A Traveling Jewish Theatre Presents See Under Love Press Release

For Immediate Release Contact: Karen Stahr
January 2001 415-399-1809 x302

A TRAVELING JEWISH THEATRE PREMIERES

SEE UNDER: LOVE

NEW PLAY BY COREY FISCHER BASED ON A NOVEL BY

DAVID GROSSMAN WON 1999 KENNEDY CENTER AWARD

February 15 – March 25, 2001

Press Opening: Monday, February 19, 8 pm

A Traveling Jewish Theatre, 470 Florida Street, San Francisco

In See Under: LOVE, a Jewish writer unable to die changes the life of a Nazi officer by spinning a fantastical tale that breaks the boundaries between imagination and reality. This new play by A Traveling Jewish Theatre Co-Artistic Director Corey Fischer, based on the ground-breaking novel of the same name by Israeli author David Grossman, confronts the effects of the Holocaust on the modern psyche through a series of daring imaginative leaps. In 1999, Fischer and ATJT received a grant from The Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays—the nation’s most distinguished honor for new theatre—to create and premiere this work. Known for its unconventional use of movement, image and language to make challenging material both accessible and theatrical, ATJT is well suited to the task of adapting and performing Grossman’s surprising, multi-layered work.

See Under: LOVE previews February 15 – 18, opens to the press on Monday, February 19 at 8 pm, and runs Thursdays through Sundays until March 25. Performances are Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 pm, and Sundays at 2 pm and 7 pm. Tickets are $25.00 with discounted tickets available for students, seniors, and groups of 10 or more. "Pay-what-you-can" tickets are available every Thursday at the door (subject to availability). A Traveling Jewish Theatre is located at 470 Florida Street (between 17th and Mariposa Streets) in San Francisco. For tickets or additional information, contact A Traveling Jewish Theatre at 415-399-1809 or visit www.atjt.com.

ATJT's See Under: LOVE – 2 of 6

Directed by ATJT Co-Artistic Director Naomi Newman, the world premiere of See Under: LOVE features the largest cast ever assembled on ATJT’s stage including ATJT Associate Artist Aaron Davidman, Julian López-Morillas, Joan Mankin, Mark Samuels, Robert Sicular, ATJT Co-Artistic Director Helen Stoltzfus and Norbert Weisser. The work features an original score and sound design by ATJT Co-Artistic Director Albert Greenberg, scenic and lighting design by Richard Olmsted and costume design by Todd Roehrman.

Since 1986 The Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays has awarded more than $3 million in grants to theatres and playwrights to encourage American writers to write new plays and non-profit professional theatres across the country to produce them. Three Kennedy Fund plays have gone on to win the Pulitzer Prize: Wendy Wasserstein's The Heidi Chronicles; Robert Shenkan's The Kentucky Cycle and Tony Kushner's Angels in America: Millennium Approaches. The Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays is a project of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Countrywide Home Loans, Inc., in cooperation with the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.

Play Synopsis
An old Jewish writer, Wasserman, is imprisoned in an unnamed concentration camp but cannot die. He keeps emerging from the gas chambers alive. When the camp commandant, Neigel, discovers that this man is the writer of a series of children's stories called Children of the Heart that he remembers vividly from his own childhood, he commands Wasserman to revive the characters and tell him a new episode each night. In a dark and ironic reversal of the Scheherazade story, Neigel promises Wasserman that if he is pleased with the evening’s episode, he will shoot the writer, thereby giving Wasserman the release he seeks. As it happens, Wasserman survives all of Neigel's bullets. Wasserman's dormant artist's soul is awakened as he begins to tell the new Children of the Heart story. He realizes that, through the telling, he might pierce the Nazi's heart and “infect him with humanity.”

ATJT's See Under: LOVE – 3 of 6

David Grossman, one of Israel's best-known contemporary authors, has written four novels, a children's book and several works of non-fiction. Translated from Hebrew by Betsy Rosenberg, See Under: LOVE has been compared to Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and Gunter Grass's Tin Drum for its complex narrative format and its bold mix of realism and fantasy. In addition to Corey Fischer's stage adaptation of See Under: LOVE, several of Grossman's novels have been adapted for film.

Corey Fischer is an actor, writer and teacher who has been creating and performing theatre for over thirty years. In 1978, with Albert Greenberg and Naomi Newman, he co-founded A Traveling Jewish Theatre where he continues to serve as co-artistic director. Fischer has co-written and performed in more than nine ATJT productions including Diamonds in the Dark, The Dybbuk, Forgiving Waters, The Last Yiddish Poet, and Sometimes We Need a Story More Than Food. A 1999 recipient of the California Arts Council Playwright Fellowship, Fischer has published short stories and essays in The Sun, Callboard, Inquiring Mind and various anthologies. His story, The Blessing, was nominated for a 1995 Pushcart Prize.

Naomi Newman is a founding member of ATJT who co-authored and directed the company’s first three ensemble pieces (Coming from a Great Distance, A Dance of Exile, and The Last Yiddish Poet). She returned to performing in Berlin, Jerusalem and the Moon, and then created and performed two solo pieces, Snake Talk and Old, Jewish and Queer, and Crossing the Broken Bridge, a collaboration with John O’Neal. Most recently she performed in Diamonds in the Dark and the revival of Snake Talk and directed the revival of Berlin, Jerusalem and the Moon and Kabbalah Tango.

Aaron Davidman was appointed ATJT’s first associate artist in 2000. Most recently he co-wrote and performed in ATJT’s God’s Donkey: A Play on Moses. Previously he appeared in ATJT’s 1999 production of Berlin, Jerusalem and the Moon. Davidman’s other acting credits include work with the California and Utah Shakespeare Festivals. As ATJT’s education director, Davidman developed and directed both On the Seventh Day and The Golden Bird, community educational touring productions.

Julian López-Morillas appeared in ATJT’s 1999 production of Berlin, Jerusalem and the Moon. Active in Bay Area theatre since 1973, López-Morillas’ acting and directing work includes many productions with the Berkeley/California Shakespeare Festival and the Berkeley Jewish Theatre, as well as work with the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the Denver Center Theatre Company, the Eureka and Magic Theatres and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Joan Mankin’s most recent credits include Mornings at Seven at the Marin Theatre Company, Comedy of Errors at the Aurora Theatre Company, and You Can’t Take It With You at Theatreworks. She also has worked with the San Francisco and California Shakespeare Festivals, A.C.T., the San Francisco Mime Troupe and the Pickle Family Circus. Mankin appeared in ATJT’s 1999 production of Berlin, Jerusalem and the Moon.

Mark Samuels has been involved in both experimental and traditional theatre for over thirty years as an actor, director, writer and teacher. He has worked with the Living Theater, the Public Theatre, The Open Theatre, The Actors Space, The New York Winter Project, Present Stage and The Baltimore Free Theatre. Samuels worked previously with ATJT as director of the critically acclaimed The Dybbuk.

Robert Sicular is known to Bay Area audiences for his many performances at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, A.C.T., Berkeley/California Shakespeare Festival and numerous other venues. He has also appeared at regional theatres including the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, Denver Center Theatre Company and Washington, DC’s Shakespeare Theatre. Sicular appears in the soon to be released science fiction action comedy film, Never Die Twice.

Helen Stoltzfus the fourth ensemble member of ATJT, is an actor, writer and director. Her many projects for ATJT include co-writing and performing Trotsky and Frida and Heart of the World, directing Sometimes We Need A Story More Than Food, The Fatherless Sky and Heart of the World, writing and performing her solo work, Like a Mother Bear, and co-creating and directing Diamonds in the Dark. A film, Send Word, Bear Mother, based on Like a Mother Bear, was recently released by Crown Sephira Productions.

Norbert Weisser appeared in Taking Sides on Broadway, The Three Sisters at the Dallas Theater Center and The Three Penny Opera and Mary Barnes at Los Angeles’ Odyssey Theater. His directorial credits include Coyote Cycle at the Magic Theatre and Heads at the Mark Taper Forum New Works Festival. Weisser’s numerous film credits include Schindler’s List, Midnight Express, Three Amigos, The Road to Wellville, Chaplin and the recently released Pollock among many others. On television he has appeared in Riders of the Purple Sage, Amelia Earhart and My Antonia.

In 1978 writers/performers Corey Fischer, Albert Greenberg and Naomi Newman founded A Traveling Jewish Theatre. A decade later they were joined by writer/performer Helen Stoltzfus. One of the oldest ensemble theatres in America, ATJT is unique as an artist-led ensemble committed to the exploration of untapped theatrical power in Jewish history, myth, poetry and story. ATJT's collaborative creative process draws from sources as various as secular humanism, ecstatic mysticism, myth, jazz, sacred chant, the legends of the Hasidim, feminist writing and Yiddish poetry. Recognizing the roots of theatre in the realm of the mythic, the sacred and the communal, ATJT takes risks in both the form and content of the theater it creates. A winner of numerous critical awards including honors from Drama-logue and the Bay Area Theater Critics Circle, ATJT also won a lifetime achievement award from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture.

Related Events
A variety of special community programs exploring the impact of the Holocaust on contemporary culture will take place in conjunction with the premiere of See Under: LOVE. A free public symposium, "The Future of the Holocaust: Storytelling, Oppression, and Identity," takes place February 25, 2001 from 10 am to 6 pm at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. David Grossman will give the symposium’s keynote address. To register or for more information about this event call 415-399-1809. A free academic conference featuring David Grossman and Holocaust scholars takes place at UC Santa Cruz on February 23, 2001 from 9:45 am to 4 pm. To register or for more information about this event call 831-459-1225. In February and March Lehrhaus Judaica is offering mini-courses to read and discuss the novel See Under: LOVE. To register or for more information about these courses call 510-845-6420, ext. 11.

Sponsors
In addition to the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays, sponsors of See Under: LOVE include the Koret Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council Challenge Program, the Jewish Community Endowment Fund, the Flintridge Foundation, Moses and Susan Libitzky, the Neufeld-Levin Chair in Holocaust Studies (UC Santa Cruz), the San Francisco Arts Commission, the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, the David B. Gold Foundation, the Robert Sillins Family Fund, the Consulate General of Israel (San Francisco) and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

CALENDAR EDITORS:

See Under: LOVE, a new play by A Traveling Jewish Theatre Co-Artistic Director Corey Fischer based on the ground-breaking novel of the same name by Israeli author David Grossman, confronts the effects of the Holocaust on the modern psyche through a series of daring imaginative leaps. In 1999, Fischer and ATJT received a grant from The Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays—the nation’s most distinguished honor for new theatre—to create and premiere this work.

WHAT: See Under: LOVE
WHO:   Featuring Aaron Davidman, Julian López-Morillas, Joan Mankin, Mark Samuels, Robert Sicular, Helen Stoltzfus and Norbert Weisser as directed by Naomi Newman. Adapted by Corey Fischer from a novel by David Grossman.
WHEN: February 15 – March 25, 2001 (Press Opening: February 19) Thursdays – Saturdays at 8 pm; Sundays at 2 & 7 pm              WHERE: A Traveling Jewish Theatre, 470 Florida Street (between 17th and Mariposa Streets), San Francisco
COST: $25 for all performances; discounts available for seniors, students, and groups. Thursday nights are “pay-what-you-can” at the door (subject to availability).
INFO:415-399-1809
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