On Saturday and Sunday my cast did a great job performing "How to Speak Woman." The Sunday performance was particularly fun. The audience loved it and we all went out afterwards to celebrate. It was such a pleasure to work with professional, talented, positive people!
On another note, please accept my apologies - "Sleeping Handsome" has been cancelled.
Monday, December 24, 2007
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
in Berlin
Already there's so much to say...
I'm here in Berlin, one of my favorite cities ever. I was here in August of 2006 on my "world tour" - 10 weeks in Africa and Central Europe - and now I am back. But this time I am doing a program called "Young American Jews Meet Modern Germany" which will soon be renamed "Germany Up Close." It is run by Dr. Dagmar Pruin, a theologian and fascinating woman who is a professor at Humboldt University here in Berlin. (Not the one in California, although that one is named after the same person.)
Anyway, the focus of this trip is Jewish life in Germany in the present, and in order to understand the full scope, we have been learning about history and visiting many memorials and historical sites. I'm fascinated, just devouring every tour guide and German greeter we meet with questions and discussion. (Surprise, I'm curious.)
We met with Karsten Voigt at the Federal Foreign Office - he has a fascinating history of nurturing the Jewish voice in Germany as he believes that the first Jews to be killed in the Nazi regime were really the most advanced socio-political thinkers of the day and the Jewish community is inherently aligned with his political views. Jews have been living in what is now Germany since the time of the Roman Empire - as long as the Germanic tribes, so the history is inextricably linked.
We attended a very full lecture by Peter Berger at the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung on the connections between relativism and fundamentalism - that these are two parallel responses to the challenges of modernity, and that both are detrimental to social order.
Visiting the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was interesting and moving for me despite the fact that I had been there on my previous visit to Berlin. I had many new thoughts and questions. The main thing that came to mind was the "frog in the pot" idea - that little by little the heat is turned up and the frog ends up boiling to death, trying to acclimate at each juncture. Jews tried to accept the civil rights abuses, then the human rights abuses and were finally killed by the Nazis. We can't wait until people are being shot or gassed to react. As is written on a plaque in Bebelplatz, where 20-50,000 books were burned, societies that first begin by burning books later burn people. So true in the case of the Nazis. The memorial itself drives this point home through symbolism - the pillars begin at ground level on the edge of the space but if you walk toward the center, the ground keeps changing and you're eventually surrounded by huge pillars that are two or three times your height. It feels scary and unknown in there, as if you are hiding, hearing the sounds of others but rarely seeing them. As Joe pointed out, you can't fit other than in single file, so you are alone. By not being able to band together, you lose a lot of power, and this is what regimes like the Nazis want.
Lejb Langfus wrote in 1944 that Jewish women on the horribly cramped cattle cars to the camps exchanged their wedding rings for a sip of water...they were so desperate! I thought of Esau in Genesis and how he sold his birthright to Jacob for a hot meal - he said "what use in the birthright to me when I am on the point of death?" This is always read as Esau "spurning" the birthright but if we consider the desperation a person feels when starved, perhaps there is another way to look at his situation and Jacob should have taken the high road.
This morning we visited the Wannsee House where the conference of high-ranking officials took place to plan the Final Solution on 20 January 1942. Our guide, Elke Gryglevski, lived in Israel as a volunteer in teh Action Reconciliation Services for Peace, which helps countries that were negatively affected by the Nazi regime. There is a much stronger relationship between Israel and Germany than I was previously aware of.
We also visited Mahnmal Gleis 17, where Jews were carted off to the camps from the Grunewald train station - just a few feet from the nearest house. In fact, this neighborhood was 40% Jewish before the war. The memorial was beautifully symbolic of the weakening of society when some elements are removed - it was a cement wall with human body shapes hollowed out. People just disappeared, dropped off the face of the earth when they were taken away to the camps.
I'm here in Berlin, one of my favorite cities ever. I was here in August of 2006 on my "world tour" - 10 weeks in Africa and Central Europe - and now I am back. But this time I am doing a program called "Young American Jews Meet Modern Germany" which will soon be renamed "Germany Up Close." It is run by Dr. Dagmar Pruin, a theologian and fascinating woman who is a professor at Humboldt University here in Berlin. (Not the one in California, although that one is named after the same person.)
Anyway, the focus of this trip is Jewish life in Germany in the present, and in order to understand the full scope, we have been learning about history and visiting many memorials and historical sites. I'm fascinated, just devouring every tour guide and German greeter we meet with questions and discussion. (Surprise, I'm curious.)
We met with Karsten Voigt at the Federal Foreign Office - he has a fascinating history of nurturing the Jewish voice in Germany as he believes that the first Jews to be killed in the Nazi regime were really the most advanced socio-political thinkers of the day and the Jewish community is inherently aligned with his political views. Jews have been living in what is now Germany since the time of the Roman Empire - as long as the Germanic tribes, so the history is inextricably linked.
We attended a very full lecture by Peter Berger at the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung on the connections between relativism and fundamentalism - that these are two parallel responses to the challenges of modernity, and that both are detrimental to social order.
Visiting the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was interesting and moving for me despite the fact that I had been there on my previous visit to Berlin. I had many new thoughts and questions. The main thing that came to mind was the "frog in the pot" idea - that little by little the heat is turned up and the frog ends up boiling to death, trying to acclimate at each juncture. Jews tried to accept the civil rights abuses, then the human rights abuses and were finally killed by the Nazis. We can't wait until people are being shot or gassed to react. As is written on a plaque in Bebelplatz, where 20-50,000 books were burned, societies that first begin by burning books later burn people. So true in the case of the Nazis. The memorial itself drives this point home through symbolism - the pillars begin at ground level on the edge of the space but if you walk toward the center, the ground keeps changing and you're eventually surrounded by huge pillars that are two or three times your height. It feels scary and unknown in there, as if you are hiding, hearing the sounds of others but rarely seeing them. As Joe pointed out, you can't fit other than in single file, so you are alone. By not being able to band together, you lose a lot of power, and this is what regimes like the Nazis want.
Lejb Langfus wrote in 1944 that Jewish women on the horribly cramped cattle cars to the camps exchanged their wedding rings for a sip of water...they were so desperate! I thought of Esau in Genesis and how he sold his birthright to Jacob for a hot meal - he said "what use in the birthright to me when I am on the point of death?" This is always read as Esau "spurning" the birthright but if we consider the desperation a person feels when starved, perhaps there is another way to look at his situation and Jacob should have taken the high road.
This morning we visited the Wannsee House where the conference of high-ranking officials took place to plan the Final Solution on 20 January 1942. Our guide, Elke Gryglevski, lived in Israel as a volunteer in teh Action Reconciliation Services for Peace, which helps countries that were negatively affected by the Nazi regime. There is a much stronger relationship between Israel and Germany than I was previously aware of.
We also visited Mahnmal Gleis 17, where Jews were carted off to the camps from the Grunewald train station - just a few feet from the nearest house. In fact, this neighborhood was 40% Jewish before the war. The memorial was beautifully symbolic of the weakening of society when some elements are removed - it was a cement wall with human body shapes hollowed out. People just disappeared, dropped off the face of the earth when they were taken away to the camps.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
I'm directing a show!
I am directing "How to Speak Woman" by Ray Payton, produced by Theatervision/Playtime. It will perform at the National Comedy Theater on December 22 and 23 at 5pm.
It's really exciting because I have put together a great cast - Alex Rascovar, Julia Wolfermann, Hermann Eppert and Kristen Abate. Van Truster is assistant directing.
"How to Speak Woman" is the story of David, a lovably clueless guy who gets dumped by Tabitha and learns from a mysterious man named Grayson how to have a happy relationship with Debbie.
It's exciting to be on the other side of the script, but don't worry - I'm not done acting. On December 27, my other show, Sleeping Handsome, goes up at Nicu's Spoon Theater.
For tickets to "How to Speak Woman" please visit http://www.ovationtix.com/trs/cal/167
For tickets to "Sleeping Handsome" please email info@spoontheater.org
Hope to see you at the theaters!
It's really exciting because I have put together a great cast - Alex Rascovar, Julia Wolfermann, Hermann Eppert and Kristen Abate. Van Truster is assistant directing.
"How to Speak Woman" is the story of David, a lovably clueless guy who gets dumped by Tabitha and learns from a mysterious man named Grayson how to have a happy relationship with Debbie.
It's exciting to be on the other side of the script, but don't worry - I'm not done acting. On December 27, my other show, Sleeping Handsome, goes up at Nicu's Spoon Theater.
For tickets to "How to Speak Woman" please visit http://www.ovationtix.com/trs/cal/167
For tickets to "Sleeping Handsome" please email info@spoontheater.org
Hope to see you at the theaters!
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