The Washington Post - USA (2022-04-10)

SUNDAY, APRIL 10 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ EE E3

Theater

Immerwahr said, discussing the

orientation for the playwrights.

“We imagine some of them will

come from very educated religious

backgrounds, and some of them

might have more tenuous connec-

tions to their Jewishness. So this is

giving them some of the areas they

could explore in their plays.”

The hope, Immerwahr added,

“is that many of these plays will

end up in subsequent seasons on

both our stage and also other stag-

es around the country and the

world.” In this regard, Theater J,

an arm of the Edlavitch D.C. Jew-

ish Community Center, becomes a

conduit both for new avenues for

thinking about Jewish identity

and how audiences digest them.

“The power of this project,” said

Dava Schub, the DCJCC’s chief

executive, “is not just in the ability

to center stories of Jews of color on

the stage, but also to shine a light

on new storytellers and say, ‘It’s

not just about the story, it’s also

about the storyteller.’ ”

The myriad paths these story-

tellers might take are foreshad-

owed in Arbus and Thompson’s

choice to investigate Shylock as a

Black man. Arbus noted that it is

not pure imagination to think of

Shylock as a man of color. In fact,

she said, the well-known Shake-

speare scholar James Shapiro told

her that “most of the Jews in Eng-

land in Shakespeare’s time would

have come from North Africa.”

For Thompson, the role of out-

sider did not seem so elusive.

“I look at Shylock as a proxy for

the other,” he said. “I don’t think

Shakespeare knew a lot about

Jewish people, but he was a hu-

manist. He knew how to write the

shape of a human being and give

them a life.”

It is that aspect of a classic

Jewish character that beguiled the

actor — a quality that ultimately

transcends race and ethnicity.

“The individual life is made sig-

nificant just by the struggle,”

Thompson said. “That’s it, that’s

what I’m after. It’s the struggle.”

The Merchant of Venice Through

April 24 at Michael R. Klein Theatre,

450 Seventh St. NW.

shakespearetheatre.org.

Just for Us Through April 30 at SoHo

Playhouse, 15 Vandam St., New York,

and June 13-July 23 at Greenwich

House Theater, 27 Barrow St., New

York. justforusshow.com.

BY PETER MARKS

When John Douglas Thompson
let it be known he wanted to play
Shylock, one of the most provoca-
tive starring roles in Shakespeare,
that was all Arin Arbus needed to
hear. Having directed Thompson
in “Othello” and “Macbeth,”
among other plays, Arbus counted
the actor as a cherished fellow
traveler. Now, she would be join-
ing him in the most daring project
yet in their stage collaborations.
That Thompson is Black and
Shylock is Jewish adds rarely ex-
plored dimensions to “The Mer-
chant of Venice,” which began its
run at Shakespeare Theatre Com-
pany on March 22. The casting
underlines an intriguing develop-
ment that — intensified by the
Black Lives Matter movement —
has propelled American theaters
into new investigations of racial
and ethnic identity. Some of the
most trenchant of these efforts, in
fact, are occurring at the intersec-
tion of race and Judaism.
“I could clearly imagine John
embodying the journey that char-
acter goes through, and so it was a
very exciting idea to me,” Arbus
said in an interview, adding that
the challenge both thrilled and
terrified her. “We went on a jour-
ney of exploration to try and figure
out how to cast the rest of the play.
And, you know, to explore what
this play means to us now, with
John in that role.”
That process is reflected in an
array of innovative ventures tied
to the portrayal of Jewish people
in modern life, and in drama. And,
more specifically, to an effort to
enlighten theatergoers about the
range of people across racial lines
who call themselves Jewish.
At Washington’s Theater J, ar-
tistic director Adam Immerwahr
recently launched Expanding the
Canon, a program awarding
$10,000 commissions plus $5,000
production grants to seven play-
wrights across North America
who identify as Jews of color. That
category includes multiethnic and

multiracial Jews, as well as Mizra-

hi Jews from North Africa and

western and central Asia.

In an entirely unscientific indi-

cation of how rich this line of

inquiry is, Theater J, one of the

nation’s leading Jewish theaters,

has already received 70 submis-

sions for the project.

Showcasing a Black Shylock

and recruiting Jewish dramatists

of color reveal the degree to which

theaters see themselves as open-

ing vistas of understanding.

“In the last few years, with the

racial reckoning in this country,

we’ve been thinking about what

Theater J’s obligations are to tell-

ing the accurate story of the multi-

ethnic, multiracial tapestry of Ju-

daism,” Immerwahr said.

“There are just not enough

plays that are by and about the

experience of racially and ethni-

cally diverse Jews,” he added. “And

I use that phrase specifically be-

cause when we talk about this

group, we’re talking about Jews of

color, who are also left out of what

we call the ‘Ashke-normativity’ of

Jewish culture.” (Ashke-normativ-

ity refers to the conventional cen-

tering of Eastern European-root-

ed, Ashkenazi Jewry as the main-

stream of Jewish identity.)

Examining Jewishness has

been a vital preoccupation of

American theater for generations,

from the early-20th-century tradi-

tions of Yiddish theater to “The

Diary of Anne Frank,” to “Fiddler

on the Roof,” to Joshua Harmon’s

irreverently hip 2010s comedy

“Bad Jews.” What feels ever more

current are the new ways in which

Jewish playwrights and perform-

ers are introducing a broader

range of cultural experiences into

the contemporary conversation.

For instance, in Alex Edelman’s

sublime solo show “Just for Us” —

a sold-out smash at off-Broad-

way’s SoHo Playhouse — he hilari-

ously illuminates the complex role

Jewish people continue to occupy

in America’s polarized society.

The New York-based comedian

recounts in “Just for Us” his infil-

New initiatives shine

spotlight on d iversity

of Jewish identity

tration of a meeting of white na-

tionalists in an apartment in

Queens. They are only too happy

to welcome him into the fold —

until he admits the little wrinkle of

his actual ethnicity. In a room rife

with anti-Semitic invective, he is

now pegged as an undesirable,

someone not categorically White,

which is news, sort of, to him. The

“Just for Us” of the title therefore

poses an existential challenge:

Who exactly, Edelman seems to be

asking, is this “us”?

“The show is not a think piece or

anything,” Edelman said late one

winter afternoon, sitting in a small

West Village park in the drizzly

cold. “The show is not about ‘if

Jews are White.’ Personally, I think

it’s about a gray area, where Jews

are classically ‘other,’ in a way that

this binary doesn’t serve.”

The preoccupations of “Just for

Us,” directed by Adam Brace, cover

Edelman’s childhood in an upper-

middle-class Boston suburb, in a

modern Orthodox home. He at-

tended a Jewish day school, com-

plete with Talmudic study. But

Boston is not a shtetl, and the

gentile world loomed large: Edel-

man provides an uproarious ac-

count of a holiday season when his

mother, seeking to console a

Christian friend who had lost fam-

ily members, staged a traditional

Christmas dinner for her — to

Edelman’s father’s utter outrage.

“My comedy is very much in-

formed by my Talmudic upbring-

ing,” Edelman said. “My comedy is

all about the gray space between

the traditions and modernity.”

Efforts such as Theater J’s Ex-

panding the Canon attempt to fur-

ther enlarge the understanding of

the diaspora. “We’re excited that

the narrative of who expresses

themselves as a Jew is expanding

in the United States. It’s not

changing, it’s expanding,” said Ila-

na Kaufman, executive director of

the Jews of Color Initiative, a

group that supports research and

issues grants with the aim of

building “a truly multiracial, anti-

racist Jewish community.”

Immerwahr consulted with the

initiative and obtained funding

from the Covenant Foundation, a

group that advances Jewish edu-

cation, for its one-of-a-kind Jews

of color playwriting program. The

commissions will begin later this

year with a beit midrash, or study

period, for the writers, spearhead-

ed by Sabrina Sojourner — herself

a Jew of color who serves as a

Rockville, Md.-based community

chaplain promoting diversity and

inclusion among Jewish people.

“At the beginning, we’re going

to say we want to introduce you to

the true landscape of Jewishness,”

HENRY GROSSMAN/SHAKESPEARE THEATRE COMPANY

John Douglas Thompson as Shylock and Danaya Esperanza as Jessica in “The Merchant of Venice.”

Casting a Black person as Shylock, a Jewish character, adds extra dimensions to Shakespeare’s play.

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:

Ben Folds Presents

With William Shatner

April 29 | Concert Hall

Steven Reineke, conductor

Following his recent trip to

space, legendary actor and

musician William Shatner

joins NSO Artistic Advisor

Ben Folds for a special

concert presented as part

of Ben’s casual, late-night

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the traditional symphony experience with exciting

guest artists, pre-show activities, and more. It’s

classical music, DECLASSIFIED!

Now thru April 24 | Opera House

Blue Series Sponsor:

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May 12–14 | Concert Hall

Cristian Măcelaru, conductor

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov: The Tale of Tsar Saltan - Suite

Mason Bates: Philharmonia Fantastique (MUSIC & FILM)

(NSO CO-COMMISSION)**

Antonín Dvořák: Symphony No. 6

NEW RECORDING!

Blue

Washington National Opera

presents Blue, a contemporary

opera exploring race, loss, violence,

and reconciliation in today’s

America, with a libretto by Tazewell

Thompson set to music by Jeanine

Tesori. The recording features Kenneth Kellogg as The Father,

Briana Hunter as The Mother, Aaron Crouch as The Son, and

Gordon Hawkins as The Reverend. The Washington National

Opera Orchestra is led by rising star conductor Roderick Cox. On

the Pentatone label: smarturl.it/TesoriBlueWNO

Louis Langrée conducts

Boléro

May 19–21 | Concert Hall

Louis Langrée, conductor

Alisa Weilerstein, cello

Claude Debussy: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune

(Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun)

Joan Tower: A New Day

(NSO CO-COMMISSION)**

Maurice Ravel: La Valse

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