ENTERTAINMENT
The Management and Staff of
a Restaurant
Wish Their Customers and Friends
A Very Happy and Healthy New Year
Image of Jews
Has Changed On Stage
MICHAEL ELKIN
Special to The Jewish News
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A Healthy, Happy and Prosperous
New Year
OLIVERIO'S
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Wishing All Our
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A Very Healthy
and Happy
New Year
WING HONG
Orchard Lake Rd. and 14 Mile Rd.
TOKYO JAPANESE STEAK HOUSE I CANTONESE & NORTHERN CHINESE
851-8600
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Chinese-American Restaurant
Wishes It's
Friends and Customers
A VERY HEALTHY & HAPPY
NEW YEAR
148
FRIDAY SFPTFMRFR 21. 1990
THIS SPACE CONTRIBUTED BY THE PUBLISHER
t was that famous scholar
Archie Bunker who long
ago offered some insight
into the Jewish condition.
"You can always tell who a
Jew is," he said, "by that
little yamaha he wears on
his head."
Well, the "yamahas" are
nowhere in sight on the
American stage these days,
but audiences don't have a
difficult time discerning who
the Jews are supposed to be.
During the past decade,
the image of the Jew in
American theater has
changed dramatically; it has
become more clearly defined
with playwrights —Jewish
playwrights — willing to
lean back into their past and
pull out memories and
mishugas for their current
projects.
Arguably, Neil Simon —
with his autobiographical
trilogy of growing up Jewish
(Brighton Beach Memoirs,
Biloxi Blues and Broadway
Bound) —is the most promi-
nent of the playwrights to do
so.
But there have been others
— Jules Feiffer (Grown Ups),
Alfred Uhry (Driving Miss
Daisy), Herb Gardner (I'm
Not Rappaport), Barbara
Lebow (A Shayna Maidel),
Mark Harelik (The Immi-
grant) — who have found the
stage the right setting for
expressing their Jewish con-
cerns.
Indeed, the topic of the
evolving nature of the Jew-
ish image played to a packed
house recently, when some
prominent theatrical per-
sonalities gathered to
discuss "Masks and Faces:
The Portrayal of the Jew in
American Theater."
The program was billed as
the initial event in a series
of Robert Saligman Ameri-
can Jewish Heritage events
at the National Museum of
American Jewish History on
Independence Mall East.
Taking part in the pro-
gram were author Chaim
Potok, whose plays Sins of
the Father and Out of the
Depths were premiered on
the local front recently; New
York actress Rita Karin,
known for her work on the
Yiddish stage as well as on
Michael Elkin is the
entertainment editor of the
Philadelphia Jewish
Exponent.
TV ("Chicken Soup") and
film (Enemies); and David
Bassuk, founder/artistic di-
rector of Philadelphia's
Novel Stages, which pre-
sented Potok's play Out of
the Depths.
Also serving on the panel
were director Michael Nash,
who helmed the recent
People's Light and Theatre
Co. of Malvern, Pa., produc-
tion of Ernest Joselovitz's
The Devil and All His
Works, and Carol Rocamora,
artistic and producing direc-
tor of the Philadelphia Fes-
tival Theatre for New Plays,
But are today's
Jewish playwrights
up to the challenge
of offering such a
balanced picture?
Are they up to the
challenge of
offering a true
picture of Jewish
life?
which offered Potok's Sins.
Preceding the panel
discussion, Danny Fruchter,
producing director of
People's Light, offered his
perspectives on the topic
after being introduced by
Margo Bloom, director of the
museum.
There isn't one singular
image of Jews in today's
theater, said Nash, whose
other directing credits at
People's Light include
Awake and Sing and The
Work Room. Like Devil,
which explores the Holo-
caust, these plays deal with
Jewish themes.
"The image of the Jew as a
thinker, a questioner and,
more humorously, as a wor-
rier seems central to these
plays and the Jewish
theater," Nash said.
Karin finds nothing ap-
pealing about the Jewish
image projected in some of
today's comedies. "I take ex-
ception with playwrights
(depicting) Jewish family,
warts and all," she said,
citing Other People's Money
and its central character of
the money-grabbing Gar-
finkle, and Feiffer's Grown
Ups, which deals with a Jew-
ish family at war with itself.
"When I think of Clifford
Odets' Awake and Sing,
there was a balance," she
said. She sees no such bal-