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.