Arts & Entertainment
Motivated By Music
Playwright Jon Marans' Old Wicked Songs opens JET's 2007-2008 season.
Suzanne Chessler
Special to the Jewish News
0
Id Wicked Songs can't be called a
musical, but music punctuates
the plot.
The play, opening the 2007-2008 season
of the Jewish Ensemble Theatre, introduc-
es a young piano accompanist studying
with an elderly vocal coach and ultimately
breaks through to their emotional centers
and identity with Judaism.
Playwright Jon Marans sets his two-
character drama, a 1996 Pulitzer Prize
finalist, in Vienna, where he had studied.
Excerpts from Schumann's song cycle
Dichterliebe move the structural transi-
tions.
The drama, directed by JET artistic
director Evelyn Orbach, runs Oct. 9-Nov.
4 at the West Bloomfield JCC with two
Michigan-bred performers in the cast.
Max Wright, who had a starring role in
the TV series ALF, portrays the professor,
while Daniel Kahn, a singer-songwriter-
actor now touring Europe, takes the part
of the student.
"The characters are larger than life, very
idiosyncratic and non-sentimental: says
Marans, who also has written for film and
TV.
"There's a toughness and an oddness
to each of them as they try to hide so
much of who they really are. That's why
the music often tells what's really going on
beneath the surface.
"When I studied in Vienna and was 21
at the time, I fell in love with the city but
slowly began to see the darker side. The
anti-Semitism completely surprised me in
a blatant way, but I didn't speak up about
it as much as I should have. That's prob-
ably why I wrote Old Wicked Songs."
Marans — who describes himself as
spiritually and culturally Jewish but not
very observant — fills his scripts with
characters that represent very different
outlooks toward Judaism.
An Orthodox family is the focus of A
Strange and Separate People, scheduled for
staging at Connecticut's Westport County
Playhouse in 2008. Parents, raising an
autistic child, confront unexpected issues
after meeting a newly Orthodox man
in a story told through the traditions of
Judaism.
"I probably write about Jewish char-
acters because I like their strength:' says
46
September 20 2007
Jon Marans: His Old Wicked Songs was a
1996 Pulitzer Prize finalist.
Marans, 40ish and single. "They under-
stand the need to speak up. I also think
that Judaism brings a complexity to these
characters that I latch on to, understand
and find absolutely fascinating."
While there are no other playwrights
in Marans' family, there are writers. His
grandfather self-published a book about
the Jews of Washington, D.C. His father,
Nelson Marans, a retired organic chemist,
has been the subject of articles based on his
angry letters sent to many publications.
"I always knew I wanted to be a play-
wright, but I didn't think it made a lot of
Season
Synopsis
A preview of
what's to come.
After inaugurating its 2007-2008
season with a two-person drama
supported by music, JET's schedule
moves into an all-out musical: They're
Playing Our Song.
The show, which runs Nov. 27-Dec.
31, takes its story from the short-term
relationship of lyricist Carole Bayer
Sager and composer Marvin Hamlisch.
The book is by Neil Simon.
"We just started presenting musi-
cals in the last couple of years, and we
thought this would be fun to do," says
sense to just get a theater degree because
I was doing theater anyway: explains the
playwright, who focused on math and
music at Duke University.
"Ironically, the music has been
extremely helpful in my writing, and the
math entered into the book and lyrics I
wrote for The Irrationals, which is about a
geometry teacher and was first seen at the
Village Theatre in Seattle!"
After graduating from Duke, Marans
moved to New York City, entered the BMI
Musical Theater Workshop and tackled
scripts in between odd jobs taken just to
earn a living.
Marans' first breakthrough employment
came at Stonebridge, Michael Douglas'
production company. The emerging writer
moved up from reader to story editor and
was asked to write a screenplay, which has
yet to be produced.
He went on to earn some television
credits, as a staff writer for a later version
of the Carol Burnett Show on CBS and
for Cookin' in Brooklyn for the Discovery
Channel.
Marans currently is working on a
screenplay with writing partner Yuri
Sivo for Universal Pictures and Tribeca
Productions. The script, based on the
book Chasing the Dragon by Roy Rowan,
tells about a journalist's search for truth
during the 1940s civil war between the
Evelyn Orbach, JET artistic director.
"It's very different from our first
play, Old Wicked Songs, which is
fascinating as it explores personal
secrets. The suggestion for the season
opener came from the actor playing
the coach, Max Wright, who grew up in
Detroit."
From musical comedy to outright
comedy is the next transition in the
JET lineup. The world premiere of
Saying Kaddish With My Sister, by
Allison Luterman, will be presented
Jan. 22-Feb. 17.
The play was chosen because of the
enthusiastic reaction to a staged read-
ing last year. Directed by Christopher
Bremer, the theater piece is about car-
ing mothers and sibling rivalry.
"This new play has all the elements
of surprise," Orbach says. "There's
underlying wisdom in the humor."
The fourth production, staged
Nationalists and Communists in China.
Simultaneously, he has begun a theater
project capturing the issues faced by
Harry Hay, who formed the first political
gay organization in the U.S. in the early
1950s. The Jewish connection has to
do with Hay's association with clothing
designer and gay activist Rudi Gernreich,
a Viennese Jew whose family was killed in
Auschwitz.
Marans clearly is starting to see a pat-
tern in his writing and understands why
he chose to give his attention to scripts
rather than books.
"I tend to write about different worlds',' he
explains. In Old Wicked Songs, it is the world
of musicians and what their life is like.
"I'm especially drawn to the physicality
and action of the stage. I believe there's an
immediacy that people understand!" I 1
Old Wicked Songs runs Oct. 9-Nov.
4 at the Jewish Ensemble Theatre
in the Jewish Community Center,
West Bloomfield. Performances are
at 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Thursdays,
5 and 8:30 p.m. Saturdays and 2
p.m. Sundays. There is a 7:30 p.m.
performance on Oct. 9 and a 2 p.m.
performance on Oct. 31. $25-$39.
(248) 788-2900.
March 18-April 13, will be accompanied
by community outreach programs.
Women's Minyan, written by Naomi
Ragen after being commissioned
by the National Theatre of Israel,
explores domestic abuse.
"Our theater's mission statement
compels us to find plays with great
social value, and Women's Minyan
falls right into that category," Orbach
explains. "It's based on a true story,
and we are working with area orga-
nizations to get out the message in
many ways."
(Ragen will appear at this year's
Jewish Book Fair in conjunction with
her novel Saturday's Wife.)
Leave them laughing is the philoso-
phy behind choosing the final produc-
tion, OW, written by Richard Orloff
and running April 29-May 25. A series
of vignettes zeroes in on human
foibles.