Arts & Entertainment

A 'Moving' Memoir

Playwright Brooke Berman, a Michigan native,
pens an entertaining book about self-discovery.

Suzanne Chessler

Special to the Jewish News

B

rooke Berman is moving again.
That will be no surprise
to readers of her first book,
No Place Like Home: A Memoir in 39
Apartments (Harmony Books; $23),
released this month.
Berman, who spent nearly the first
decade of her life in Michigan, reveals
her personal struggles managing day-
to-day obligations while striving for
artistic achievement.
The author, 41, an emerging play-
wright and screenwriter recently relo-
cated from New York to Los Angeles,
already can look back on stage mile-
stones that have taken her work across
the country and into England, often
with the theme of finding home.
The recipient of a commissioning
grant from the National Foundation for
Jewish Culture, she has won a Berilla
Kerr Award, Helen Merrill Award and
Francesca Primus awards for her talent
as a playwright.
Hunting and Gathering, which pre-
miered on Primary Stages in New York
and was named one of the 10 Best of
2008 by New York magazine, starred
Mamie Gummer, daughter of megastar
Meryl Streep, and Keira Naughton,
daughter of stage and TV actor James
Naughton.
"After spending 20 years as a play-
wright, it's so exciting to create some-
thing that has a physical life," says
Berman, whose autobiography has been
chosen one of 10 recommended for
summer reading by Elle magazine.
"A play is an ephemeral experience.
People go to the theater to see a play for
the time that it runs, and then the play
goes away. It's amazing for me to hold
this book in my hand, to have made an
object."
The author puts out the welcome
mat for readers as they learn about
her diverse spaces, the work she did
within them and her relationships to
roommates. While most quarters were
cramped, there was one luxurious loft
held by the family of a rich friend.
"I felt that it was important that the

"I think something
amazing happened
telling myself
the story of
my own life."

- Brooke Berman

a Went oi.t in 39 apizAint.ents

focus of the book was what I learned in
each apartment, why I moved and how
the pieces fit together," says Berman,
even open about the effects of a brutal
rape in one of those places.
"I think something amazing hap-
pened telling myself the story of my
own life. I started to experience the
sense of coherency in events that
felt episodic or chaotic at the time. It
seemed clear to me that there always
was an inner direction unfolding and
integrity in my journey."
While most of the names were
changed, along with identifying details,
another person revealed without res-
ervation is Berman's mom, the late
Marilyn Berman, who established a
public relations business in Michigan as
the author went through her early years.
The book tells about their difficulties
at times when serious illness had moth-
er trying to lean on daughter. It also
delves into unhappy times with Marilyn
Berman's second husband in Chicago.
"After a very complicated and lov-
ing but difficult relationship with my
mom, we came to a good place with
each other," says the writer, who lived
in Huntington Woods and returns to
Southfield for visits with her maternal
grandmother, Ida Lucas. "I don't think
I'm doing anything that she wouldn't
have approved.
"In the 1970s, my mom had a lot of

fashion clients, such as Hattie Belkin
and Linda Dresner, and I was so proud
of her. I remember when she would pick
me up from school and drive me around
to all her clients. I think those were the
happiest years of her life.
"Writing the book — and growing up
— gave me a lot of compassion for my
mother?'
Berman, who always enjoyed writ-
ing, won her first literary prize while
attending McIntyre Elementary School
in Lathrup Village. She started keeping
journals when she was 16 and has main-
tained the practice.
Trying to become a New York actress
when she was 20, Berman performed
her own monologues in small clubs,
calling attention to pieces she had devel-
oped while studying at Barnard College.
"Around that period, a 10-minute play
I had written was produced by a pro-
fessional company, Naked Angels, and
I realized that playwriting could be a
viable path for me," she explains.
"I became involved with a handful of
small theater companies and entered a
graduate program in playwriting at the
Juilliard School [in New York] when I
was 28.
"I joined the writers' groups of the
theaters I admired, such as the Rising
Phoenix Repertory and Primary Stages,
did readings and workshops, went to

development colonies and festivals and
sent my work out:'
The book developed out of a request
from a theater company for 10-minute
plays about home. Berman decided to
make a list of all the places she had
stayed and tell funny stories about
them.
That short developed into Hunting
and Gathering, the subject of an article
in the New York Times. A Random House
editor saw the play and the article and
suggested the book.
Berman, who just finished the play
My New Best Friend, also has completed
two screenplays, one of her own design
and another for a company requesting
an adaptation. She is spending June pro-
moting her book, which has an excerpt
on her website, www.brookeberman.net .
With fiance Gordon Haber, a writer
for the Forward teaching at the
American Jewish University in L.A.,
Berman targets July for establishing
residence in a two-bedroom apartment,
another temporary space as they hope
to return East.
"While living in Los Angeles, I meet
writers from Michigan," says Berman,
who attended services at Temple Beth
El in Michigan. "I keep waiting for the
day when I can meet Bruce Rubin, who
wrote Ghost. My mom went to the junior
prom with him, and I have a picture of
them together?'

❑

June 10 2010

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