Notes on Moonwatcher from Director Corey Fischer

It took TJT almost twenty-five years to come up with what now seems like such an obvious idea: an annual, family-oriented play for the Chanukah season.  To unpack all the reasons this took us so long might tell you a lot about growing up, growing old and growing community as Jews and artists in North America. 

TJT began its existence as a theatre in search of a community. In the late seventies, when we started out, we were young Jewish theatre-makers with a passion for connecting our heritage and our art. Our first audiences in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco came mainly from the ranks of  “unaffiliated” Jews like us who did not relate to the organized Jewish world.  We also attracted many non-Jews who were simply interested in innovative, unusual theatre.  We often toured to places like Oslo, Norway, or Whitesburg, Kentucky, where there might me no Jews at all in the audience.

After we settled in the Bay Area in 1982, we began to move slowly closer to the Jewish Community here. We discovered like-minded colleagues among the Jewish artists, academics and cultural workers of the area. A number of rabbis appreciated what we were doing and encouraged temple members to see our work.  Eventually, we even became a beneficiary of the Jewish Federation, who, along with several “Jewish” foundations and many individuals helped us create our own TJT theatre space, our “Home for the Imagination” at 470 Florida Street.  This outpouring of support made us realize that we were, indeed, part of a community.  Within the vibrant, inclusive, unpredictable Jewish life of the Bay Area, we had found a home. While we are still gratified that a significant part of our audience is not Jewish, we have come to feel a new sense of responsibility to the Jewish community of the Bay Area who have invested so much in our vision. 

You also need to realize that, unlike twenty-five years ago, most of the company members now have growing families that include children and, yes, grandchildren. In all our years of making theatre, we really hadn’t produced anything for our kids. So, in 2002 we started creating something that children and adults could enjoy together: an accessible, funny, music-filled, beautiful celebration we could give to our community. We decided to avoid the over-seriousness of a retelling of the Chanukah story itself, and instead, chose to visit the zany world of Chelm, exemplar of the kind of foolery that has inspired Jewish humor from folktale to vaudeville, from anonymous jokes to the sophisticated Chelm tales of I.B. Singer. We also returned to our early fascination with masks and puppets, so present in our first few plays. In a world glutted with computer-generated special effects, we want young folks to experience this simple and powerful magic. 

My two and a half year-old grandson River came to rehearsals and sat in rapt attention watching puppets sing and clowns dance.  Encouraged, we brought him to a performance which equally enthralled him.  We learned a lot from last year’s Moonwatcher. Number one: Bay Area Jews were delighted to have an alternative to Nutcrackers and Scrooges for holiday entertainment. Number two: there was a lot we could do to integrate the various elements of the piece into a more satisfying whole.

 Benefiting from our many years of  reworking and rewriting our plays over a long period, Aaron Davidman, Eric Rhys Miller, Daniel Hoffman and I went back to work last summer.  We tossed out everything that didn’t work, re-envisioned the main characters, added new songs, and found what seems to be a much more satisfying plot line.  This year, we have a larger venue and the excitement of a live band.  And we have you and your families, our reason for doing this work in the first place. We hope you’ll continue to participate in the growth of Moonwatcher from season to season, from moon to moon.