Theworld's
His Stage

Playwright Israel Horovitz's
Unexpected Tenderness
is JET's newest production.

SUZANNE CHESSLER SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

p

lays written by Emmy and Obie award-win-
ner Israel Horovitz have been staged by the
Jewish Ensemble Theatre (JET) before, but
this season's selection reaches deeper emo-

tions.
Longtime JET audiences will remember the
lighter Today, I Am a Fountain Pen and A Rosen
by Any Other Name as quite different from Unex-
pected Tenderness, a dramatization of spousal abuse.
Set in New England in the 1950s, and told
through the comic memory of a teen-age boy, the
play unfolds the story of a seemingly idyllic family
that has a violent storm brewing from within.
"It's not easy for me to talk about Unexpected
Tenderness because there's so much in it that's per-
sonal and pairiful," said Horovitz, who hopes to see
a local performance.
"I really held off on it for half my lifetime because
I wanted to deal with the subject fairly. I didn't want
to deal with it as an angry kid.
"I think I've been successful in not making it so
much a memory as a play, and I've really been able
to invent a great deal so that it's entertaining and
not just a rite of passage."
Sometimes mixing comedy with tragedy all at
once, Horovitz's work will be presented through
March 23. Before the play's 1994 debut, Horovitz
asked approval from his 84-year-old mother; the
story is the essence of her experience.
"I don't write from the point of view of what's in
the newspapers or what the critical issues are," said
the playwright, whose first work was produced
when he was 17. "While I'm pleased there's some-
thing out there that makes the play find an audi-
ence more easily, I'm displeased there are problems
like that."
As Horovitz's 51st play settles into JET, he is tak-
ing off with other projects — rewriting a script for
a film to be made in Budapest, keeping an eye on
the Paris production of Fighting Over Beverly and
working on a new play, My Old Lady, which is about
a man inheriting an apartment.
"There was a time when I only thought about be-
ing an American playwright," commented Horovitz,
who maintains homes in New York, Massachusetts
and England, where his wife, Gillian Adams-
Horovitz, was national marathon champion.
"Now, I realize I can be an American playwright
and a world-class playwright, and it's just all the

more exciting. Some of
my plays are done in 35
languages, and I've
been invited to see them
and work,with compa-
nies in Portugal, Japan,
Israel, France and Ger-
many. I've directed nine
of my plays in France."
Horovitz, who stud-
ied acting early in his
career, last year took a
role in a British televi-
sion production of his
play The Chips Are
Down.
"I ended up acting in
five different things last
year, and I quite en-
joyed it," said Horovitz,
who counts two new
screenplays for Warner
Bros. among his body of
James Dean,
work
based on the actor's life,
and an updated version
of A Star Is Born.
"I get the same thing
out of acting that I get
out of running or com-
peting in athletics. It's
kind of mindless for me.
When I'm writing, I'm
constantly wrestling be-
tween profound issues
about being alive; but when I'm acting, I'm focus-
ing on one text and performing it.
"It's interesting being a writer and asking actors
to do all kinds of things and then going out on stage
or being in a film and actually doing some acting."
Horovitz, the father of five, routinely shows drafts
of new plays to his oldest daughter, Rachel, a film
producer, and to son Matthew, a novelist and film
editor. Son Adam is a Beastie Boy, and Hannah and
Oliver are 10-year-old twins.
"I write every day, and I run every day," Horovitz
said. "My friends tend to be people who write. Twen-
ty years ago, I founded the New York Playwrights
Lab, and we read pages from our new plays to each
other." ❑

—

Israel Horovitz's Unexpected
Tenderness is a play that's
personal and painful.

Unexpected Tenderness will be performed by JET at the
Aaron DeRoy Theatre in the Maple-Drake Jewish Commu-
nity Center. The show opens March 1 and runs through
March 23. The curtain goes up at 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays,
Thursdays and Sundays and 8 p.m. Saturdays. Matinees
are at 2 p.m. Sundays with one Wednesday matinee on
March 5, when there will be no evening performance. For
information, call (810) 788-2900.