his eclectic assignments, his success on the New York stage beginning in 1972 and continuing (see sidebar below), one could imagine him as not so unfamiliar a thinker as the free thinker Baruch Spinoza in his time.
The superb writing, the excellent cast and very fine directing come to fruition at the JET.
The play’s opening coincides with the grand opening this week of the $6.7-million Berman Center for the Performing Arts on the Jewish Community Center in West Bloomfield, which is also celebrating the annual JCC Stephen Gottlieb Music Festival. Marvin Hamlisch was the opening show on stage! The Berman Center seats a variable 350-600, boasts a beautiful stage and the gifts of cutting edge technology.
About Playwright David Ives: Ives’ first play in New York was “Canvas” at the Circle Repertory Company in 1972. He has also written Saint Freud in 1975 and a series of one-act plays in the 1980s including “Variations on the Death of Trotsky,” “Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread,” and “The Universal Language.” His “All in the Timing,” originated as an evening of one-act comedies, premiered at Primary Stages in 1993, moved to the larger John Houseman Theatre and ran for 606 performances, which won him the Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award for Playwriting.
The Jewish Ensemble Theatre presents ‘New Jerusalem: The Interrogation of Baruch Spinoza at Talmud Torah Congregation: Amsterdam, July 27, 1656’ through April 10 at the Aaron DeRoy Theatre on the campus of the Jewish Community Center, 6600 West Maple Road in West Bloomfield. Tickets are $32-$41 and performances run 7:30 p.m. Thursdays; 5 and 8:30 p.m. Saturdays; 2 and 6 p.m. on Sundays; with a Wednesday matinee April 6. Call 248-788-2900 or visit www.jettheatre.com.
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Searching for the Hoopoe Bird
Searching for the Hoopoe
by Vivian DeGain
Just look at him.
Yes, I went to Israel in search of the little Hoopoe Bird.
Yes, when my husband and I were there together in April, 2005, with my Rabbi Joe Klein and 14 people from Temple Emanu-El in Oak Park, it was the season of the great bird migration from Africa to the south to Europe in the north, right across Israel’s fertile crescent, the path birds have navigated for centuries.
Yes, we saw hundreds of giant black storks flying like hang gliders across the desert sky and yes, they were magnificent.
Yes, we saw a Syrian Woodpecker at Yad Vashem, a family of Chukars walking on the roadside along the Jerusalem highway, and my husband claims that he saw the brightest and most colorful little jewel of all: The blue-green-yellow-brown-red European Bee-Eater.
I didn’t believe him. I didn’t see it. But then, I have to begrudgingly admit that he probably did. He is a better bird watcher than I am. He’s faster to see and identify.
But I was the one dying to see the most fabulous bird of all of Israel: The Hoopoe.
Just look at the photo above that I got from the Internet of that jaunty little fellow with the gorgeous comb over his head. Who wouldn’t want to see one?
I had read about the Hoopoe in James A. Michener’s “The Source.” The author named one of his historically imagined characters as “the Hoopoe” with this perfect description, “For as long as men had existed upon the land of Israel, they had been accompanied by the curious bird the hoopoe… a short stubby creature, about eight inches long, with a black and white body and a pinkish head, and was remarkable in that he walked more than he flew.”
Imagine a fat little pigeon wobbling around, cooing and bobbling his head.
But no, this was not a pigeon this Hoopoe, he was a creature set apart.
On this trip, July 5-20, our group of 30, again from Temple Emanu-El and again with Rabbi Klein, we began to look out for birds and take note.
We saw the rich blue-black hummingbird-like Palestine Sunbird, buzzing around trees and sucking nectar through its long beak in Tzfat.
Our Keshet Guide Dovid Soloman rolled scraps of bread into little balls to play with the speckled Starlings and feed them in flight on the side of the mountain near Masada.
We saw grey Blackstarts, a Mourning Wheatear, even Parrotts circling around. We saw finch, sparrows, swallows, ravens, raptors and what could only be described as a different-looking but exactly-the-same-behaving-as Israeli crow. And so it was. The ”Hooded Crow.” It is bigger than ours, dirty grey with black patches around its rump and head, but it’s a crow alright, it caws and caws and KHAWS.
Dovid, once he heard me tell everyone to keep looking for a Hoopoe, that I was determined to see one on this trip, said, “Oh, they are the Israel State Bird! We voted on it! You can see them everywhere, look under the trees.
“You know why they are called the Hoopoe? That’s their call, hoo-poe-poe, hoo-poe-poe, hoo-poe.”
I informed the group, but I was too late.
Because alongside the highway, from inside the bus window, from the seat right in front of me, Laura Miller said, “What is that cool bird right there?”
Yep. When I described him, she said, “Yes! Yes! That’s it!” I showed her my bird guide and yes, she confirmed the sighting.
But, no,no, no. I did not see him.
The first time I went to Israel, I saw the gorgeous landscapes from the rich green hills along the northern Jordan river, to the Mediterranean Ocean along the eastern coast, the Dead Sea on the west, the numerous Biblical mountains, and the Machtesh Ramon that looks like the Grand Canyon in the middle of the desert — all within one tiny country.
Tiny, only as long as Michigan’s lower peninsula and only half as wide.
I saw the fantastical but real Biblical sites, Jewish, Christian and Moslem, the shrines and cities and archeological digs. I relished the food. I adored the people. I loved the country.
I was not yet Jewish then but wanted to be with all my heart.
This time when I went to Israel, I saw the breath-taking landscapes, the shrines, and again felt the holiness of the land and the sacredness of the journey — but this time I also heard Hebrew all around me, a language I have studied for four years now.
And this time, I really saw the people, their hardened and joyous faces, their strength, their compassion, their pride, their weariness, their concern and their ownership.
I saw children, old people, young people, families, tribes, communities, schools, military bases, kibbutz dwellers, worshipers and every now and then, neighbors in contention, but not like you would imagine. Nothing like what you would imagine. Bigger, smaller, sometimes with laughter, sometimes with tears.
This time I was Jewish.
This time I was coming back home.
But I did not see a Hoopoe.
Read this link to Israel’s Haaretz newspaper: After 5 Months of Suspense, the Hoopoe is Crowned Israel’s State Bird http://www.haaretz.com/news/after-five-months-of-suspense-the-hoopoe-is-crowned-israel-s-state-bird-1.246842
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Daniel Schorr, a tribute
As a journalist, I’ve had at least two role models for excellence in reporting, pathos in writing and voice in delivery: Bob Talbert (Detroit Free Press) and Daniel Schoor. Schoor worked until he died last week at age 93 — and with all due respect to his wife and family — I was in love ! Read and hear the NPR tribute to Schoor: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128565997
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Home from Israel but still there too
Top, Members of Temple Emanu-El, a Reform group in Oak Park Michigan, volunteer and pick onions in a field that grows food for the needy in Israel.
Above, The metal statue in the courtyard of the Rimonim Hotel in Tzfat, Israel, embodies the Jewish value of Tikkun Olam — repairing the world.
We went to feed the hungry. What other kind of work is closer to God?
By Vivian DeGain July 25, 2010
We were 30 hands — volunteers from three generations from Temple Emanu-El in Oak Park, Michigan who were travelling through Israel on a study tour with our Rabbi Joe Klein.
One of our stops included a soup kitchen for the needy, a vista for mostly elderly folks in the neighborhood who truly appreciated the gift of one hot meal per day.
The meals that day were served with smiles by our youngsters, kids aged 9-high school.
While lunch was being served in the cafeteria by our youngsters, the rest of us reported to the kitchen and were assigned the task of eggplant. Loads of fresh, ripe, deep purple vegetables had arrived in the kitchen that day.
The long industrial counter had already been staged for us, a virtual path of cutting boards that lined both sides of the work table, fixed with ready tools like sharp paring knives and peelers.
The kitchen manager explained that we would prepare the eggplant for a soup or stew and demonstrated how to perfectly slice and dice the pale green inner meat of the fruit to just the right size for the recipe.
The task, three grocery carts full of jaunty purple vegetables, was made easy by the number of hands peeling, scoring, removing and discarding the stem tops and rutted bottoms of the fruit, and chopping the eggplant into cubes about the size of marshmallows.
Then there was the issue of modesty.
Not the eggplants’ of course — ours.
In the hot, humid Jerusalem afternoon, members of our group had arrived in Bermuda shorts and some of us in sleeveless shirts.
Apparently this was unacceptable to a few of the very strict Orthodox men who also worked/ volunteered in the kitchen that day. So we were confused when I, along with all the other women in our group, were handed a white snap-up garment that covered us from our necks to our wrists and knees.
At first we thought the jackets were some kind of sanitary requirement. But then, why only for the women among us?
With sincere apologies and much embarrassment by the professional staff of the soup kitchen organization, we were informed that it was necessary for us to cover-up to appease the Ultra Orthodox Jewish neighbors nearby — who live within a nonnegotiable code of modesty, which is of course their right.
Yet, as I explained to the three different individuals who came over while I was paring and chopping eggplant, I was hot and needed to cool down, and thus removed the smock.
I was hot! Chaffed from the Jerusalem afternoon, the kitchen stoves, the work, menopause and yes, I was hot under the collar — as they ignored my logic and insisted that they would cover me after I took off my smock.
The eggplant was naked.
I was not.
I was there to volunteer to feed hungry people and I just wanted to do my job.
As part of our study tour, our group was taught a new Hebrew word every day. The word of the day was “BALAGAN,” which roughly translates into “a total mess” and is frequently used to describe the government — not just the Israeli government, but any government and the inefficiency of civil service.
It’s enough to say that baring my arms in the soup kitchen and being told to “cover up my immodesty so as to not offend the neighbors” counts as a BALAGAN in my book.
We went to feed the hungry and so we did.
Photo is by fellow trip member, thank you!
Vivian is to the right wearing a pink baseball cap, “uncovered” at the moment. She brought her “cover” home with her.
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DETROIT ARTS LIVE AND WORTH WATCHING: SPRING AWAKENING
Spring Awakening: Story 100 years old, music brand new
**** Four Stars
By Vivian DeGain
The Oakland Press, Sunday, April 18, 2010
Tom Hulce, who was raised in Plymouth, Michigan, may have earned his fame for the lead role in “Amadeus,” but history will be thanking him for his “shepherding” role in the exciting award-sweeping musical “Spring Awakening” which opens at the Fisher Theatre Tuesday.
“Spring Awakening” won eight out of its 11 nominations in the 2007 Tony Awards including Best Musical, on Broadway.
Hulce joined Michael Mayer (director) and a creative collaboration to transform the 100-year-old story into a stage-ready drama in 2004, though each had been aware and very excited by the piece years before.
Based on the 1891 play by Frank Wedekind, playwright Steven Sater, music writer Duncan Sheik and director Michael Mayer had been working on the musical “Spring Awakening” since 1999.
“We felt that if this unique, exciting story could be told within a score of gorgeous Rock music and dance — it would be hard — but amazing if done well,” Hulce said.
“The results were astounding, to allow the music to be the vehicle for the hope, the escape, the articulation for these young people who were living in a time and community that was so restrictive.”
A tension of two not-always-compatible times, cultures and costumes, “Spring Awakening” is set against the backdrop of a repressive and provincial late 19th century Germany, familiar to Wedekind.
“Spring Awakening” tells the timeless story of teenage self-discovery and budding sexuality as seen through the eyes of three teenagers.
The musical “Spring Awakening” brings the story to fruition through the electrifying score by Duncan Sheik, and book and lyrics Steven Sater.
The energy and pulse created in the singing and dancing are incredible. www.springawakening.com
“Spring Awakening” opened on Broadway on Dec. 10, 2006 at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre, following its world premiere at the Atlantic Theatre Company.
It was so highly received by the audience and the critics that “Awakening” also won 2007 Tony’s for Best Director (Mayer), Best Book (Sater), Best Choreography (Bill T. Jones), Best Orchestrations (Duncan Sheik), Best Lighting Design (Kevin Adams) and Best Featured Actor (John Gallagher Jr.).
It was also named “Best Musical of the Year” by the NY Drama Critics Circle, the Drama Desk and the Outer Critics Circle.
The original cast also recording won the 2008 Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album.
“It is so gratifying, the response shown to this from all around the country,” Hulce said, “The best engagements have been in cities that are more conservative. Why? I think because the circumstances of the play speak very strongly and people respond to it and to the opportunity given to these phenomenal young actors. We feel empowered in universality of that exhilaration.”
Spring Awakening contains mature themes, sexual situations and strong language.
“Spring Awakening” is produced by Ira Pittelman, Hulce, Jeffrey Richards, Jerry Frankel and the Atlantic Theatre Co.
Hulce, whose films also include “Parenthood” and “Fearless” also starred on Broadway in “Equus” and “A Few Good Men,” and in “Hamlet” at The Shakespeare Theater. He has been nominated for an Academy Award, a Tony, four Golden Globes, two Helen Hayes and an Emmy, which he won for “The Heidi Chronicles.”
In addition to “Spring Awakening,” he has shepherded two other major projects to fruition, the six-hour two-evening stage adaptation of John Irving’s “The Cider House Rules” and “Talking Heads”, a festival of Alan Bennett’s solo plays which won 6 Obie Awards, a Drama Desk Award, a special Outer Critics Circle Award, and a NY Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play.
Vivian DeGain went to Broadway to see “Spring Awakening” in 2007 and was totally knocked out by this production.
‘Spring Awakening’ runs April 20-May 9 at the Fisher Theatre, 3011 W. Grand Blvd. in Detroit. Performances are at 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays; 7:30 p.m. on Sundays; and matinees at 2 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets are $24-$79 at the Fisher Theatre box office, at www.broadwayindetroit.com or www.ticketmaster.com or at Ticketmaster, 1-800-982-2787.
DETROIT ARTS LIVE AND WORTH SUPPORTING: UDM Theatre Homeless Monologues
“Lonnie” Fleischer
Theatre for a cause: UD Mercy presents ‘Unheard Voices, Homeless Monologues’
By Vivian DeGain
Oakland Press Sunday, Feb. 21, 2010
There has always been a tender and vibrant relationship between theater and social justice, said Lonnie (Yolanda) Fleischer, theater professor, director and actor.
She should know. Fleischer, with over 30 years to her credit on stage and at the head of the classroom, also teaches about social action at the International Institute for Secular and Humanistic Judaism.
Though she will retire as Associate Professor of Theatre from the University of Detroit Mercy this May, it’s not likely that her artistic collaborations with the UDM Theatre, and the theaters at Wayne State, Oakland University, Actors Alliance Conservatory, the Jewish Ensemble Theatre and the Detroit Repertory will ever let her escape completely.
She is passionate about her students, her work and how art brings awareness to worthy causes, like, “A play that will address the issues and problems of the overwhelming epidemic of homelessness in Southeast Michigan,” she said.
Directed and conceived by Fleischer, “Unheard Voices; Homeless Monologues” aims to present the lives, hopes, pains and spirits of the homeless community and will be presented at the UDM campus (next weekend Feb. 26-28).
All proceeds from the play will go to Homeless Action Network of Detroit an organization crucial to the survival of many homeless people. A special Gala benefits the Homeless Action Network of Detroit Friday.
“Unheard Voices” originated when Fleischer directed her UDM students to get involved. “These dedicated students have spent nearly a year in the streets and shelters in Detroit talking with the homeless and creating monologues of their stories,” she said.
From these personal interviews and observations, as well as personal interviews that students conducted with their own family and neighbors, the play offers stunning surprises.
“Unheard Voices; Homeless Monologues” was written in the style similar to the fabulous Broadway writers Anna Deavere Smith and Eve Ensler, she said.
Smith, a familiar actress on television’s “West Wing,” earned a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding One-Person Show in both 1991 for her “Fires in the Mirror” about the 1991 Crown Heights Riot and in 1992 for “Twilight: Los Angeles” about the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
Ensler also earned international acclaim as the writer and performer of The Vagina Monologues.
“UDM students and theatre students used a similar technique in ‘Unheard Voices; Homeless Monologues’” Fleischer said.
“This provoking and progressive work takes the stories of homelessness out of the shadows and into the light through the use of original monologues. The writers and actors who have taken on this project have incorporated true stories that encompass the hardships and problems faced by the homeless. Through the sensitive empathic portrayal of those living on the fringes, it is hoped that negative prejudices surrounding the homeless are abolished.”
The result?
“I was blown away. My eyes were really opened.”
The entire transcript, once 27 pages long, has been whittled and perfected to a 75-minute show without intermissions. The UDM cast of 17 performs the monologues, ranging from 2 -10 minutes each and one quartet.
The cast for Unheard Voices includes UDM undergraduate and graduate students, alumni, faculty Ann Eskridge and Dr. Laurie Britt-Smith, and guest professional artists Nancy Kammer, Peter Sapienza and Sandra Love Aldridge.
Fleischer said John Daniels, from the UDM Leadership Institute, helped her envision the project in a summer course, and named the production.
“He is a very religious Catholic and I am a secular Humanistic Jew and yet we agree on everything about this work.”
All Unheard Voices proceeds will benefit H.A.N.D. which serves as the Continuum of Care for Detroit, Hamtramck and Highland Park. Comprised of nonprofit organizations, businesses, government entities and committed individuals, H.A.N.D. aims to reduce and eliminate homelessness through planning and implementing housing and service programs.
Performances of Unheard Voices on Feb. 27 and 28 request a ticket donation of $16, but admission will be on a Pay-What-You-Can basis, even accepting a donation of gently used clothes on a hanger.
Unheard Voices; Homeless Monologues the show is now closed.
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Better Past 50
A beloved child in my life asked me recently, “why do we always remember the bad things we have done?” over and over in our minds, or why don’t we even balance them with our ability to remember all the good things? Why is it so easy for us to sweat over the foolish, awkward, mean or just plain stupid things we have done – and judge ourselves harshly — instead of accepting our “human” imperfections and just moving on… What do you think?
DETROIT ARTS LIVE AND WORTH WATCHING: Blank Page
Kitty Dubin’s ‘The Blank Page’
****
Four out of four stars
Review by Vivian DeGain
Arts and entertainment writer
As you might guess, “Blank Page,” Kitty Dubin’s world premiere running at the Jewish Ensemble Theatre through Nov. 8, is a play about a writer and what makes writers tick.
Professor Amy Kaplan (Sarab Kamoo) teaches a master’s level course while she is also a mother to a toddler, a wife to a man whose profession requires his 24-7 and often hers as well, and she is a writer trying to complete her second novel.
Amy is overwhelmed by the very real demands pulling on her time and energy, and she suffers the crisis of confidence that undermines her best work.
The paradox of the story, and one that I think more women than men understand, is of course the perfect metaphor in the blank page and what we see on it. Children’s meals in need of cooking. Houses in need of dusting. Social obligations in need of partnering.
At the beginning of Dubin’s drama, the page is still blank, — but words appear that are very clear about the ending. Her editor has written to say her manuscript is due, no excuses, by the end of the semester.
Crank the tension when a very gifted and ambitious young writer enrolls in Amy’s class, a young woman in whom she sees herself about 10 years earlier. Stories roll off the tongue for this new one, Alex Malone (Leslie Ann Handelman.)
And Amy’s husband, Rabbi Danny Kaplan (John Lepard) wants to be supportive — but their life, like so many marriages or organizations today, is one where everyone is already working overtime. Where is the opening?
Dubin said, “The stakes are so high, with all of her identity and professional ties at risk. Every passion is in conflict — and she doesn’t handle it well. She is angry. She is overwhelmed. She loses it, but good.”
Amy’s only source of relief is her best friend Joy Fields (Naz Edwards). Joy is also a professor and a woman 10 years older. Joy offers solace and support, yet Amy manages to alienate her friend as well.
All of this, in the first half. This critic never gives away the ending, but Dubin is a master craftsman and in this play, she shines.
If there is a message that this critic and writer loves about “Blank Page” — it is that if it takes a community to raise a child, it also takes a family and a community to raise an artist.
If there is a Jewish message in “Blank Page” it is about what we do and where we go that counts. We must look within, but we must not look only within.
Dubin’s “Blank Page” is superbly written, brilliantly directed and stunningly acted.
Titled “Blank Page” we would expect the story to be about a writer and the distance that writers must go from the blank page to the completed story.
The surprise in the “Blank Page” story is that this story is not only about writers. Each of us awakens every morning with a blank page. Each of us stares at an unwritten chapter of the challenges and the rewards of living a creative life, a loving life, an invested life. The choice is ours.
Directed by Gillian Eaton, this formidable and top notch ensemble is one of the best plays this critic has seen in the Detroit area in years! Dubin is the Playwright-in-Residence for the Jewish Ensemble Theatre’s 2009-10 season. www.jettheatre.com.
The Jewish Ensemble Theatre presents ‘The Blank Page’ through Nov. 8, at the Aaron DeRoy Theatre on the campus of the Jewish Community Center, 6600 West Maple Road in West Bloomfield. Tickets are $28-$36. Discounts for seniors, students, groups. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday; 5 and 8:30 p.m. Saturday; and 2 p.m. on Sundays and on Nov. 4. Call 248-788-2900 or visit www.jettheatre.com.
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DETROIT ARTS: Live and Worth Watching JET Opens with new Kitty Dubin drama ‘Blank Page’
Kitty Dubin’s ‘The Blank Page’ opens Jewish Ensemble Theatre season
By Vivian DeGain
The Oakland Press Sunday, Oct. 11, 2009
Of her newest creation, “Blank Page,” a world premiere opening at the Jewish Ensemble Theatre this week, playwright Kitty Dubin has much in common with the protagonist of her drama.
Both are writers and professors.
Both are women facing the demands of midlife while jockeying work, family and concrete creative deadlines.
At least one difference is that Dubin, who lives in Birmingham and teaches at Oakland University, has numerous credits in the business, including her full length productions “Mirrors,” “The Last Resort,” “Change Of Life,” “The Day We Met,” “Dance Like No One’s Watching” and “Coming Of Age,” as well as numerous one act plays.
Her character Amy, on the other hand, is still working on her second novel.
“She is a creative writing professor who once had a very successful literary career. She wrote her first novel when she could dedicate her whole life and all of her energy to her work, before kids and before her marriage to a man whose career absolutely demanded that she participate,” Dubin said.
“The play begins as Amy is struggling to finish her second, long-awaited novel despite increasing conflicts in her marriage. She is also teaching a master’s level class to a very gifted and ambitious young writer in whom she sees herself about 10 years earlier. The inciting incident in the plot occurs when she receives a letter from her publisher demanding the finished manuscript by the end of the semester or else,” Dubin said.
“The stakes are so high, with all of her identity and professional ties at risk. Every passion is in conflict — and she doesn’t handle it well. She is angry. She is overwhelmed. She loses it, but good.”
“Blank Page” frames the drama with four characters: Amy, her husband, her impressive student and a best friend, “another university professor who is about 10 years older and divorced for several years.”
“There is so much to this story that people will relate to. The difficulty of professional loss. The challenge of midlife and coming of age. The differences of the viewpoints of the three women because of their decades apart – the older who since her divorce is afraid of the pain and disappointment she experienced, and the younger who has such a sense of entitlement,” Dubin said.
As “Blank Page” opens Jewish Ensemble Theatre’s 2009-10 fall season, Dubin is the JET’s own Playwright-in-Residence and facing the concrete deadline of opening night and perfecting the script out loud and in public.
The play is directed by Gillian Eaton and the cast includes Sarab Kamoo, John Lepard, Naz Edwards and Leslie Ann Handelman – a formidable and top notch ensemble.
“Gillian Eaton has a remarkable understanding of the process of creative writing, staging and acting, of hearing the dialogue and of what is needed in rewriting. I couldn’t be in better hands. I have the utmost respect for her as a collaborator. She pushes me to make the play, the best it could be,” Dubin said.
“The play has been in development for two years, with four different professional readings on stage, all a part of the refining process. You can’t really rewrite dialogue until you hear it out loud. Even now as I am seeing it with costumes and stage designers – it’s with new eyes.”
Dubin, who has been writing plays for more than twenty-five years, said it is a fluid, exciting, challenging and very rewarding process. While all kinds of stories begin with the author, then become something quite different in the mind of the reader, she said, “the thing about this kind of writing is that you really have to let go.”
JET 2009-10 Season
The Big Bang Dec. 8 – Jan. 3, 2010
Music by Jed Feuer, Book and Lyrics by Boyd Graham
Musical comedy parody of a 12-hour staged history of the world.
The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife Jan. 26 – Feb. 21
By Charles Busch Intelligent comedy featuring a midlife crisis.
Palmer Park April 13 – May 9
By Joanna McClelland Glass
Drama made in Detroit about life after the 1967 race riots and during the 1968 Detroit Tigers World Series run.
The Jewish Ensemble Theatre presents ‘The Blank Page’ through Nov. 8, at the Aaron DeRoy Theatre on the campus of the Jewish Community Center, 6600 West Maple Road in West Bloomfield. Tickets are $28-$36. Discounts for seniors, students, groups. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays; 5 and 8:30 p.m. on Saturdays; and 2 p.m. on Sundays and on Nov. 4. Call 248-788-2900 or visit www.jettheatre.com.
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A daughter begins grad school
She’s my youngest, my only daughter, and is determined to become a role model for girls who, like her, are gifted, curious and have a penchant for all things algebra, geometry, calculus, lines and figures, graphs and proofs, logic and defying logic. She wants to be a high school math teacher and she will be the teacher you wish would teach your children — the one you wish you would have had yourself. All because of the number one reason most people give for their best inspiration: A teacher who pushed her and believed in her.
