arts & entertainment Looking For Sunnier Skies JET's The Model Apartment tells of a retired Jewish couple who left their difficult life in Brooklyn for a Florida condo. Suzanne Chessler Contributing Writer M ichigan has been on the mind of playwright Donald Margulies. One of his edgier plays, The Model Apartment, soon will be staged by Jewish Ensemble Theatre. His adaptation of the novel Middlesex, which is set in Detroit, will be a miniseries on HBO. The Model Apartment, running May 11 June 5 at the Jewish Community Center in West Bloomfield, introduces Holocaust survivors seeking escape from family distur- bances. Middlesex recounts the experiences of a hermaphrodite, or person born with both male and female sexual organs, con- fronting sexual identity. "I wrote The Model Apartment when I was a younger man, and I take a certain pleasure in revisiting work that I wrote when I was younger," says Margulies, 56, who teaches playwriting at Yale University. "The idea came out of an association with my closest friend at a time when his parents were contemplating retiring from their lives in Brooklyn and transplanting themselves to Florida. "They were survivors, and I was struck by the juxtaposition of where they were 40 years earlier and where they were ending up. I thought there was something very power- ful, absurd and poignant in imagining that juxtaposition, which became the impetus for the play' Appearing in the JET production, directed - by Lavinia Hart, will be Trudy Mason (Lola), Tom Mahard (Max), Laurel Hufano (Debby), Chris Jakob (Neil) and Christina Flynn (Deborah). Margulies, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his play Dinner With _Friends, had a JET reading of The Model Apartment more than 20 years ago. JET also has staged his Sight Unseen and Brooklyn Boy. "I didn't attend the staged reading so I'm especially grateful that JET remembered the play and returned to it with this full produc- tion," he says. "The reading gave me confi- dence that the play speaks to people." Margulies defines almost all of his work as dealing with the relationship between the world and domestic life. That particularly comes across in his latest work for Broadway, Time Stands Still, which is about war cor- respondents trying to resettle in their loft apartment in Brooklyn. Margulies, raised in a secular Jewish household in Brooklyn, is a baby boomer whose sensitivity was shaped by the Depression and Holocaust. "I think I bring Judaism into my plays because it was so much a part of the cultural fabric of my upbringing:' he says. Margulies, who began his career as a visual artist, had no formal theater training. While studying art at Purchase College in New York, he started writing plays. "Theater was something I had always been exposed to because of my parents' interest in taking me and my brother to Broadway shows',' he says. "I was fascinated by the form of the play and was pretty much Aha! Moments Female authors open up about life-changing statements by men. Suzanne Chessler Contributing Writer B onnie Garvin, a graduate of Southfield High School and Wayne State University, has built a film career scripting dramatic true stories for cable networks. Black Widower, for instance, reveals the work of a prosecutor investigating an auto executive charged with murder. The Killing Yard spotlights the Attica prison riot and subsequent court proceedings. When the Vow Breaks exposes a judge with a double life. One true story Garvin has not been able to bring to the screen is explained in a new anthology, He Said What? Women Write About Moments When Everything Changed 50 M a 5 2011 (Seal Press; $16.95). She teams with 24 suc- cessful female writers to recall the effects of eye- opening statements made by men. While Garvin is linked with the group of essayists who stick to career as sub- ject, others delve into family issues, romance, reactions to Bonnie Garvin illness — the kinds of situa- tions often remembered as women hold the center of attention on Mother's Day. Some essays are humorous; many are not. There are instances when Jewish upbringing and family enter into the narrative. "We can't tell anybody about that" were self taught." Although supporting himself for a short time as a graphic designer and art editor at Scholastic magazine, Margulies found his writing momentum working with Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara on a program for HBO. "I say they made a mentsh out of me',' Margulies says. Margulies, who has had his works pro- duced since 1982, thinks of The Model Apartment as having an interesting history as a dark comedy. "I wrote it in 1984, and it was optioned by Joseph Papp for the first couple of years of its life,' he recalls. "Then, Joe didn't produce it. "Its world premiere was in Los Angeles in 1988, but it wasn't produced in New York until 1995. I won the Obie Award for best (Off Broadway) play for a play I had written 10 years earlier." Margulies currently is working on two commissions — one for the Manhattan Theatre Club in New York and another for the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. "I think The Model Apartment ultimately is about parents and children',' Margulies says. "Its about legacy and the hopes, dreams and expectations parents instill in their chil- dren no matter what their circumstances. "In the play, the stakes are very high because both parents are survivors and their daughter is mentally ill. "The play operates almost in a world of magical realism. Things happen in the play that don't happen in life. I don't dwell on the clinical aspect of mental illness because I the disappointing words — now essay title — Garvin, now 62, heard when she pitched a film idea early in her career. She had wanted to develop characters contrasting dire conditions in the garment industry with the pricey ambience of fashion houses. Young and optimistic about oppor- tunities then, Garvin, who now teaches screenwriting at USC, had thought circumstances were on her side. Her expenses for a trip to Hollywood were paid to discuss her film proposal. The television executive she was to see had been a priest. "It became the fantasy of what was in my head against the reality of what is," Garvin explains of her time before settling into Cal ifornia."It was emblematic of what the business is and what was to come." Garvin appreciated being asked to do the essay by Victoria Zackheim, another California writer who also has edited three earlier anthologies about women. "I thought Donald Margulies: "I think The Model Apartment ultimately is about parents and children." In The Model Apartment, Trudy Mason (Lola) and Tom Mahard (Max) play Holocaust survivors, and Laurel Hufano (Debby) portrays their mentally ill daughter. don't wish for the play to be viewed as any kind of documentary portrayal:' 1 JET presents a production of The Model Apartment May 11-June 5 at the Jewish Community Center in West Bloomfield. Performances are 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 5 and 8:30 p.m. Saturdays and 2 and 6:30 p.m. Sundays as well as 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 11, and 2 p.m. Wednesday, June 1. $32-$41 with stu- dent and senior discounts. (248) 788- 2900; www.jettheatre.org . the writers' range of experience was very interesting, with most writing about their own evolution',' Garvin says. "I loved that you could feel the growth of people. There's wis- dom in all of them. "There were some very different women from the ones I knew growing up. When I was going to Southfield High, I was a late bloomer. They seemed like early bloomers." Among those early bloomers were Joyce Maynard, remembering her rejection at age 19 by author J.D. Salinger after she set aside her own career dreams to live with him, and Amy Ferris, explaining her teenage move to a commune and how bad times led to the good ones. "There's a huge cross-section of the kinds of messages women receive from men over a lifetime, and that's one of the things I really love about the book:' says Zackheim, 66. "I also love the fact that men were not necessarily put in a bad light. I wanted men to be seen coming from their own places of concerns, fears and insecurities. Ultimately, I think it's a fair look at the male species."