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 ENJOY SHAWN RILEY FRI. & SAT. NIGHTS 8 p.m. to 12 Mid. UNDER OUR NEWLY COVERED LAKESIDE DECK 142 E. WALLED LAKE DR. RESERVATIONS: WALLED LAKE MICH. 669-1441 Wishing All Our Friends and Patrons A Healthy, Happy and Prosperous New Year OLIVERIO'S We Proudly Announce The Addition Of Our New Room .. Also Available For Private Parties 3832 N. Woodward Ave. • Royal Oak • 549-3344 Wishing All Our Customers & Friends 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 851-7400 HOA KOW INN Oak Park 13715 W. 9 MILE, W. of Coolidge build a strong foundation with good prenatal care. 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-