ENTERTAINMENT
BEHIND
SCENE
th e
KENNETH JONES
Special to The Jewish News
he general obser-
vation made about
Yolanda Fleischer
and her 11-year
theater directing
career is that she is drawn to
plays about the Jewish ex-
perience. Her most potent and
exciting work is shaped from
scripts about the intimate
conflicts within a family unit.
Sometimes these concerns
overlap and result in memo-
rable revivals of, say, Meyer
Levin's Ann Frank, Clifford
Odets' Awake and Sing! or
Lillian Helman's Watch on the
Rhine, three Detroit-area pro-
ductions with which Ms.
Fleischer is strongly iden-
tified.
Ms. Fleischer, who staged
her first professional produc-
tion, Joanna Glass' Artichoke
in 1980 at the now-defunct
Actors Renaissance Theatre,
is currently making her direc-
torial debut with the Jewish
Ensemble Theatre. She
directs Ira Levin's Cantorial,
a romantic comedy about an
interfaith couple who move
into a haunted condominium
that was once a synagogue.
Previews began April 17.
She'd probably rather not be
categorized as being just a
director of Jewish and family-
Kenneth Jones is a Grosse
Pointe-based theater critic
and writer.
Yolanda Fleischer has a long list of local credits.
related plays, but in Mr.
Levin's play here again are
the apparent trademarks — a
familial relationship and
Jewish content.
"I think I choose a lot of
Jewish shows because I've
always had a very strong
Jewish identity, even though
I converted," says Ms.
Fleischer.
"There are two ingredients
I like generally in plays, and
plays about Jewish culture
tend to have these ingre-
dients," she says. "One is
some kind of social
significance, whether it's
about man's struggle against
oppression, like Watch on the
Rhine, or the struggle against
an oppressive economy and
family, like Awake and Sing!
"The other is humor. If you
Photos: Glenn Triest
look at Jewish literature, the
humor comes out of the
human condition rather than
a joke. Sholom Aleichem
wrote a collection called
Laughter Through Tears —
that's a kind of Jewish humor.
The situation is so messed up,
it has to be funny. You have to
laugh or you cry. It gives the
character and story a lot of
depth and resonance."
Her staging of Jon Klein's
T Bone 'N Weasel last year for
the Theatre Company of the
University of Detroit Mercy,
where she is one of three
director-professors, comes to
mind as a laughter-through-
tears play. Mr. Klein's comedy
concerns two goofy misfits
who face degradation while
on the run in the South.
It was a departure for Ms.
Fleischer in that it lacked a
living room set design, a
Jewish theme and a tradi-
tional family. It's also one of
her favorite productions in a
list of some 20 shows she'd
staged since Artichoke.
When searching for plays to
direct for the U-D season, Ms.
Fleischer says she doesn't
look specifically for some-
thing Jewish, but for some-
thing that will be of in-
terest to the adventurous,
largely non-Jewish audience
that patronizes the Theatre
Company.
"I think it's important;' she
says, "for non-Jewish au-
diences to see plays of Jewish
content. And I hope the
Jewish Ensemble Theatre's
outreach program includes
audiences that are not
necessarily Jewish, but au-
diences that like theater,
period."
Ms. Fleischer, 44, grew up
in a working class family in
Taylor Township, now the Ci-
ty of Taylor, where she
organized neighborhood
shows.
"I always directed from the
time I was a little girl, but I
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
67
& ENTERTAI NMENT
JET's "Cantorial" is just the latest in
Yolanda Fleischer's directing career.