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28875 FRANKLIN RD at Northwestern Hwy & 12 Mile
Southfield
358-3355
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474-3033
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30715 W Ten Mile • Farm. Hills, MI
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4108 W. Maple • Birminaham. MI • i biock W ci Te , earcW. • 626.2630
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11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Mon. Thru Thurs. • 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Fri. & Sat.
I OPEN SUNDAY 5 -p.m TO 10 p.m.
29269 Southfield Road north of 12 Mile
In The Southfield Commons
68 FRIDAY, APRIL 19, 1991
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569-1400
didn't know that's what it
was," she says. "In the sum-
mer I'd get all the little kids
together and we'd rehearse
these kind of revues that had
verse and songs and lip-
syncing. We'd have little
skits?'
As a 10-year-old impresario,
she wasn't thinking ahead to
a career in theater, she was
just having fun. Besides, her
childhood dream was to be a
teacher.
"I kind of liked telling peo-
ple what to do," Ms. Fleischer
says with a laugh. "I had a
plan, always, of how I wanted
the shows to turn out and
nobody else bothered to think
that far ahead."
Although she found value
in high school music pro-
grams, and appeared in the
chorus of the student staging
of The King and I, Ms.
Fleischer recalls negative
feelings about theater in high
school — the drama coach was
prone to tantrums.
When she attended Central
Michigan University, her at-
titude about theater changed
because of the warmth of the
students and faculty there.
She plunged into theater and
speech programs, eventually
earning a bachelor's degree in
theater and speech with a
minor in English (and a
teaching certificate to boot).
When she wasn't perform-
ing in plays at CMU, she was
particularly involved in oral
interpretation competitions,
pouring over written material
— articles, poems, stories —
and staging.
"It was kind of like reader's
theater," she says. "We'd take
novels and stage them. It
wasn't just a playscript. I lik-
ed editing, putting the scripts
together. Are you ready for
this? For one of these tour-
naments, I did a 20-minute
version of Fiddler on the Roof
with a single piano and three
actors?'
She laughs at the memory
and admits that she wasn't
thinking exactly how she
could parlay oral interpreta-
tion into a career. Ironically,
in 1987, she would become
the artistic director of the
popular Readers Theatre pro-
gram at the Jewish Com-
munity Center in West
Bloomfield — a direct link to
her "oral interp" days when
she would select and edit pro-
se and verse to be read aloud.
In the early 1970s, Ms.
Fleischer taught high school
in Detroit and Taylor before
returning to college and ear-
ning two master's degrees, in
theater and directing, at
Wayne State University. She
now teaches part-time at
WSU in the theater depart-
ment.
Ms. Fleischer converted to
Judaism in 1970, the same
year she married her hus-
band, a Jewish real estate
agent, whom she met while
working weekends in a real
estate office.
"I was always a religious
searcher," says Ms. Fleischer,
who describes her household
as humanistic. "I went to
Hungarian Reform Church as
a child; I was a confirmed
Episcopalian at one time in
college. I studied religion. I
was always drawn to the spir-
tual side of this human being
we are.
"I liked how Jews viewed
life and death and family, and
that Judaism found a way to
unite religion and family
more so than any other Chris-
tian religions I had in-
vestigated. I liked the fact
that so much of what was
significant in the religion was
from the home."
Family is an important idea
for Ms. Fleischer, and it
relates not only to her
spirituality but to her career
choices. Had she not felt the
warm acceptance of theater at
CMU, today she would likely
be teaching fourth grade, her
original goal.
And she might not have
worked at nearly every resi-
dent professional theater in
Detroit, from the Attic to U-
D, from the defunct Fourth
Street Playhouse to the
Detroit Repertory Theatre.
The only major theater she
hasn't worked at is Meadow
Brook Theatre.
Next season at U-D-Mercy,
Ms. Fleischer will perform in
one show and direct a play
called The White Rose, seen
last year in a staging by the
theater department of the
University of Michigan.
The drama tells the story of
university students in
Hitler's Germany who
distribute anti-Nazi pro-
paganda under the name The
White Rose.
❑
A sampling of Yolanda Fleischer's
directing work:
Artichoke (1980 Actors Renaissance Theatre)
Watch on the Rhine (1981 Attic Theatre)
Awake and Sine (1983 Attic Theatre)
My Sister in This House (1983 Fourth Street Playhouse)
The Rainmaker (1984 Actors Alliance Theatre Co.)
A Member of the Wedding (1985 State Fair Theatre)
A Taste of Honey (1987 U-D Theatre Co.)
A Shayna Maidel (1989 Ann Arbor Repertory" Theatre)
Two (1989 U-D Theatre Co.)
Blood Relations (1989 Detroit Repertory Theatre)
Cantorial (1991 Jewish Ensemble Theatre)
Ms. Fleischer works with Tim Pickering and Carol Lempert in
"Cantorial."