arts & life
theater
Love, Comedy And
Misunderstandings
Suzanne Chessler | Contributing Writer
Handle with Care, to
be staged at JET,
was inspired by
the playwright’s
Israeli wife.
A
real-world romance
sparked the idea for a
theater-world romantic
comedy being performed on stages
across the country.
Jason Odell Williams, an
actor and playwright raised in
a Christian household, wanted
to develop his first play with an
impressive role for his Israel-
raised wife, actress and producer
Charlotte Cohn, and he looked to
her for ideas.
After she suggested misunder-
standings as the basis for a plot, he
It runs Dec. 1-24 at the Jewish
Community Center and features
Annie Keris (Ayelet), Michael
Lopetrone (Josh), Henrietta
Hermelin Weinberg (Edna) and
Dan Johnson (Terrence) under the
direction of Robert Grossman.
“I write plays ultimately to enter-
tain, whether it is to make audi-
ences laugh or cry or think or do
whatever else it takes to have them
feel something,” says Williams, 41,
during a phone conversation from
his Manhattan home.
“I set out to make this play a
Jason Odell Williams
details
Handle with Care runs Dec. 1-24,
at the Jewish Ensemble Theatre at
the Jewish Community Center in
West Bloomfield. $16-$44. (248)
788-2900; jettheatre.org.
came up with Handle with Care,
ultimately a love story between an
Israeli Jew and an American Jew.
It unfolds on an otherwise quiet
Christmas eve, when a largely
Hebrew-speaking woman con-
fronts an American-lingo delivery
man as they try to locate what she
considers a sacred responsibility
lost in transit. The language barrier
helps drive the comedic misunder-
standings.
The Jewish Ensemble Theatre
(JET) is among four stage compa-
nies presenting the play this season.
sweet antidote to other Christmas
plays always being seen. My wife
actually had an experience waking
up one Christmas morning in New
York and not understanding why
everything was closed. Practically,
it made sense to set the story on
Christmas eve, and it went from
there.”
The theater couple, who happily
collaborate on many projects, met
as graduate students at the Actors
Studio Drama School in New York.
They had classes together before
finding themselves in the same
summer play.
“Over the course of the first
year, we ended up being friends,”
Williams traces the start of the
romance. “She tells a story about
hating me the first year, thinking
I was full of myself. Really, I was
just shy, and it takes a while for me
to come out of my shell; then, I’m
outgoing and gregarious.
“We hit it off and started dat-
ing after the summer play and
then worked together in shows at
school. We got engaged at the end
of the second year and got married
at the end of graduate school. I did
not convert, but our daughter goes
to Hebrew school.”
Williams was attending fourth
grade in Maryland when he had
his first theater experience cast as
the Scarecrow in a school produc-
tion of The Wizard of Oz.
“I got my first laugh and thought
that was really cool,” he says.
“From then, I was hooked.”
After appearing in school pro-
ductions every year, he became a
drama major at the University of
Virginia and moved to New York
in 1996 to pursue acting.
“I flicked the switch [to playwrit-
ing] in 2008,” he recalls. “I decided
I belonged on the writing side after
working on a scene here and there.
Coming through the acting track
has been beneficial in knowing
what it’s like to perform dialogue.
Hopefully, I can craft stories and
dialogue in ways that I would want
to perform.
“My plays have one thing in
common, which is comedy and
drama in all of them. Handle with
Care was the most heartfelt in
some ways; it was the sweetest and
least cynical. That was my aim
because there were lots of cynical
plays in New York at the time.
“I wanted to do the opposite
with [a script that’s] very earnest,
honest, charming and funny. The
next few plays are more cynical
and reflecting the times that we’re
in right now.”
With a full-time job in unscript-
ed television, Williams writes
plays in spurts as he finds time.
Employed by Lucky 8 as a story
producer, he has worked on 60
Days In and Behind Bars: Rookie
Year, both broadcast on the A&E
network. A developing show
explores underground mysteries,
such as a ship that went down in
Lake Michigan and the tunnel Al
Capone used to escape authorities.
“I write plays really fast,” says
Williams, whose script credits
include Baltimore in Black and
White (a comedy about race),
Someone Else (a comedy about
marriage) and Church & State (a
comedy-drama about politics, guns
and religion in America).
“I don’t ever sit down for more
than an hour at a time, but I’m
thinking about what I’m writing
all the time. I show stuff to my
wife, and she gives me great feed-
back. She wrote all the Hebrew
for Handle with Care after I wrote
[those segments] in English.
“She directed Baltimore in Black
and White, and because we were
changing things in rehearsal, she
collaborated on that. As the lead
character in Someone Else, she
crafted a lot of her character’s dia-
logue, and we became co-authors
on that play.”
While Williams wrote the young
adult novel Personal Statement, his
wife collaborated on the screen-
play.
As the couple prepares for the
spring production of Church &
State in New York with Cohn as
producer, Williams recalls how
Handle with Care came to be
staged in Michigan.
“The second production of
this play was done in Florida,” he
says. “They had a talkback after-
ward, and a woman stood up to
say that she was from Michigan
and I ought to write to JET to do
the play. She emailed the theater
information, and I reached out
to the company. It was because of
that audience member that the
play is at JET.”
*
November 24 • 2016
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