Jews Dominate Auteur’s New Play

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Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Revived ‘Parade’ Marches Across L.A. Stage

By Naomi Pfefferman

Alfred Uhry swept though a corridor backstage at the Mark Taper Forum last week, greeting actors dressed in early 20th century garb with a robust “Shalom, y’all!” The Southern Jewish playwright was on hand to offer advice and answer questions for the cast of “Parade,” the musical about the anti-Semitic lynching of Leo Frank in Georgia in 1913, which failed on Broadway but was later revised for a London production that will now make its United States premiere at the Taper on Oct. 4.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Cabaret for Cancer Cure

By Dikla Kadosh

Jo Levi DiSante, a Hollywood producer, was 28 when her sister’s breast cancer metastasized to her spine and bones and she was given three to five years to live. Two weeks later, DiSante’s mother also was diagnosed, for the second time, with breast cancer. “I was an executive in the film industry,” DiSante wrote in an online bio, “where every day I reminded myself and my peers that although we might experience blows from our egotistical studio head bosses as earth-shattering, we were not curing cancer.”

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Behind the Scenes With Hitler’s Elite

By Tom Tugend

Cornelius Schnauber’s father joined the Nazi Party early on, when it was still a fringe movement, and the son has been wrestling with this legacy ever since, as an academician and playwright.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Not-Quite Farewell

By Tom Tugend

Way back in 1965, an actor named Chaim Topol, unknown in America, arrived in Los Angeles, staying at the cheapest possible hotel with fellow Israeli Ephraim Kishon, a popular satirical writer.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Play Explores Different Holocaust Aspect — Effect on Son of Nazi War Criminal

by Iris Mann

The sins of the father are visited on the child in “East of Berlin,” a play about the emotional agony suffered by the son of a Nazi war criminal, which is making its United States debut at the NoHo Arts Center in North Hollywood after taking Canada by storm two years ago.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

‘Dirty Dancing’ Comes Alive on Stage

By Rick Schultz

Remember the classic line from the 1987 hit movie, “Dirty Dancing,” when the lower-class Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze) walks up to the cosseted Jewish girl, Frances “Baby” Houseman (Jennifer Grey), and in front of her parents says, “My Baby belongs to me. Is this clear?”

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Play Highlights Troubled Couple’s Attempt to Reconnect

By Naomi Pfefferman

Heads turn as Meital Dohan strolls into the café at the Viceroy Santa Monica hotel, wearing a miniskirt and high heels.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Enough Is Enough: Play About Mideast Conflict Is Timely

By Dikla Kadosh

Iris Bahr’s “Dai” (Hebrew for “Enough”), a one-woman play about 10 people at a Tel Aviv cafe moments before a suicide bombing.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Questions, Dilemmas Drive Geffen-Commissioned Play

By Rachel Heller

When the Geffen Playhouse commissioned a new piece from Donald Margulies five years ago, the award-winning playwright bided his time.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Tovah Feldshuh immortalizes life of young Shoah heroine in ‘Irena’s Vow’

By David A. Lash

"Irena's Vow" is the story of Irena Gut Opdyke, a young Polish Catholic woman who took unimaginable risks and paid an unspeakable personal price to save the lives of 12 Jews by hiding them in the basement of the villa where she was virtually enslaved by a German major during World War II.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

‘Accidental Mexican’  Ilan Stavans probes cultural identity in first play

By Rachel Heller

As an "accidental Mexican" born to an Eastern European family, author and essayist Ilan Stavans has hurdled critics to become one of the nation's foremost commentators on Latino culture. As a Mexican American, he has written widely on immigration, the clash and fusion of languages and the quest for acceptance.

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Emily Stern—Howard Stern’s daughter—on stage and off

By Naomi Pfefferman

As a child, Emily first performed in the choir at her Reform temple in Roslyn, N.Y., where she sang at children's services and Jewish camp. She continued to perform in high school; but studying acting at New York University did not mesh well with her intuitive approach to theater, she said.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Robert Schimmel: Cancer, through a lens comedic

By Naomi Pfefferman

He realized that even though he had just been told he had cancer, he hadn't been told he was going to die. To prove it, he was going to do the one thing that showed he was very much alive, which was to make people laugh.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Women plot revenge against a sexist ‘70s boss in ‘9 to 5: The Musical’ (what a way to make a livin’)

By Shoshana Lewin Fischer

"It seems that in a musical you would get to know people less -- I actually think you get to know them more" -- Patricia Resnick, writer of "9 to 5"

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Even up close, Minkin’s illusions are magical

By Dikla Kadosh

"I want to make people think and feel a range of emotions —wonder, surprise, nostalgia, delight."

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Deferred dream comes true for actress Nan Tepper

By Tom Tugend

"I had been a student, wife, mother, news executive and caregiver, but I had always promised myself that one day I would be an actor."

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

‘Forgotten Hero’ of the Shoah Peter Bergson gets his due times two

By Tom Tugend

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Prolific Israeli producer-director tries Hollywood

By Tom Tugend

Israeli producer-director Uri Paster has four movie and theater projects planned this year

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Israeli and Palestinian shed their armor in ‘Desert Sunrise’

By Orit Arfa

The play opens in the south Hebron hills in the West Bank with Tsahi, an off-duty Israel Defense Forces soldier, pointing his gun at Ismail, a Palestinian shepherd. Having just broken up with his settler girlfriend, Tsahi is lost and seeking a way back to the main road. Ismail, waiting for his girlfriend, is the only one who can help Tsahi find his way.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Leigh Silverman:  Nurturing novel ideas, one play at a time

By Naomi Pfefferman

One day, when Leigh Silverman was 15 and the youngest student in a college summer drama program, her teacher pointedly asked her to stay after class.
"She said, 'Leigh, you shouldn't be an actress; you're terrible,'" Silverman, now 33, recalled with a laugh. "I was horrified. But then she said I had good insights about the plays, and that instead of acting I should be her assistant.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Theater: Making a Jew not a Jew

By Tom Tugend

Always in the background lurks the threat of "Gentleman's Agreement," produced by Darryl Zanuck, the only non-Jewish studio chief, and starring Gregory Peck as a WASP who pretends to be a Jew.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

‘Chorus Line’ composer’s music still has a kick

By Shoshana Lewin Fischer

The characters reveal their stories through a mixture of singing and dancing -- with some pantomime thrown in. Hamlisch said that from the beginning the creators felt that certain stories were best told through song, others through dance.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Pilar Millhollen puts it all on the ‘Line’

By Shoshana Lewin Fischer

"When I was 14, I saw the first national tour of 'Crazy For You,' she said. "I saw that show and that's what made me want to be a dancer. It was the most wonderful thing I've every seen."

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Tale of the ‘Stranger’ leaps from book to musical

By Anita K. Kantrowitz

It was 1985, and many of the Ethiopian Jews who'd been airlifted from Sudan were being housed in a hotel in Netanya, Israel. When writer Sonia Levitin entered the temporary nursery, she was particularly struck by all the babies and toddlers who'd been born since their families had arrived.