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"Celebrating Life," a musical presentation featuring Petula Clark and other
cast members of Sunset Boulevard, will be performed 7:30 p.m. Monday,
March 15, at Temple Israel, 5725 Walnut Lake Road, in West Bloomfield.
Proceeds from the program will benefit the Michigan Jewish AIDS Coalition
(MJAC), Broadway Cares: Equity Fight Against AIDS, and Steppin' Out.
Tickets are $72 for reserved seating and $36 for general seating. Other levels
of sponsorship are available. For information, call MJAC, (248) 594-6522.

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I can't do something," reveals the
director, who guided The Secret
Garden productions on Broadway and
then on tour with former Detroiter
Douglas Sills. Sills currently appears in
the Broadway production of The
Scarlet Pimpernel.
"I was told all the time that I could-
n't [direct] by well-meaning people
who didn't want me to be heartbroken.
They felt I could never make a living
from theater, and for a long time, they
were right. I only started making a liv-
ing when my first Broadway show,
Sweeney Todd, opened in 1990. I had
been directing all around the country
but made so little money."
Schulman credits some of her suc-
cess to having the feistiness of a
native New Yorker. She also credits
the encouragement of her father, a
Jewish immigrant who maintained
that America held the golden
promise that let people realize their
brightest dreams.
"The thing I didn't anticipate was
how people treated Sweeney Todd after
they realized that a woman had direct-
ed it," recalls Schulman, who was
nominated for a Tony Award as Best
Director. Her later play Violet won the
Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding
Musical and the New York Drama
Critics Circle Award for Best Musical.
"I was shocked that [my being a
woman] seemed to be the bite and
hook of every article, even the reviews.
That was only 10 years ago, but things
have changed remarkably.
When Schulman agreed to direct
Sunset Boulevard, she took on a daunt-
ing task. An earlier tour had to be
stopped in its tracks because the sets
were too cumbersome to move.
"I wanted to set the play inside a
metaphor that would enlighten the
audience about Norma's mind, and
that's why we set it inside a movie
sound stage," Schulman explains about
the production scheduled for 47 cities.
"Everything that happens gets cre-
ated inside that sound stage, where
reality and fantasy get all mixed up,
which is clearly what's going on in

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Norma's mind as well. It also allows
for a seamlessness and movement
that's very cinematic."
While the subject of the show can be
very heavy, the play lightens up with
fun music that recalls the '50s, a con-
trast to the high-emotion songs per-
formed by Clark, whose rock recordings
hit pop charts in America as well as her
homeland of England in the '60s.
"I think Petula brings a kind of
warmth and sassiness to Norma,"
Schulman says. "She was a child movie
star and went through [some of what
Norma went through] before becom-
ing a pop singer, and she has a very
quixotic sense of humor. She can turn
on a dime, and it shows what a facile
movie actress she must have been.
"Lewis Cleale, [who plays the
young screenwriter and Norma's
romantic interest], said to me, 'I have
no trouble falling in love with her.
Apart from the fact that I find her
very sexy, she's so entertaining."'
Schulman, busy preparing Richard
Chamberlain to become the male lead
in Broadway's The Sound of Music and
taking on the new play Time and Again
set for Broadway in 1999, relaxes at her
home on a lake, where she reads —
and is beginning to write — novels.
"I want to do plays that are true to
me and courageous," the single
Schulman says. "I direct because I feel
strongly that I'm telling the story that
was created.
"It gives me great pleasure when
someone like Stephen Sondheim or
Andrew Lloyd Webber says, 'This is
what I had in mind or never realized.'
It gives me great pleasure to sit at the
back of a house and watch an audience
respond to something I've directed." ❑

Sunset Boulevard will be per-
formed at the Detroit Opera
House 8 p.m. Tuesdays-
Saturdays, 7:30 p.m. Sundays and
2 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays, March
2-21. $32.50-$65. For informa-
tion, call (313) 872-1000.

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Detroit Jewish News

1999

89