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FOOD FOR THOUGHT from page 61

The cast of "Dinner
With Friends":
Left to right,
Michelle Mountain,
Phil Powers, Barbara
Coven and John Lepard.

Lost Love

SUZANNE CHESSLER

Special to the Jewish News

B

Margulies believes losing his mother and father
while still in his 20s gave him a certain fearlessness
as a writer.
"There is something liberating," he says, "in not
feeling you have to earn the approval of your par-
ents." He continued to churn out plays haunted by
Brooklyn and by "the legacy that parents inflict
upon their children."
In Found a Peanut,
adult actors portray
New York kids circa
1962 (Margulies'
Burmese is named after
Little Earl, the charac-
ter who is "always in
your face"). The Model
Apartment is "a sort of
Frankenstein story"
about two Holocaust
survivors and their
obese, schizophrenic
daughter
Nevertheless, success was so elusive for Margulies
that he considered leaving the theater altogether
after toiling for a decade to establish himself as a
playwright.
He even moved alone to L.A. for a time, leaving
his wife back East while he tried his hand as a super-
vising producer on a TV series. "I hated it," he
recalls. "I quit after six days. I just thought I was
having a breakdown."
Then came Sight Unseen, Margulies' black comedy
about a painter, catapulted to super-fame, who
struggles with his identity as an artist and a Jew.

.

Naomi Pfefferman is entertainment editor at the
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles.

8/31
2001

84

The 1991 piece put the artist at a crossroads: "I'd
put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into the American
theater, and I thought, 'This is the best I can do,'"
he recalls. "If people didn't like the play, I was going
to have to [quit]."
Fortunately, life imitated art, and Margulies' saga
of a famous artist thrust him into the limelight.
The Pulitzer, he reflects,
came at just the right
Playwright
time in his career.
Donald
"If I had won before I
Mar g ulies• •
had
a body of work, it
"Couples
might have disabled
I had thought
me," admits Margulies,
were constant
who has penned screen-
were suddenly
plays for Robin Williams
combusting."
and Spike Lee and
whose recent piece, God
of Vengeance, is an adap-
tation of the 1906 play
by Yiddish writer
Sholem Asch. "I've seen it derail people, because it
brings with it a whole new set of expectations."
Margulies believes the Pulitzer acknowledges not
just Dinner With Friends but his entire body of work.
"It's an awesome club to be a member of," he says. ❑

Dinner With Friends runs Sept. 5-Dec. 31 at
the Gem Theatre, 333 Madison Ave., Detroit.
Showtimes are 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays, 6
and 9 p.m. Saturdays and 2 and 6 p.m.
Sundays. Beginning Sept. 19, there will be an
additional 2 p.m. show on Wednesdays.
$27.50-$37.50. Opening week tickets are half
price. (313) 963-9800.

arbara Coven has led lots of physical
workouts for Jewish Community Center

members, but in the coming months, she
hopes to lead at least some of them through
emotional workouts.
Coven, a former JCC aerobics and gymnast
instructor, will be appearing Sept. 5-Dec. 31 at
the Gem Theatre in Detroit as an about-to-be
divorcee in Donald Margulies' Pulitzer Prize-
winning play, Dinner With Friends.
"Life has prepared me for this role," says
Coven, 39, who was cast as a lesbian caterer in the
Jewish Ensemble Theatre's production of Falsettos.
"I went through a divorce and have remarried. I
play Beth, and this
role is extremely
emotional.
'Although, at
times, characters can
seem casual, the
playwright is explor-
ing the casualties of
divorce. The comic
relief comes through
the couple por-
trayed as gourmets
and seemingly dom-
inated by food."
Barbara Coven: "Life has
While Coven,
prepared me for this role."
married to actor
Paul Hopper, has
internalized her character in a very personal way,
she also looks at the issues from a wider point of
view and is impressed with the universal impact
of the themes.
The playwright talks to so many of us," says
Coven, who is not Jewish. 'People who haven't
gone through divorce have witnessed it and it's
amazing how we're all affected by it. The subject
is not overly dramatized in the play; its very real.
I love the playwright's language and believe it's
the way we all hope we sound."
Coven, who studied acting at the Los Angeles
Theatre Academy, enters the production off a
run of Jeff Daniels' The Tropical Pickle, which is
just closing at the Gem. She has appeared on
many area stages, including those at Meadow
Brook Theatre, the Purple Rose, the
Performance Network and the Strand.
In Dinner With Friends, she appreciates the
opportunity to explore relationships and the per-
sonalities beneath public surfaces. At the time of
divorce, whether in reality or on stage, there are
new discoveries about people who seem very
close and known, she explains.
"This play is not about people feeling sorry for
themselves," says the actress, who can recall the
issues raised in the drama through her own expe-
riences. "It's about people living with change and
trying to adjust to that." 0