PROPOSAL FOR THE GOLEM: FOURTH SLOT, PRODUCTION WORKSHOP, 2001

March 12, 2001

Jeffrey Kurtz

To the Board of Production Workshop,
Approximately 2 years ago, Alix Sobler began a journey. I, now, request to begin a journey of my own: to carry out her vision not to an end, but to a new beginning. Therefore, with great enthusiasm I am proposing to direct The Golem, a new play by Alix Sobler '01, to be performed in Production Workshop's fourth slot, 2001.

The following is a list of the production staff and a draft of the budget:

Production Manager: TBA
Stage Manager: Naomi Kenner
Scene Design: Teresa Wells
Lighting Design: Sam Kusnetz
Assistant Lighting Design: Darius Pierce
Sound Design: Sam Kusnetz
Costume Design: Jillian Waid
Technical Director: Mac Vaughey
Assistant Technical Director: Alex Aixala
Master Electrician: Gayle MacDonald
Assistant Master Electrician: Rachael Miller
Big Brother: Alex Aixala
Mentor: Liz Drew

Budget:

Set construction: $250
Lighting: $0
Sound: $0
Costumes/Props: $150
Publicity: $100

Why do I want to direct The Golem?

The Golem is about many things: triumph in the face of tragedy, the coming of age of the young and the sacrifices of the old, and the bonds of family and friendships. Most significantly, however, this play tells our story: the story of the artist who creates beauty in a world intent on destroying him. This story is not well known outside the artistic community, and I believe that both the PW audiences and the Brown community at large need to hear it.
At the National Theater Institute, we placed three chairs in a barn, and made theater. We risked. We failed. We risked again. What we experienced both as audience and as artists was raw: I call it compassion. It is an empathic understanding of the world, beyond what our senses can perceive directly. Theater, I believe, is ritual storytelling. However, the process of this telling is profound: as artists, we must ingest suffering, and then transform it into beauty. By doing this, we heal, and the power to heal, I believe, is what is most exciting, provocative, and profoundly transcendental about theater.
There is an energy that the artist feels when she enters a theater on the first day of rehearsals, and again on opening night. Whether she knows it or not, this life force is both the power to heal, and the power to change the way an audience sees and relates to the world. In effect, the artist, and thus art itself, has the power to change the world. However, until we in the theatrical community recognize this energy, we will not be able to produce influential art.
The Golem tells the story of a group of artists struggling to heal themselves and their community, through humor and compassion, in the face of overwhelming hate. I want to direct The Golem because, as art, it has the power to heal. I want to direct The Golem because, as a story, it has the potential to expose the hate that remains within the community at large today. I want to direct The Golem because, as a production, it gives the audience the most important tool it needs to heal that hate: compassion.
After every performance of The Golem, I want the audience to leave the theater with a newly acquired respect for, and understanding of, the work we do everyday as artists: how we do it and why we do it. I want to audience to return to the theater, to be healed again. I want the audience to incorporate art into their own lives and their own communities. Most importantly, I want the artists in the audience to recognize their own inherent energy: to harness and nourish it, in order that they, without fail, continue the work that we now begin.

Why is it important to do this play at Brown, at PW and now?

Theater, for me, at its roots, should expose humanity in its most vulnerable state: in its infancy, when compassion is most abundant. Therefore, it's time to reinvent Theater: to return it to its basic elements and its epic potentials. To reinvent theater, both in writing and in production, is to endow it with such compassion. I believe that the current production of King Lear has already begun such a rebirth, and I make it my most important goal in directing The Golem, to continue this journey.
The power of The Golem rests in its simplicity. The story and the characters are easily accessible to the Brown community, and I believe that this community in particular would be eagerly receptive to both the circumstances and the profound "message" (for lack of a better word) of the play. That is why it is important to produce The Golem at Brown.
Producing theater is about collaboration and flexibility; in order to play, we, as artists, must be collaborative and flexible. PW, I believe, because it fosters collaboration and flexibility, can be the tabula rasa of the imagination: the place where we begin to play. PW is above politics and hierarchies; it nourishes only art. Therefore, PW is the only place to tell the artist's story: the story of The Golem. That is why we must produce The Golem at PW.
If we communicate our goals effectively, our art will endure. However, urgency must be of paramount importance in producing great art, because we can never know when our audience may lose interest. In the past month, over 40 people have personally expressed to me their desire to work on The Golem. Why do they want to work on this piece? They want to work on this piece, I believe, because of the play's potential power to change the way we create, produce, and view art, forever. Therefore, we must begin The Golem's journey through PW now, before we lose sight of our purposes.

What is my concept/vision and how do I intend to develop it throughout the production?

The Golem is about theater: how the theatrical illusion often seems more real to the characters than does reality itself. Therefore, I want the production to be raw: to expose the theatrical elements to the audience, as a magician might reveal how he performs his tricks. The scenery will consist of basic elements only: a metal raked stage, a window, a catwalk behind the audience, and a perimeter fence with barbed wire. I want both the actors and the audience to feel, on the one hand, that the broom factory is a safe haven-an escape from nature's harsh elements and the surrounding violence-and, on the other hand, a prison-the walls should seem, at least ostensibly, to confine them. I also want this feeling to extend to the theater itself: the audience would be fenced in by the perimeter fence and barbed wire, and the treatment of the upstairs space and the entrance into the house would reflect both the atmosphere of the Ghetto and the conventions of the Theater.
In order to facilitate the relationship between the actors and the audience, besides the fence that encloses both the stage and the house, I also want the actors (when they're not onstage) to sit among the audience; the audience should feel that the actors' relationship to the stage is no different from their own.
Additionally, I want the broom factory to be represented in only black, white, and shades of gray. Although this may seem like an imitation of Schindler's List, I believe that the hate and violence that pervades the world of the Ghetto is best indicated, within the factory, by a lack of color. However, in contrast to the factory, elements of Jonathan's apartment would be spotted with color, specifically red; as Jonathan is a member of the Jewish Police, his world seems to lie between the monochrome Ghetto and the blood of the Nazi machine. In addition, I have been playing with the idea of having one red object in every scene: objects that have been touched by "outsiders" (e.g. David's apple, the bicycle, Malka's lipstick).
In the end, however, I believe it is most important simply to tell the story. In other words, I don't want the theatrical and symbolic elements obscuring the power and simplicity of the characters, their relationships, or the action.

Why do I want to direct?

I have such a profound feeling to make theater great: to tell a great story in an engaging and powerful way. At the end of fall semester, Alix asked me to read the part of Jonathan in her reading of The Golem, Act I. Thus began an epic. When she asked me to direct the piece, I couldn't have been more excited. For the last month, I've been telling and re-telling the story of The Golem to myself, talking to Alix about the script, and assembling an enthusiastic staff of designers and technicians; I am now ready to change the way we produce theater at Brown, and have a fucking damn good time in the process.
I want to direct for three reasons: first, two semesters ago at the National Theater Institute I took a directing class. I had no prior experience in directing, but it had always been something I wanted to try. I first directed a content-less scene, then an original theatrical adaptation of a painting, and finally a scene from Mathew Maguire's Phaedre. Before we began the Maguire piece, the process seemed overwhelming; intellectually, I had no idea how to make the text come alive or how the actors should be blocked. However, my impulse was to place the scene in the round, and so I had the actors improvise their own blocking in a circular space. The work began to fall into place; all of a sudden, everything seemed to make sense. The only difficulty was that I still didn't know how to communicate what I wanted to the actors. I didn't want to give them line readings, so I tried to give them a reading of the same intention but with different lines. That only worked part of the time, however. Then a friend gave me a copy of William Ball's A Sense of Direction, which contains a chapter on objectives. Specifically, it offers a list of "actable" verbs (i.e. verbs that can be used as tactics, such as "seduce, destroy, flatter, annihilate," etc.). So, I gave the actors this list of verbs, and when their own choices didn't seem right, I would suggest my own. I loved it, and it seemed easy-it felt as though the actors were doing most of the work; I was only guiding them to where they needed to be. I have been fortunate to be able to direct three scenes in TA23 and TA116, but it has been my hope to direct an entire full-length play-nay, an entire production.
Second, at NTI, I also directed a one-act: a new play, written by one of my peers, and produced during a playwriting festival. It was an incredible experience to direct a new play: to feel that I was creating something that had never been done before. Additionally, I learned so much by working directly with the playwright and dramaturging the script. That is why, among other reasons, I am so excited to work on The Golem: we get to witness the birth of a child.
Lastly, I want to learn. Most of my previous work in theater has been onstage, and yet I have always wanted to know how the other elements of a production are designed, executed, and nourished though performance. Directing The Golem would give me the opportunity not only to collaborate with the actors, designers, and staff, but also, more significantly, to learn from them.

What specific plans do I have for the rehearsal process and for working with the actors and the design/technical staff?

If the show were passed, I would want to have auditions next week (the week before spring break), and have our first read-through next Friday (March 23). During that read-through, I would give the actors some background reading material on Judaism, the story of the Golem, and the Nazi occupation of the Warsaw Ghetto. I would also ask them to watch a few movies over spring break, including, but not limited to, Europa, Europa, Schindler's List, Life is Beautiful, The Last Days, and The Golem. Additionally, I may also attempt to organize a voluntary trip to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., during the break.
As per the general schedule of the rehearsal process, after we return from spring break, I want to start out with a second read-through, followed by, at most, two days of table work. Although I have often found that it can be more effective to jump directly into hands-on work, because the circumstances of this particular play require that the actors (and designers) understand and create a complicated, historical reality, I strongly believe it would beneficial to discuss how The Golem represents that reality through the specific characterizations and the mise en scene.
After the table work, I would begin to sketch out a rough blocking plan with the actors, in addition to working on their actions and tactics. I have often found that the best work comes directly from the actors' organic impulses. Therefore, for the first week or so, I would simply let the actors play in the space. At that point, I would begin to shape their work into a more finished piece. What follows is a tentative rehearsal schedule:

Friday, March 23: First Read-Through
Sunday, April 1: Second Read-Through
Monday, April 2: Table/ Background Work
Tuesday, April 3- Thursday, April 5: Sketch out Act I
Friday, April 6: Run Act I
Sunday, April 8- Tuesday, April 10: Sketch out Act II
Wednesday, April 11: Run Act II
Thursday, 12- Friday, 13: Work Act I
Sunday, 15: Design Run Act I
Monday, 16- Tuesday, 17: Work Act II
Wednesday, 18: Design Run Act II
Thursday, 19: Work/Run Act I
Friday, 20: Work/Run Act II
Sunday, 22: Full Design Run-Through
Monday, 23- Tuesday, 24: TBA
Wednesday, 25: Full Design Run-Through
Thursday, 26-Friday, 27: DARK DAYS***
Saturday, 28: Dry Tech (no actors)
Sunday, 29: Wet Tech
Monday, 30: Tech Run
Tuesday, May 1: 1st Dress
Wednesday, May 2: 2nd Dress
Thursday, May 3: Invited Dress
Friday, May 4- Monday, May 7: Performance

***On Thursday, April 26 and Friday, April 27, I will be at the Kennedy Center with EMMA. I have already talked to Sam about using those days as Dark Days, which he seems to appreciate.

I would also like to discuss the work I intend to do during rehearsals. At the beginning of the process, I would like to hand out excerpts from Ball's, A Sense of Direction-specifically from his chapter on Objectives. Although I fully respect each actor's personal process, Ball's lists of "actable" verbs gives the actors and I tools with which we may speak a common language. From there, I would start with ensemble-building activities, and then have the actors try some situational improvisation, using the specific elements of the space. I would also probably use some of the techniques that I have learned in TA23 and TA116, when needed, such as playing scenes all for/to love, sex, would, laughs, etc.
With respect to the designers, I have been meeting with Teresa and Sam over the last week, and I hope to meet with Jillian in a few days. I would like to have a final set design established by our first read-through, rough sketches of the costumes finished by our second read-through (after break), and a rough lighting plot by April 18. As per the script, Alix needs to continue rewriting over spring break. Therefore, I plan to freeze the script with respect to any major changes by April 1, and freeze for all changes by April 11.

Describe a moment from the show to us.

The ending: (The ending of the play is currently under revision. The following description, however, is based on the current version of the script)

As the play enters its final moments, the lights begin to fade gradually from the black and white of the broom factory to harsh, glaring red and white pools. The fence, barbed wire, and Nazi banners along the perimeter are revealed, as is the inside of a train car. As each actor exits the stage (except for Sam, Anne, and Malka), instead of returning to their seats among the audience, they stand in their own specials in front of the audience platforms. The fade is timed so that it is complete by the end of Anne's final line: "We'll live." At this point, the sound of barking dogs is heard, and white searchlights begin to sweep the stage. Each actor tries to escape the lights by darting around the space. Jonathan then guides them, one by one, into the train car, as if it were a safe place to hide, except for Avram, who has been "caught" by one of the lights center stage. When all the actors are inside the car, Jonathan himself steps in, and slams the door shut. Immediately, and simultaneously, the sound cuts off, all light cuts to black (except for the spot on Avram), the train car disappears, and Avram begins to tell his joke. At the end of the joke, applause and a laugh track is heard. The spotlight fades to black. Instantly, the houselight scoops cut to full.

* * *

In proposing The Golem, I am asking the PW board for money, keys, and the right to perform. But I am also asking for more than that. I am asking you to show an audience how we, the theater community, work as artists, how our compassion inspires and sustains art, and how we, all of humanity, must make the cultivation of this compassion our prime directive.
We are ready. We may not succeed, but fuck it. What is important is the process: how we work.

Sincerely,

Jeffrey Kurtz