arts & life

PHOTO BY ALYSE PRINCE

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Left to right: Henrietta Hermelin Weinberg, Christopher Bremer and Kitty Dubin

The Curtain Rises

The new JET season
opens with its annual
Fall Gala and honors
a local legend.

details

The JET Fall Gala begins with
hors d’oeuvres and dinner at
6 p.m. Monday, Sept. 26, at
the Glen Oaks Country Club in
Farmington Hills. $150.
(248) 788-2900; jettheatre.org.

42 September 15 • 2016

Suzanne Chessler | Contributing Writer

F

ive new laptop computers click
away in the offices of the Jewish
Ensemble Theatre (JET), enhanc-
ing administrative efficiency for an artistic
team getting ready for the 2016-2017 sea-
son — its 28th.
Times are moving quickly for the stage
company returning to a full schedule of
mainstage productions, planning for an
extension of programming offered to
schools and celebrating a longtime per-
former who also has participated behind
the scenes.
JET cut back on productions last sea-
son to strengthen finances and upgrade
resources in preparation for contemporary
shows that ultimately express a range of
sentiments shared by generations.
“While we cut back on our mainstage
schedule, we extended our programs for
young people, and that has helped us
start the season on solid footing,” explains
Christopher Bremer, artistic director.
“We presented The Diary of Anne Frank
to 3,700 students last season as compared
to 2,200 the season before, and we had
51 performances of outreach shows last

season as compared to 22 in the previous
season.
“I give so much credit to Jim August
and the rest of our board of directors, who
led us through our year of regrouping and
refocusing on our mission of bringing
wonderful experiences to our patrons. The
students who saw our shows experienced
an art form and learned lessons about how
to treat each other.”
Bremer is pleased to open the season
with a new play, Rights of Passage, by Kitty
Dubin, the JET playwright-in-residence
who has watched sellout audiences enter
into the introduction of six other scripts.
“This production is really a group of
one-act plays, equal parts comedy and
drama and each revolving around a Jewish
rite of passage — from a bris to a shivah,”
says Dubin, pointing out that the themes
of each segment have more to do with
universal conflicts rather than the rites
themselves.
“There are five different rites of passage
with six actors playing multiple roles, and
the characters are different in each play.
There are no bad guys or good guys. They

are all people striving to do their best but
getting into some kind of conflict because
of a rite of passage, which is very com-
mon.”
Dubin, entering her 20th year of teach-
ing playwriting at Oakland University,
started this project after writing two
separate short plays — one about celebrat-
ing birth and the other about making
condolence calls. She then had the idea
to expand those with a piece that encom-
passed more of life’s defining moments.
“The production reflects a deepening
of my experiences over the past seven
years and an awareness of situations and
people,” says Dubin, a former psychologi-
cal therapist. “People are usually trying to
do their best, but sometimes, in order to
do their best, they’re forced to change the
ways they’ve been handling things their
whole lives.”
Rights of Passage is being directed
by Tony Caselli, artistic director of the
Williamston Theatre, and features Sandra
Birch, Fred Buchalter, Brian Michael
Ogden, Meredith Deighton, Julia Glander
and Jamie Warrow. “We’re going to have a