this week in literature

BLIND JUSTICE: RUNNING FOR LIBERATION AT ST. ANN’S

A woman (Ainaz Azarhoush) and her husband (Mohammad Reza Hosseinzadeh) contemplate freedom in Blind Runner (photo by Amir Hamja)

BLIND RUNNER
St. Ann’s Warehouse
45 Water St.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 24, $49-$69
stannswarehouse.org
utrfest.org

In September 2022, Iranian journalist Niloofar Hamedi was incarcerated for reporting on the controversial death of Mahsa Amini, a twenty-two-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman who died in a hospital shortly after being arrested for not wearing a hijab; the case was followed around the world. While in prison, Hamedi began running while her husband, Mohamad Hosein Ajoroloo, ran outside the building, preparing for a marathon. In June 2023, he told the New York Times, “Niloofar believes that enduring prison is like training for a marathon. Daily suffering. But imagining the joy of the finish line cancels out all the pain.”

That story, and others involving political imprisonments, served as inspiration for Iranian writer-director Amir Reza Koohestani’s haunting Blind Runner, continuing at St. Ann’s Warehouse through January 24 as part of the Under the Radar festival.

Éric Soyer’s set is a deep, dark area with two long, horizontal lines of light. At either side is a small camera, the projections of which appear on the large screen in back. The sublime video design is by Yasi Moradi and Benjamin Krieg, with stark lighting by Soyer, tense music by Phillip Hohenwarter and Matthias Peyker, and contemporary costumes by Negar Nobakht Foghani.

As the audience enters the space, actors Ainaz Azarhoush and Mohammad Reza Hosseinzadeh are already onstage, standing in concerned poses. Soon they each approach stanchions on opposite sides where they alternately write and erase such morphing phrases as “Based on a true story,” “Based on an actual story,” “Based on true history,” “Based on an actual history,” “Based on a factual history,” “Based on fiction history,” “Fact,” and “Fiction” before the husband concludes, “This is a theater.” Thus, we are instantly reminded that while what we are about to experience is artifice, it has been born out of fact, but whose facts? The playwright’s? The Iranian government’s? Ours in New York City, in America?

At first, the husband visits the wife once a week and they talk every day on the phone; in between their meetings, they run across the stage, each in a different strip of light, moving in opposing directions that signal the growing gap between them. She points out to him that everything they are saying and doing is being closely watched and recorded, like they are trapped in a spiderweb. While he values the visits and phone calls, she is becoming tired of them, as she has to carefully parse her words so as not to get him — or her — in trouble. This lack of communication frustrates him, since he wants to know the truth about how she is being treated and is adamant that he will get her released. “False hopes are worse than despair,” she admonishes.

Running is at the center of Amir Reza Koohestani’s Blind Runner at St. Ann’s Warehouse (photo by Amir Hamja)

He asks her, “Why don’t you just give me a ring to say that you’re fine?” She quickly answers, “Why should I lie?”

At her request, he meets with a blind marathoner named Parissa (Azarhoush) who lost her sight during a political protest and wants him to be her guide runner for an upcoming competition in Paris. He is apprehensive about it, but his wife thinks it is a good opportunity. “It’s not just running,” he explains. “It’s a matter of rhythm. You need to be in sync together.”

It’s clear he is not just talking about his potential professional relationship with Parissa, especially when his wife is not worried that he his traveling to Europe with another woman as the contentious Illegal Migration Bill is about to be passed in England.

Presented by the Mehr Theatre Group in Persian with English supertitles, the sixty-minute Blind Runner is a bleak, mysterious, and deeply involving play about the physical, psychological, and emotional choices we make as individuals and as a society and the consequences that result. Justice around the world can be blind, but the answer is not running away, or remaining silent, even as the risks grow and private and public freedom is jeopardized.

Koohestani himself started running after the Green Movement in Iran was suppressed, an activity he considered “an alternative to the demonstrations that were no longer being held and the freedom that had left us again for the umpteenth time,” he writes in a program note. His hypnotic play, also inspired by the case of imprisoned student activist Zia Nabavi, captures that feeling, with its hard-hitting dialogue and striking visuals that zoom in on the characters’ faces and merge their bodies when they are running, leading to a powerful conclusion. It is sometimes difficult to know where to look — at the two actors, at their projections on the screen, or at the supertitles above — but Azarhoush and Hosseinzadeh deliver beautifully human performances that ground the narrative.

In conjunction with Blind Runner, St. Ann’s is hosting the exhibition “Unseen Iran: A Celebration of Iranian Art & Culture,” featuring works by Tahmineh Monzavi (street photography), Shirin Neshat (the Villains triptych and Divine Rebellion related to the Arab Spring riots), Bahar Behbahani (Warp and Woof from her “Through a Wave, Darkly” series ), and Safarani Sisters (the video painting Awake) in addition to a Persian Tea Room where you can sip tea and relax before the show.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

MORGAN LIBRARY GOES KAFKAESQUE FOR FRANZ CENTENNIAL

Andy Warhol, Portrait of Franz Kafka, silkscreen print, 1980 (courtesy of Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York © the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York)

FRANZ KAFKA: PROGRAMS
Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Ave. at 36th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 13, $13-$25
www.themorgan.org

There are not a lot of authors whose name has been acknowledged as a legitimate adjective in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, and even fewer of those adjectives have been used as the name of a musical. In fact, the only one might be Kafkaesque, which is used for anything that relates to Czech-born German-language writer Franz Kafka and has “a nightmarishly complex, bizarre, or illogical quality.”

Last fall, James Harvey’s musical comedy Kafkaesque! opened off-off-Broadway at Theatre 154 in the West Village, about one American family experiencing predicaments inspired by Kafka’s writings. The first song gets right to the point when Kafka sings, “By age forty I was dead / never had kids and I never wed / the words I wrote were hardly read / but now I’m an adjective.”

Kafka and his work have grown in stature since his passing in June 1924 at the age of forty from tuberculosis, leaving behind a literary legacy that includes the novels The Castle, The Trial, and Amerika and such influential stories as “The Judgment,” “In the Penal Colony,” and “The Metamorphosis.”

The Morgan Library is celebrating that legacy with the simply titled exhibition “Franz Kafka,” continuing through April 13. The show features original notebooks and manuscripts, letters about vegetarianism and his first hemorrhage, postcards, illustrated pages, family photos, handwritten aphorisms, first editions, architectural models, a diary, and other ephemera, primarily from the Bodleian Library, organized into such sections as “Life and Times: Health and Illness,” “Life and Times: Jewishness,” “Journeys: Around Europe,” and “Journeys: Of the Imagination.”

In his catalogue essay “Kafka’s Life and World,” British editor Ritchie Robertson writes, “Even during his final illness he kept writing. In March 1924 he wrote his last story, ‘Josefine, the Singer or The Mouse-People,’ and on his death-bed he corrected the proofs of the volume, A Hunger Artist: Four Stories, in which the story was included. ‘Josefine’ is a masterpiece of Kafka’s gentle, self-deprecating humour, and ends with the unexplained disappearance of the heroine and the narrator’s reflection that she will not be much missed. She ‘will lose herself happily in the numberless host of our people’s heroes, and, since we don’t go in for history, she will soon, redeemed and transfigured, be forgotten, like all her brethren.’”

Kafka often wrote about the unexplained, but he never disappeared from the public consciousness and will not soon be forgotten. The Morgan exhibition, held in conjunction with the centennial of Kafka’s death, is supplemented by a series of programs that delve further into Kafka’s life and world, ranging from panel discussions to special tours, workshops, lectures, and live music; below is the complete schedule.

Postcard to Ottla Kafka, Schelesen (Želízy), December 1918. MS. Kafka 49, fol. 79r (jointly owned by the Bodleian Library and the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach © the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford)

Thursday, January 9
Kafkaesque: Creative Responses to Kafka, with Joshua Cohen, Maira Kalman, and Josh Luxenberg, Gilder Lehrman Hall, $25, 7:00

Friday, January 10
Virtual Spotlight Tour | Franz Kafka: The Making of an Icon, Zoom, sold out, 12:30

Wednesday, February 5
Virtual Lecture | Benjamin Balint: Kafka’s Last Trial, with author Benjamin Balint, Zoom, free with advance RSVP, noon

Gallery Tour | Franz Kafka with Benjamin Balint, Engelhard Gallery, free with museum admission, 2:00

Wednesday February 19
Winter Break Family Program | Franz Kafka Storytime and Artmaking, with readings of author Larissa Theule and illustrator Rebecca Green’s Kafka and the Doll, free with museum admission, 2:00

Thursday, March 6
Concert | Philip Glass’s “Metamorphosis,” with pianist Jenny Lin, actor Saroi Tsukada, and bassist Lindsay Rosenberg, followed by a discussion with music publisher Richard Guerin, Gilder Lehrman Hall, $40, 7:00

Friday, March 14
Lecture | “Daylight at the Exit”: Women Translating Kafka, with Michelle Woods, Gilder Lehrman Hall, free (advance RSVP recommended), 6:00

Wednesday, April 9
Lecture | Nahma Sandrow: Kafka and the Vagabonds, with playwright and Yiddish theater scholar Dr. Nahma Sandrow, J. Pierpont Morgan’s Library, $20, 6:00

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

JEWISH LITERATURE AND REAL AND IMAGINED DEMONS: HANNAH ARENDT AND ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER

Hannah Stern (Ella Dershowitz) is watched by Gestapo officer Karl Frick (Brett Temple) in gripping play at WP Theater (photo by Valerie Terranova)

MRS. STERN WANDERS THE PRUSSIAN STATE LIBRARY
WP Theater
2162 Broadway at Seventy-Sixth St.
Through January 19, $39 – $129
www.mrssternwanders.com
wptheater.org

Last Saturday, I saw two shows involving Jewish writers, one a German woman who revolutionized political philosophy, the other a Polish man who kept a dying language alive through fictional narratives rich with folklore and history. Both were born in the first decade of the twentieth century, wrote about the Holocaust, had unique relationships with Zionism, and died in America.

The first play is a taut, gripping tale inspired by the little-known 1933 arrest of Hannah Arendt by the Gestapo, while the second is a slight but entertaining retelling of three Yiddish short stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Jenny Lyn Bader’s Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library is one of the best dramas of the year. The ninety-minute Luna Stage production opened in October at 59E59, where I saw an early preview, and has now moved to the WP Theater, where it continues through January 19 in an even better version. Bader is intimately familiar with Arendt’s life and career; her husband, Roger Berkowitz, founded the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College, where she has served on the board of advisers.

As the audience enters the space, they are instantly immersed in Arendt’s world in 1933 Berlin, through period music and Lauren Helpern’s stark set, a prison cell with two empty chairs, the white walls reaching out toward us. It feels like a warning that any of us could end up being interrogated under the dangling light fixture, then or now, especially given the rise of antisemitism across the globe. Barred, opaque windows do not promise hope.

A twenty-six-year-old burgeoning historian, philosopher, and author, Arendt (Ella Dershowitz) — whose married name at the time was Stern; she and her first husband, Günther Anders Stern, would divorce in 1937 — has been brought in by the Gestapo, along with her mother, who is in a separate cell. What Hannah thought would be just a brief questioning turns into several days of interrogation by Karl Frick (Brett Temple), an inquisitive Aryan guard who appears to be just as interested in her philosophy as in the identities of her dissident, Zionist friends.

After Hannah grimaces upon taking a sip of the coffee Karl has given her, he asks, “Do you not like the coffee?” She responds, “If I may speak freely? It’s terrible.” Karl: “Sorry to hear it. But at least I know you answer questions truthfully.” Hannah: “It wouldn’t occur to me to answer them any other way.” Karl: “That will make our time together easier.” It’s an intimate, critical moment that establishes the two characters and how they will relate to each other, Karl displaying genuine concern — it’s his first day on this new job, having been promoted from the criminal police to the political police — while Hannah plays a clever game of cat and mouse.

Karl grows suspicious when Hannah is visited by Erich Landau (usually played by Drew Hirshfield, although I saw his understudy this time, Jay DeYonker), a lawyer purportedly sent by the Zionists. “They are changing laws they made yesterday, then changing them again, by arbitrary police decree,” Hannah explains. Erich replies, “‘Arbitrary’? How can you say that? Laws create order!” Hannah answers, “In a classic dictatorship, yes. But the Nazis want chaos.”

Over the course of several days, Karl and Hannah discuss forced immigration, false idols, the arts, assimilation, love, the Bible, vegetarianism, German writer Rahel Varnhagen, and the Jewish Question as he tries to get information out of her while she cagily parries, brilliantly careful about everything she offers him.

Ella Dershowitz excels as a young Hannah Arendt in Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library (photo by Valerie Terranova)

In Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library Bader (The Whole Megillah: A Purim Spiel for Grown-Ups, None of the Above, Manhattan Casanova) captures the fear that many Jews live with, whether in 1933 Germany or 2024 America as the rule of law grows ever more arbitrary — and purposefully vindictive. The show is expertly directed by Ari Laura Kreith (Heartland, 167 Tongues); even though we know what’s ultimately going to happen, in general if not in the specific details, we are kept on the edge of our seats like a tense thriller, each scene offering new surprises and philosophical insight about what happened then — and can happen again.

A dead ringer for Natalie Portman, Dershowitz (Connected, Can You Forgive Her?) — whose father, controversial lawyer Alan Dershowitz, once debated Arendt and has written extensively about her (unfavorably) and whose husband’s last name is Stern — portrays Arendt with an astute elegance, from the way she smokes a cigarette and holds a cup of coffee to how she climbs on a table to look out the window, freedom just out of her grasp. Temple (The Valley of the Shadow, Henry IV, Part One) imbues Karl with a gentle vulnerability and curiosity not usually associated with Gestapo officers, while DeYonker, a five-year member of the Prague Shakespeare Company, is effective in his small but key role as the lawyer.

“Personally I think that’s the first big mistake in the history of thought — that truth comes at the end. I think truth comes at the beginning of a thought,” Hannah tells Karl at one point. In her February 1967 New Yorker article “Truth and Politics,” Arendt wrote, “We must now turn our attention to the relatively recent phenomenon of mass manipulation of fact and opinion as it has become evident in the rewriting of history, in image-making, and in actual government policy. The traditional political lie, so prominent in the history of diplomacy and statecraft, used to concern either true secrets — data that had never been made public — or intentions, which anyhow do not possess the same degree of reliability as accomplished facts; like everything that goes on merely inside ourselves, intentions are only potentialities, and what was intended to be a lie can always turn out to be true in the end. In contrast, the modern political lies deal efficiently with things that are not secrets at all but are known to practically everybody. This is obvious in the case of rewriting contemporary history under the eyes of those who witnessed it, but it is equally true in image-making of all sorts, in which, again, every known and established fact can be denied or neglected if it is likely to hurt the image; for an image, unlike an old-fashioned portrait, is supposed not to flatter reality but to offer a full-fledged substitute for it. And this substitute, because of modern techniques and the mass media, is, of course, much more in the public eye than the original ever was.”

Watching Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library in the context of current international politics is a chilling warning of what might lie ahead, especially if we cannot hear the voices from history, like Hannah Arendt’s.

Shane Baker and Miryem-Khaye Seigel bring a trio of Yiddish shorts to life in Bashevis’s Demons (photo by Maria Clara Vieira Fernandes/Viver com Yiddish)

BASHEVIS’S DEMONS
Theatre 154
154 Christopher St. between Greenwich & Washington Sts.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 5, $50
www.congressforjewishculture.org

Previously presented in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro, Bashevis’s Demons is making its North American premiere at Theatre 154 in the West Village through January 5. The seventy-five-minute show consists of three Yiddish tales by Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer, who wrote such books as Shosha, Satan in Goray, and Enemies, a Love Story in addition to the short story “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy,” which was made into a popular film by Barbra Streisand.

Directed and designed by Moshe Yassur with Beate Hein Bennett, the segments take place on a modest set centered by a comfy red velvet armchair on a Persian carpet, with a table off to one side with a few props, and a horizontal framed dark screen up above the stage, where operator Rokhl Kafrissen projects the English-language surtitles. Shane Baker portrays the demons, wearing a kimono and waving a fan, while Miryem-Khaye Seigel plays a married woman in white, a rabbi, and a hilariously costumed rooster.

The evening begins with 1955’s “The Mirror,” which Singer also turned into a full-length play. It’s set in 1856 in the Polish shtetl of Krashnik and is narrated by a demon who announces, “There’s a net as old as Methuselah . . . Soft as cobwebs, full of holes, it traps people even today. When a demon tires of chasing the past or spinning in a windmill’s arms, he can always settle in a mirror, like a spider in its web — and the fly must succumb.” In this case the fly is Tsirl (Seigel), a “young, beautiful, wealthy, childless woman, with lots of time and little comradeship.” Her husband is a traveling salesman who works for her father, a woodcutter, and her mother is deceased, so she often finds herself alone, missing the more active life she had in Cracow.

Distressed by her situation, she regularly goes up to the attic and sits in a velvet chair, looking into a gold-framed mirror with a crack in the middle and admiring her body. She embroiders Bible scenes, reads German poetry, and imagines heroic men coming to save her.

She is instead met by a demon in the mirror, who describes himself as an imp, a wedding jester, a clown who has “donkey ears; the horns of a ram; a frog’s mouth; and a goat’s beard. My eyes have no whites. I have no fingernails or teeth. My arms stretch like licorice, my horns bend like wax.” Through it all, Baker remains a bald man in a kimono, not changing makeup, more of a psychological demon than a physically grotesque trickster, as if any person could have a demon inside them.

Despite his ugliness, she is intrigued by him; they discuss wisdom, beauty, and desire, angels, G-d, and sin. When she leaves the attic and doesn’t come back the next day, he considers other actions, like clogging a chimney of the besmedresh or ruining the blowing of the shofar. “There’s no lack of business during the Days of Awe!” he proclaims.

When she at last returns, he offers to fly her to the garden of golden birds in Rehab the Harlot’s palace, an unimaginable journey that is a one-of-a-kind experience.

Shane Baker incorporates Yiddish and Japanese traditional storytelling in Bashevis’s Demons (photo by Maria Clara Vieira Fernandes/Viver com Yiddish)

“The Mirror” is followed by the first of two brief farcical interludes, “Thus Spake the Rooster,” adapted from Singer’s “Kukeriku,” Yiddish for cock-a-doodle-doo. Seigel, in full fowl regalia, talks about the meaning behind her kukeriku and, later, expresses her fear of Kapparot, the ancient Yom Kippur ritual where religious men swing live chickens over their heads before slaughtering them. (Singer became a vegetarian for the last thirty-five years of his life.)

Between the two-part “Thus Spake the Rooster” is “The Last Demon,” which switches between 1906 and 1956 and opens with a demon from Lublin declaring, “I, a demon, testify there are no more demons. No need, when people have themselves become demons.” He lives in frozen time in an attic in the small village of Tishevits, where he pores over a storybook filled with powerful Yiddish letters. Here, there are no flies in the spiderweb above him, not even a husk. He chatters on about Satan, a false messiah, “the good Inclination,” and Jewish writers.

He encounters a rabbi (Seigel) and decides to tempt him, one way or another, but the learned man proves to be a tough adversary. The demon decides he must appeal to the rabbi’s pride, telling him, “You alone can bring redemption or leave the world to fester for another 689,000 years.” That piques the rabbi’s interest, but when he asks the demon to give him two signs that he is telling the truth, the demon finds himself in trouble that he might not be able to get out of.

Baker, who was born in Kansas City and is not Jewish, is one of the leading figures in Yiddish theater, having performed in such shows as God of Vengeance (Got Fun Nekome) and his own translation of Waiting for Godot with the New Yiddish Rep and Tevye Served Raw, and he is the director of the Congress for Jewish Culture. He has studied with Charles Ludlam and Everett Quinton of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, Professor Avrom Nowersztern at a Yiddish summer course organized by YIVO, and kyogen and Noh master Juro Zenchiku, and he brings all those sensibilities to Bashevis’s Demons.

Everything comes to an awkward stop when, after “The Mirror,” Baker describes the background of creating the show; it would have been better to have included that information in the small program or online, as it takes the audience out of the mystical world that Singer so often immerses readers in. “Singer casts a spell,” Joyce Carol Oates wrote. “Open one of his books anywhere, the words leap out with a power that would seem to us demonic if it were not, at the very same time, so utterly plausible.”

Hannah Arendt died in New York City in 1975 at the age of sixty-nine, while Singer passed away in 1991 in Florida at the age of eighty-seven. Both left behind lasting literary legacies rooted in Jewish culture, history, and tradition; while Singer wrote in Yiddish, keeping the disappearing language alive, Arendt wrote in German and English — as well as one lone article in Yiddish, a November 1942 op-ed in the New York Yiddish paper Morgen Zshurnal about German and Hebrew speakers in Palestine.

Seeing Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library and Bashevis’s Demons back-to-back less than a week before Christmas and Hanukkah arrived, on the same day for the first time in nineteen years, was a vivid reminder of the demons that hover over us and inside us, yesterday and today.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

IT’S BASHERT! CELEBRATING BOOKS AT THE MUSEUM OF JEWISH HERITAGE

NEW YORK JEWISH BOOK FESTIVAL
Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust
Edmond J. Safra Plaza, 36 Battery Pl.
Sunday, December 8, free with advance RSVP, 10:00 am – 9:00 pm
866-811-4111
mjhnyc.org

The 2024 New York Jewish Book Festival, being held December 8 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, is chock-full of exciting literary events, starting at 10:00 am and continuing through a 6:00 concert by Marcin Masecki and Ger Mandolin Orchestra. And best of all, everything is free. There will be talks, workshops, panel discussions, and book signings, covering such topics as “Deconstructing Jewish Masculinity,” “Jewish Icons,” “It’s Bashert! Jewish Love and Romance,” “Translating Yiddish Prose by Women,” and “Rebuilding Lives: Survivors After the Holocaust.” Among the books being featured are Rebecca Clarren’s The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota and an American Inheritance, F. K. Clementi’s South of My Dreams: Finding My American Home, Delia Ephron’s Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life, Reuven Fenton’s Goyhood, and Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer’s The Joy of Connections: 100 Ways to Beat Loneliness and Live a Happier and More Meaningful Life. Below is the full schedule.

Writing Workshop: Tell Me Everything!, with Beth Harpaz, Events Hall, 10:15

Deconstructing Jewish Masculinity, with Ronnie Grinberg, Miriam Eve Mora, Sarah Imhoff, and Laura Shaw Frank, Classrooms A/B, 10:15

Emerging Narratives: Debut Jewish Fiction, with Danny Goodman, Sarah Seltzer, Lauren Aliza Green, Sasha Vasilyuk, and Susan Weidman Schneider, Keeping History Center, 10:15

Jewish Icons: Judy Blume, Jean Carroll, and Marty Glickman, with Jeffrey S. Gurock, Grace Kessler Overbeke, Rachelle Bergstein, and Stephanie Butnick, the Studio, 10:15

Rebecca Clarren and Sarah Podemski: The Cost of Free Land, with Rebecca Clarren, Sarah Podemski, Edmond J. Safra Hall, 11:30

Jewish Icons: Judy Blume, Jean Carroll, and Marty Glickman Book Signing, Events Hall, 11:30

It’s Bashert! Jewish Love and Romance, with Ali Rosen, Hannah Reynolds, Hannah Orenstein, and Lior Zaltzman, the Studio, 11:30

Deconstructing Jewish Masculinity Book Signing, Lobby 1, 11:30

Emerging Narratives: Debut Jewish Fiction Book Signing, Lobby 3, 11:30

Translating Yiddish Prose by Women, with Ellen Cassedy, Anita Norich, and Lisa Newman, Classrooms A/B, 11:45

Jews Writing Jews: Creating Jewish Characters, with Elyssa Friedland, Caroline Leavitt, Reuven Fenton, Julia Gergely, and Elizabeth Harris, Keeping History Center, 11:45

It’s Bashert! Jewish Love and Romance Book Signing, Events Hall, 12:45

Salinger’s Soul, with Stephen B. Shepard and Lisa Newman, the Studio, 12:45

Rebecca Clarren and Sarah Podemski: The Cost of Free Land Book Signing, Lobby 1, 12:45

Delia Ephron and Amy Schwartz: Left on Tenth, with Delia Ephron and Amy Schwartz, Edmond J. Safra Hall, 1:00

Jews Writing Jews: Creating Jewish Characters Book Signing, Lobby 3, 1:00

Translating Yiddish Prose by Women Book Signing, Lobby 1, 1:00

Rebuilding Lives: Survivors After the Holocaust, with Seth Stern, Sandra Fox, and Sarah Maslin Nir, Classrooms A/B, 1:15

On Being Jewish Now: Reflections from Authors & Advocates, with Bradley Tusk, Ali Rosen, Samantha Ettus, and Zibby Owens, Keeping History Center, 1:15

Salinger’s Soul Book Signing, Events Hall, 2:00

The Joy of Connections, with Allison Gilbert and Rachel Wright, the Studio, 2:00

Delia Ephron and Amy Schwartz: Left on Tenth Book Signing, Lobby 1, 2:15

The Old Jewish Men’s Guide to Eating, Sleeping, and Futzing Around, with Noah Rinsky and Jonah Bromwich, Edmond J. Safra Hall, 2:30

Rebuilding Lives: Survivors After the Holocaust Book Signing, Lobby 1, 2:30

On Being Jewish Now: Reflections from Authors & Advocates Book Signing, Lobby 3, 2:30

Crafting Jewish Fantasy and Folklore, with A. R. Vishny, Laura R. Samotin, and Veronica Schanoes, Classrooms A/B, 2:45

The Diary of Anne Frank: Beloved and Banned, with Dr. Lauren Bairnsfather and Adam Langer, Keeping History Center, 2:45

The Joy of Connections Book Signing, Events Hall, 3:15

Jewish Poetry Workshop, with Sean Glatch, the Studio, 3:30

The Old Jewish Men’s Guide to Eating, Sleeping, and Futzing Around Book Signing, Lobby 1, 3:45

Crafting Jewish Fantasy and Folklore Book Signing, Lobby 1, 4:00

Unearthing Untold Holocaust Stories, with Chris Heath, Elizabeth White, Jack Fairweather, and Debórah Dwork, Classrooms A/B, 4:15

In Her Words: Contemporary Jewish Women’s Memoirs, with F. K. Clementi, Bonny Reichert, Sara Glass, and Evelyn Frick, Keeping History Center, 4:15

Yiddish Translation Workshop, with Anita Norich, the Studio, 4:45

Unearthing Untold Holocaust Stories Book Signing, Lobby 1, 5:30

In Her Words: Contemporary Jewish Women’s Memoirs Book Signing, Lobby 3, 5:30

Gersuite – A Concert by Marcin Masecki and Ger Mandolin Orchestra, Edmond J. Safra Hall, 6:00

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

FOOLING AROUND WITH THE BARD: REIMAGINING SHAKESPEARE THROUGH GOOGLE TRANSLATE

Who: Emily Conlon, Sevrin Willinder
What: Shakespeare Translate: The Complete Works
Where: Caveat, 21A Clinton St. between East Houston & Stanton Sts., 212-228-2100
When: Sunday, December 1, $10 livestream, $18 in advance, $23 at door, 2:30
Why: In Hamlet, the title character says about a troupe of traveling actors, “He that plays the king shall be welcome. His majesty shall have tribute of me. The adventurous knight shall use his foil and target, the lover shall not sigh gratis, the humorous man shall end his part in peace, the clown shall make those laugh whose lungs are tickle o’ th’ sere, and the lady shall say her mind freely, or the blank verse shall halt for ’t. What players are they?”

Shakespeare included clowns or fools in most of his works, including Costard in Love’s Labours Lost, Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing, the two Dromios in The Comedy of Errors, Feste in Twelfth Night, Lavache in All’s Well That Ends Well, Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the fool in King Lear. On December 1 at Caveat, clowns Emily Conlon and Sevrin Willinder will present “Shakespeare Translate: The Complete Works,“ in which they will perform their favorite excerpts from every single play by the Bard, using original text that has been filtered through Google Translate fifteen times to give it a more contemporary feel; the show is directed by Melissa Ingle. Conlon describes herself as “a Brooklyn-based actor, singer, voice actor, and goofball,” while Willinder “is a ravishing young lad from Plympton, Massachusetts.” Advance tickets are $18, at the door $23; the performance, from Devon Loves ME! Productions, which was cofounded by Willinder, is also available via livestream for $10.

As Touchstone, the court jester, says in As You Like It, “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” Find out more at Caveat (or online) on Sunday afternoon.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

HANGING ON EVERY WORD: THE GREAT GATSBY FROM START TO FINISH

Elevator Repair Service’s Gatz takes place in a ramshackle office (photo by Joan Marcus)

GATZ
Newman Theater, the Public Theater
425 Lafayette St. at Astor Pl.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 1, $210
publictheater.org
www.elevator.org

Elevator Repair Service’s eight-hour Gatz is no mere gimmick, and it’s much more than just a unique theatrical experience; it’s a way of life and a treatise on the human condition.

In 1980, comedian Andy Kaufman began reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby to a university audience that was soon clamoring for him to do almost anything else as it became apparent he was going to read the entire text. ERS founding artistic director John Collins took that to the next level in 2004, creating Gatz, a durational show constructed around every single word of the Great American Novel (other than the chapter numbers). Over twenty years, Gatz has traveled from a Williamsburg garage to locations all over the country and the world, but it didn’t make its official New York City debut until 2010, at the Public, because of rights issues with the Fitzgerald estate. It is now back at the Public’s Newman Theater for a farewell encore presentation through December 1; only a handful of tickets remain.

The play, which consists of four acts, two intermissions, and a ninety-minute dinner break, is set in a somewhat ramshackle, drab office that seems stuck in time, with a long desk cluttered with detritus, a plain brown couch, a glassed-in room in one far corner, high shelves of boxes stuffed with papers, a dusty file cabinet, a booze station, a whiteboard with an employee schedule, a bulletin board with random items pinned to it, a horizontal window revealing a narrow hallway, a fax machine, and a poster of a lion below the declaration: “Stop sharing your income! Start saving taxes with Republic Funds Investment Program.”

An employee (Scott Shepherd) enters, sits at one end of the desk, and turns his DOS computer on and off several times, as it’s not working properly. Another employee (Jim Fletcher) enters, sits down at the other end of the desk, and reads a newspaper before pressing the keys on an old typewriter. Growing bored and frustrated, the first man picks up the 1995 Scribner paperback edition of The Great Gatsby and starts reading it out loud.

“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since,” he says. “‘Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.’ He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgements, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores.” There is nothing boring about Gatz.

At first, his coworkers are confused by what he is doing, but soon they are delivering lines of dialogue themselves — Jay Gatsby (Jim Fletcher), a mysterious, wealthy man who likes to throw parties but keeps a low profile; Daisy Buchanan (Tory Vazquez), Gatsby’s former flame and Nick’s cousin; Tom Buchanan (Pete Simpson), Daisy’s untrustworthy oaf of a husband; Jordan Baker (Susie Sokol), a professional golfer and Daisy’s best friend; George Wilson (Frank Boyd), who runs a local gas station; Myrtle (Laurena Allan), George’s wife, who is having an affair with Tom; Catherine (Annie McNamara), Myrtle’s sister; photographer Chester McKee (Vin Knight) and his wife, Lucille (Maggie Hoffman), who live in the apartment house where Tom has his trysts with Myrtle; Michaelis (sound designer Ben Jalosa Williams), a neighbor of George and Myrtle’s; Ewing Klipspringer (Mike Iveson), a regular Gatsby party guest; Meyer Wolfsheim (Shepherd), Gatsby’s mobbed-up business partner; and Henry C. Gatz (Ross Fletcher), Gatsby’s father.

Nick Carraway (Scott Shepherd), Tom Buchanan (Pete Simpson), and Jay Gatsby (Jim Fletcher) are played by office mates in Gatz (photo by Joan Marcus)

Director Collins includes numerous moments when the world of the book merges with the world of the office while acknowledging that this is a performance being staged in a theater. Phones ring in the office and in the retelling. Employees murmur and whisper to one another in the background as Shepherd keeps reading the novel. Paper is thrown through the air like pages torn from a book. Workers enter and leave just as their Gatsby doppelgängers do. The green light across the Sound that Gatsby is obsessed with is represented by a tiny light on a smoke alarm. Shepherd reads about a motorcycle and the thunderous sounds of a bike shake through the space. In the book, Nick talks about Klipspringer playing the 1920 song “The Love Nest,” and the tune can be heard, including the lyrics, which are not in the book.

At one point, when Gatsby’s hair is mentioned, both Fletcher, who is bald, and Shepherd do a double take and mug for the audience, a move that emphasizes that even while the production is being faithful to the novel by pronouncing every word, there is still plenty open to interpretation; after all, people read the same book but don’t see the exact same things in their imagination. Thus, when a child in the book says, “Aunt Jordan’s got on a white dress too,” we are not taken aback that the character in fact is not wearing a white dress; however, we are dazzled when Nick says, “I hadn’t gone twenty yards when I heard my name and Gatsby stepped from between two bushes into the path. I must have felt pretty weird by that time, because I could think of nothing except the luminosity of his pink suit under the moon,” and Fletcher appears in a luminous pink suit. As a bonus, Gatsby’s father — a part that is often left out — is played by his real-life dad, Dr. Fletcher, who has performed the role since 2005. (The costumes are by Colleen Werthmann, with original scenic design by Louisa Thompson and soft lighting by Mark Barton.)

The cast is extraordinary in morphing between office drones and Gatsby characters: Simpson is a hulking, primal Tom, tossing around mail like he treats his wife; Vazquez infuses Daisy with a strong sense of conviction; Sokol excels as an efficient employee and Baker, who knows exactly what she wants and how to get it; and Williams ably marks the past and the present, not only portraying Michaelis but also operating the sound from a desk at front stage right, complete with a laptop that is a regular reminder that this is a show we are watching in 2024, even if the book takes place in the 1920s and the office hijinks occur in the 1980s.

Fletcher, one of New York City’s most adventurous and engaging actors, gives us a Gatsby we’ve never seen before, one that is more memorable than Robert Redford’s in Jack Clayton’s static 1974 film and Leonardo DiCaprio’s in Baz Luhrmann’s glitzy 3-D 2013 extravaganza. A veteran of ERS, the Wooster Group, and NYC Players, Fletcher brings his trademark deadpan style to the role; he is tall and sturdy, imbuing Gatsby with a touching vulnerability that is at odds with his steadfast office worker.

Mayhem ensues when a mundane office starts merging with The Great Gatsby (photo by Joan Marcus)

After all, despite his name being in the title of the book, the protagonist of The Great Gatsby is not Jay but Nick, who is telling the story. Shepherd originated the role of Carraway, and his performance is one of remarkable depth and substance. Although the paperback is in his hands for nearly the entire show, he actually knows the book by heart, but it is not basic recitation. He understands every word, every line, every plot twist, bringing an intoxicating nuance to the story while not drastically altering the tone of his voice. In the fourth and final act, I felt a twinge of sadness as I saw the remaining pages dwindle, knowing the end was coming. Gatz is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before; I now understand why so many friends and colleagues have seen it multiple times. It might last the length of an average American work day, but its marvelous pacing makes it fly by — yet in one of the show’s many clever touches, the clock on the desk never advances a second.

Given that the novel is now in the public domain, there are likely more Gatsbys to come, following this year’s disappointing Broadway musical and last year’s immersive, participatory show in addition to Rachel Chavkin’s musical adaptation that ran this summer at the American Repertory Theater at Harvard. It’s a shame that Gatz, which explores the drudgery of everyday life alongside the fictional, fantastical domain Gatsby tries to construct around him, will never be performed again in New York City, that more people will not be able revel in this one-of-a-kind interpretation, an American classic all its own.

The last word, of course, will be Fitzgerald’s:

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further. . . . And one fine morning —

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

FRUITFUL JewCE! CONVENTION BACK FOR SECOND YEAR

JeCE! THE JEWISH COMIC EXPERIENCE CONVENTION
Center for Jewish History
15 West Sixteenth St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Sunday, November 10, $15-$25, 9:00 am – 8:00 pm
jewce.org
www.cjh.org

Jews played key roles in the development of the comic book industry in the United States, as artists, illustrators, editors, and publishers. In 2006-7, the Jewish Museum presented with the Newark Museum the outstanding exhibit “Masters of American Comics,” which explored the work of fourteen artists, several of whom were Jewish.

On November 10, the Center for Jewish History is hosting the second annual “JewCE! The Jewish Comic Experience Convention,” focusing on Jewish history, culture, and identity as depicted in comic books. There is a full slate of lectures, panel discussions, workshops, artist booths, and more, and awards (the jewcies!) will be handed out Sunday night in such categories as Jewish Tradition and Folklore, Diverse Representation, Historical Narrative, Autobiographical/Biographical Content, Contemporary Topics, and Combatting Prejudice, hosted by Roy Schwartz, Danny Fingeroth, Miriam Mora, and Fabrice Sapolsk. There will also be a special tribute to Trina Robbins, winner of the 2023 inaugural JewCE Award for Career Achievement who passed away in April at the age of eighty-five.

“In its second year, JewCE is more than just a superpowered celebration of Jewish comics and culture — it’s a beacon of resilience and unity,” Center for Jewish History president Dr. Gavriel Rosenfeld said in a statement. “With the troubling rise in antisemitism, it’s never been more crucial to tell our stories. Comics have always been a medium for the underdog, and JewCEshowcases the triumph of Jewish creativity over adversity.”

The impressive roster of speakers, awards judges, and artist alley participants include Chari Pere, Josh Edelglass, Fabrice Sapolsky, Tony Kim, Amit Tishler, Dean Haspiel, Emily Bowen Cohen, Paul Levitz, Miriam Mora, Danny Fingeroth, Koren Shadmi, Jordan B. Gorfinkel, Ben and Max Berkowitz, Roy Schwartz, Neil Kleid, Barbara Willy Mendes, Mathew Klickstein, Barbara Slate, Athena Finger, Cheryl Rubin, Mike Reiss, Josh Neufeld, Terry LaBan, Chris Claremont, Arie Kaplan, Ari Richter, Uri Fink, Amy Hungerford, Sholly Fisch, Omri Rose, Dr. Sean Wise, Hilary Price, Peter Kuper, Jeff Newelt, Heidi MacDonald, Jenny Caplan, and Lillian Laserson.

Among the special events are “American (Jewish) Splendor: Celebrating Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner,” “Jewish Mythology and Fantasy in Adventure Comics,” “DC Comics in the 80s — A Magic Moment,” “Exploring Jewish Humor in Comics,” and “Israeli Graphic Novels After October 7.” Below is the full schedule.

The Best-Known Comedy Writer You’ve Never Heard Of, with Mike Reiss, moderated by Mathew Klickstein, Leo and Julia Forchheimer Auditorium, 10:00

Drawing from Memory: From Archive to Graphic Novel, with Ari Richter, moderated by Amy Hungerford, Kovno-Shavl Room, 10:00

Jump into Drawing Comics!, with Josh Edelglass, Rennert Chapel, 10:00

American (Jewish) Splendor: Celebrating Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner, with Dean Haspiel, Josh Neufeld, Jeff Newel, Peter Kuper, and Arie Kaplan, moderated by Danny Fingeroth, Leo and Julia Forchheimer Auditorium, 11:30

Jewish Mythology and Fantasy in Adventure Comics, with the Berkowitz Brothers and Amit Tishler, moderated by Neil Kleid, Kovno-Shavl Room, 11:30

Comic Strip Workshop, with Chari Pere, Rennert Chapel, 11:30

DC Comics in the 80s — A Magic Moment, with Cheryl Rubin, Lillian Laserson, and Barbara Slate, moderated by Paul Levitz, Leo and Julia Forchheimer Auditorium, 1:00

Exploring Jewish Humor in Comics, with Arie Kaplan, Chari Pere, Hilary Price, Terry LaBan, and Uri Fink, moderated by Jenny Caplan, Kovno-Shavl Room, 1:00

Jewish Comics Trivia Game, with Sholly Fisch, Rennert Chapel, 1:00

Batman at 85, with Jordan B. Gorfinkel, Athena Finger, Danny Fingeroth, and N. C. Christopher Couch, moderated by Roy Schwartz, Leo and Julia Forchheimer Auditorium, 2:30

Leadership and Legacy: Trina Robbins Tribute, with Barbara “Willy” Mendes, and Barbara Slate, moderated by Heidi MacDonald, Kovno-Shavl Room, 2:30

JewCE: The Jewish Comics Experience Documentary Special and Q&A, with Miriam Mora, Tony Kim, and Danny Fingeroth, Rennert Chapel, 3:00

An Xciting Conversation with Chris Claremont, moderated by Roy Schwartz, Leo and Julia Forchheimer Auditorium, 4:00

Israeli Graphic Novels After October 7, with Uri Fink, Koren Shadmi, and Omri Rose, moderated by Sean Wise, Kovno-Shavl Room, 4:00

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]