Written by Chauncey Mabe | 01 March 2010

By Chauncey Mabe

Doris Kearns Goodwin is a historian with a great sense of timing.

Already a Pulitzer Prize winner for No Ordinary Time, her 1995 dual biography of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Goodwin was basking in the fading glow of her 2005 Abraham Lincoln book, Team of Rivals, when she received a call from an upstart presidential candidate named Barack Obama.

“He said, ‘I’ve just read ‘Team of Rivals,’ and we have to talk,” Goodwin recalls. “Hillary was still way ahead. He was not thinking about putting his cabinet together but about the qualities Lincoln had as a person.”

Of course, Obama went on to unseat front-runner Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination and then easily defeat Republican challenger John McCain to become the first African-American president -- and “team of rivals” became a phrase closely associated with the new administration.

“Lincoln crosses a wide swatch of the political spectrum,” Goodwin says. “George Bush looked up to Lincoln, and Sarah Palin has said 'Team of Rivals' is her favorite book, too. Ida Tarbell said in 1900 so many people write about Lincoln because he’s so companionable.”

Born in Brooklyn, educated at Harvard, where she earned a Ph.D. in government in 1968, Goodwin was only 23 when Lyndon Johnson offered her a job in his White House. After Johnson left office, she helped him prepare his memoirs, leading directly to her first book, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (1977).

Goodwin’s other books include The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys (1987), and the baseball memoir Wait Till Next Year (1997). She’s married to Richard Goodwin, the playwright and former presidential speechwriter portrayed by actor Rob Morrow in the 1994 film, Quiz Show.

Goodwin, who now winters in Palm Beach County, will appear at the Festival of the Arts Boca –- which opens Friday -- both alone and with Richard. She sat down with Chauncey Mabe recently to talk about Lincoln, Obama, baseball, and the art and craft of biography.

Mabe: Thanks in part to Obama’s appreciation of your book, the president has been compared to Lincoln. How do you think he’s fared over the first year?

Goodwin: When I comment on contemporary affairs, I like to come with a historical perspective. There is always something history can tell you. For example, JFK’s first year was considered a disaster. Obama faced many more challenges, without so many disasters, but his approval rating has inevitably slipped.

One thing you do learn after one year is the temperament of the new leader that will be there in years two, three and four. We’ve learned some positive things. He’s very steady in a crisis, admits his mistakes, he’s very articulate at explaining things. He may have learned he has to deal with Congress in a different way, really exert leadership over Congress.

Mabe: How does that compare with Lincoln’s first year?

Goodwin: With Lincoln we have 200 years of hindsight to see what an extraordinary figure he was. But after the first year no one believed that. He had lost the first battle of Bull Run, the country had split apart, the war was not going well. But the kind of person he was did win out. It takes time for any leader to grow into the role. The extent to which Obama looks up to Lincoln is a good thing. Why not have as mentor our greatest president?

Mabe: Speaking of perspective, what are your thoughts on LBJ now, more than 30 years after your first book?

Goodwin: I think as the years go by, LBJ’s place in history will grow. When he died [in 1973], the Vietnam War was still a scar on his legacy, and it will remain one, but when we look at what LBJ accomplished in domestic politics, there’s been nothing like him since. Civil rights legislation, voting rights, Medicare, beautification, the War on Poverty. What he did will be given its rightful place despite the war.

Mabe: Which is harder – writing the biography of a figure you knew, or that of someone in the distant past?

Goodwin: In some ways, the deader they are, the easier it is. In my first book, I knew LBJ so well, and he was such a vibrant figure, the problem becomes ho w to remove yourself sufficiently so you can criticize as well as applaud. On the other hand, as you go back in time there are fewer and fewer witnesses to interview. Even when writing about the Roosevelts, I found people still alive with wonderful stories.

As you go back in time, you become more dependent on diaries, handwritten letters. In some ways that’s the most treasured source. I worry about how diaries and letters are not written today. What will future historians do? At least there are e-mails and blogs, which makes up for the period when people mostly talked on the phone.

Mabe: What makes your books so popular with readers?

Goodwin: History is a series of stories about people that lived in another time. When people say they hated history, they mean the memorization of dates and facts. Part of what allows you to reach a larger audience is if you can tell a story. My skill is bringing character to life. [Historian] Arthur Schlesinger has the talent to write big sweeping historical books. I could not do that. I start with characters and go outward.

Mabe: So you chose to write about Lincoln, possibly the most written-about figure in history, because of the characters surrounding him?

Goodwin: At the beginning, I was attracted to Lincoln precisely because so much had been written about him. Ida Tarbell said in 1900 so many people wrote about Lincoln because he’s so companionable. It takes me a long time to write a history, years. I could not wake up every morning, knowing I was going to spend the day with Hitler or Stalin.

After the Roosevelt book and World War II, the only thing as big was the Civil War, which was scary, as I had not studied the 19^th century. I told myself I was writing to learn. Originally I thought I’d write about Abe and Mary, but Mary couldn’t carry the public side of the story in the ways Eleanor Roosevelt could.  I realized he was spending more time with his Cabinet than with his wife. I saw I could use these characters to reflect back on Lincoln.

Mabe: Why have you settled on Boca as your winter home? You could live anywhere, right?

Goodwin: We’ve lived in Mizner Park since January. It’s great. It’s been a brutal winter in Boston. We went to L.A. one winter and it was wonderful, but it’s so much farther. We have grandchildren now. We’ve spent time in Naples, too. We’re huge baseball fans. When the Dodgers left Brooklyn I was so devastated I couldn’t follow baseball for a few years. Then we moved to Boston and found a team like the Dodgers, with a small park and rabid fans.

Mabe: This is your second time at the Boca Festival of the Arts. What are you going to talk about?

Goodwin: I’d like to be able to look back over the course of a long career writing biographies, telling the stories of people I’ve lived with. It takes a long time to write my books. It took longer to write the Roosevelt biography than it took to win World War II. I really do feel like I know the people I write about.

The festival is wonderful. They have music, movies, as well as literature. I’m going to interview Richard on Saturday. He has fabulous stories about the Kennedys and LBJ. He wrote LBJ’s civil rights speech, one of the great speeches of the 20^th century. He was with Bobby Kennedy when he died. My husband was also the investigator in the quiz show scandals, played by Rob Morrow in the Robert Redford film.

His achievements are extraordinary. Most recently he wrote a play about Galileo and Pope Urban [The Hinge of the World]. He’s an amazing writer. It will be fun to have a conversation. Richard went to Harvard, first in his class, president of the Law Review, clerk for Justice Frankfurter. And he never practiced law a day in his life. He found a life of public service instead.

Mabe: I understand your son volunteered for the Army after 9/11?

Goodwin: We’re proud. Yes, our youngest son [Joseph] had just graduated from Harvard and was set to go to law school, but he volunteered for the Army. He served as a platoon leader in Iraq. And then he was working for NBC when he was called up for service in Afghanistan. That became his 20s. An experience he would not otherwise have seen, coming from affluent Concord and Harvard, if he had not volunteered. 

Doris Kearns Goodwin appearances

Doris Kearns Goodwin at Festival of the Arts Boca: Monday, March 8, at 7 p.m. The Art and Craft of Biography: Living with Johnson, Kennedy, Roosevelt and Lincoln. At the Schmidt Family Centre  for the Arts, Mizner Park, downtown Boca Raton. Tickets: $25-50. 

Doris Kearns Goodwin and Richard Goodwin: an Interview: Saturday, March 13, 4 p.m. Inside the White House with JFK, Jackie, Bobby and LBJ. Cultural Arts Center, second floor. Mizner Park, downtown Boca Raton. Tickets: $25-50.

For more information, visit the festival site at www.festivaloftheartsboca.org.

Written by Sharon McDaniel | 09 February 2010

Ballet Florida canceled the remainder of its season in March 2009. Wrecked by severe cash flow problems and long-term debt, the company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation in July.

Yet for 23 years, Ballet Florida was the resident contemporary and classical ballet company of West Palm Beach. Its fine balance of the new and the traditional made it a one-of-a-kind.

Now, all that remains are its former studio on Fern Street (just purchased by Palm Beach Atlantic University) and an enormous vacuum in the dance community. Once a company – a family, really -- of 23, Ballet Florida has left dancers widely scattered, many still performing, many more teaching, choreographing and freelancing.

You would think that would be the end of Marie Hale, the company’s artistic director and founder. You would be wrong. Talking with Hale in the deep-red Fern Street domain that she can still call her office, you would find her still a bit nostalgic, but looking forward with the determination.

Although in her 70s, Hale has decided to begin again – from scratch. She closed the company and school in July. But she promptly reopened a new school, Dance Florida Academy, on Sept. 18 (enrollment: 180 students). Hale begins as she did more than three decades ago: teaching aspiring young dancers and giving them opportunities to perform in public.

Still with her is the company’s core artistic team, as master teachers: Lynda Swiadon, Hale’s colleague for 44 years; Claudia Cravey; Steven Hoff; and as director/administrator, Joseph J. Bucheck III. Aside from teaching, they’re doubling up on job duties, doing whatever it takes to help the new venture survive.

As Ballet Florida began its long, slow decline, there were some wrenching near-misses and chilling ironies -- and some urban legends that Hale wants to dispel.

On a cool, gray, raining and equally depressing December morning, we sit down to chat. The first thing you notice is the unnatural stillness, emptiness and quiet in the Fern Street building. Just six months ago, it was an ever-bustling stage: home to aspiring youngsters, but especially, headquarters of a remarkable company and its inspiring dancers. 

McDaniel: So, where is everybody? Where have the dancers gone?

Hale: Everybody else – besides me and Lynda and Joey and Claudia and Steve – they’re all over the place. Tina Martin and Heather Lescaille (wife of retired company dancer-turned-firefighter Alfredo Lescaille), who taught in the (Ballet Florida) school, opened their own school down on South Dixie Highway. (The Florida Dance Conservatory opened in June.)

Jean-Hughes Féray actually had planned for a while that when he retired, he wanted to open a school way north. So he’s up in Abacoa.

Rogelio Corrales’ wife has had a school in Port St. Lucie (St. Lucie Ballet) for a long time. So Rogelio is helping her (along with company dancers Tracy Mozingo and Lorena Jimenez, and choreographer Jerry Opdenaker).

And who knows, maybe next year, in 2010 -- or maybe the next year -- I’ll get some students from Jean-Hughes and Rogelio and we’ll do a Nutcracker and bring in some professional dancers. But not at the Kravis. It amazes me that I could have the Kennedy Center for what I pay at Kravis. 

[Note: Other company dancers, including Yomelia Garcia, now a principal dancer with The Joffrey Ballet, and Deborah Marquez will return to West Palm Beach as guest teachers of Hale’s new academy. Choreographers Ben Stevenson of Texas Ballet Theatre and Mauricio Wainrot of Ballet Contemporaneo del Teatro San Martin of Buenos Aires will be on the guest-teaching schedule as well.]

McDaniel: How long did you go through the agony of shutting down?

Hale: Four years! It was four years ago last March that a couple members of the board first suggested that we might have to go under. So if anyone’s blaming it on the economy, that’s not true. We’ve always had problems. But then it just got to be worse and worse. In the last four years, I would wake up in the night worried.

I had the budget I was planning for 2009-10 -- which is now. (But trying to keep the company afloat), I straightaway cut $1 million. And just before we closed, I cut even more. I said, “OK, we’ll cut fall performances and come back in November, just in time to present the Nutcracker, and we’ll finish the season early, at the end of March [2010].” So I was planning already to cut back even drastically more. But then, we closed.

McDaniel: After you had already cut back so much, what pushed you over the edge? What was the last straw?

Hale: I guess the last straw was that we couldn’t make payroll. Ed (Sandall, Hale’s husband) had given and given and given, you know, and we just couldn’t make the payroll. And it was March, and we had performed Cinderella, and we couldn’t pay the crew. And we couldn’t pay the Kravis; we owe them money. We still owe the dancers two-and-a-half paychecks for five weeks’ work. 

McDaniel: How were the ticket sales?

Hale: Ticket sales were doing pretty good, pretty good.

And Juan (Escalante, company executive director) did work this out: the city was going to buy the [Ballet Florida] building and pay us so much money, and we could stay here for five years, for $1 a year. But before (we declared bankruptcy), the attorney on our board said, “I think we have to sell the building.” So she gave it to a broker. We told the broker that we wanted to sell it, but we would have to have quite a few months’ notice. We need to spend the rest of the season here and we can’t just move 400 students at the drop of a hat.

The broker brought one client here to see the building, and this client said, “I’m interested but they’re gonna have to get out in two weeks.” And so we said no.

And then, when the city was going to buy it, this broker sent us a bill for $180,000 as his commission. So then the city and the commissioners and the mayor said they were not interested in $180,000 of city money going to this man. And so they refused to buy it. So that lawsuit is still going on. 

McDaniel: But what created all the previous deficits, the past debts?

Hale: The attitude is out there that we overspent. And we didn’t. We were so frugal. Al Mathers (production manager) would sit up all night to save $5 over at the Kravis Center. Since 1986, productions came in under budget. Every expense for every ballet was accounted for: every plane ticket, every hotel room, every costume.

But the office staff would say, “We can get this fabulous copier that prints in color and does this and that and only costs $1,000-plus!” That was never in the budget. It was the board and the administration that overspent.

And then, too, you remember that last season we did Cleopatra [a full-length Ben Stevenson ballet]. Well, the production itself was built by Houston Ballet, Boston Ballet and Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre – they shared the production costs of $2 million. So (the staff) advertised that we were doing a $2 million production -- as if we were paying $2 million dollars. I rented it from Houston for $25,000!

There’s a big difference: $25,000 versus $2 million!

And I heard that someone that said, “My God, no wonder they went bankrupt! What did she spend $2 million on this one ballet for?” And you just want to scream!

McDaniel: What is your biggest wish right now?

Hale: Right now, it’s getting a location that’s big enough to do what we need to do, and cheap enough that we can pay for it. Because we need a lot of room, you know. (As a dance school,) we need high ceilings. It’s hard to find an open space that doesn’t have supporting posts. 

McDaniel: Do you have any regrets?

Hale: Regrets? Not really. I don’t know how it would be possible to do a better job choosing the dancers or the ballets. (The dancers and I) got along really well and I was always so good to them. And I don’t know how I could have done anything different that would have made it better.

It just looked like everywhere I turned -- at the Eissey Theatre in March, I walked off the stage – into the pit. I literally fell off the stage into the pit! But do you know I was not hurt at all? I was shocked, yes, I was very surprised. But I didn’t even break a fingernail -- nothing! And I think that was a premonition of what was coming, because Claudia said, you know, every time Marie tries to get up, something else knocks her down.  

McDaniel: Had you considered retiring?

Hale: No, not at all. What would I do? As of August, I’ve been teaching for 56 years. I know so much! I feel obligated to pass it on.  

Dance Florida Academy, currently at 500 Fern St. in West Palm Beach, provides classes in ballet, tap, jazz, hip-hop, Zumba, voice and piano to children and adults. Call (561)832-8941 or visit www.dancefloridaacademy.com.

Written by Hap Erstein | 06 January 2010

 

On Nov. 30, Florida Stage and the Kravis Center announced a partnership agreement in which the Manalapan theater company that specializes in developing new plays would move its operation to the Rinker Playhouse, a flexible “black box” performance space within the West Palm Beach complex, beginning in July 2010.

In mid-December, Palm Beach ArtsPaper’s Hap Erstein sat down with Florida Stage’s producing  director Louis Tyrrell to discuss the ramification of such a move.

Erstein: How did this Florida Stage-Kravis Center partnership begin?

Tyrrell: We talk all the time, (Kravis CEO) Judy Mitchell and I. We’re really common spirits. We’ve been talking since we did Shakespeare together, the year we moved here (to Manalapan).

They began thinking about how they could maximize their revenue in this economy, in the face of everybody being hurt and donations being affected -- for us as well -- so all of us were thinking out of the box.

Erstein: Hadn’t you put the idea of moving on hold because of the economy?

Tyrrell: Well, we had certainly put the idea of moving into our own 5, 10, 20-million-dollar facility on hold. We put it in the deep freeze. It didn’t make financial sense. But what did make sense was the kind of collaboration that this partnership represents, a perfect example of how you can circle your wagons, reduce your costs and upgrade the art and the audience experience.

Erstein: Were you starting to have difficulties with the management of Plaza del Mar?

Tyrrell: Increased rent is difficult in this environment to absorb. The reality of any tenant in a commercial property is if you’re there 19-20 years -- this is our 19th season here -- the small incremental increases of, say, 3 percent add up considerably. We started by paying $100,000 a year, our rent here is now $330,000 a year.

Yeah, you can add a dollar or two every so often (to the ticket price), but you get to the point where you’ve hit that ceiling and it has to come from contributed income. And if you are all of a sudden in an environment where contributed income is going down, you’ve got to be as creative about the budgeting as with what you hope to put on the stage.

Erstein: You had to be pretty creative to see the potential in the Rinker Playhouse space.

Tyrrell: I’m ecstatic with the outcome of what we’ve designed for it, because it gives us the potential for 25 to 50 additional seats and yet it doesn’t put the back row any further from the stage than we are here.

We will have 30 feet in height for the possibility of two-story sets and for expanded lighting designs, for special effects. In every way it improves our production values.

Erstein: What details of the move had to be ironed out?

Tyrrell: We had to make sure that the schedule that we needed was in the ball park of what is available. They’re still programming there. In this first year, the (Palm Beach) Opera will still be using it incrementally for rehearsals. And the Kravis Center still wanted to have several weeks where they could bring in shows, The Capital Steps or whatever.

The compromise that we made, at least initially, was that we’ll go back to four plays during the season (instead of five) and a summer musical that we’ll create. Three of the four productions will be five weeks apiece and the fourth will be six weeks, because it will be a new musical creation which typically plays to a wider audience.

The hope also is that we’ll have to add Tuesday night performances. That adds four performances, so a four-week run would only be cut by four performances.

Erstein: Did you poll your subscribers about the move?

Tyrrell: Anecdotally. Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of them are not only positive about it, but thrilled about it. We have encountered the two or three negative responses, people who say things like, “But I live across the street.…”

There are questions about the reconfiguration, which are natural. Y’know, “How will my seats look in the new space?” and those are all questions we’ll be answering in the days ahead.

Erstein: Did you do any market research about potential new audiences you might gain?

Tyrrell: The demographic research very clearly shows that the growth in Palm Beach County is west and north. As we know, Palm Beach Gardens has just exploded with people who are likely to want to come to our programs at the Kravis. As well as West Palm Beach itself. To be in the hub of the county, right in the middle of the community, with the kind of programming that we offer, we expect a tremendous response in the 30, 40, 50s-somethings community, because the work that we’re doing plays very centrally to a younger esthetic.

Erstein: Do you think your programming will change at the Kravis?

Tyrrell: No, not in terms of the type of play that we’re doing. It will simply give me a chance to consider material that I find difficult to consider here, from a technical perspective. Plays that require two stories. This will give me an opportunity, from a design perspective, to really bring those plays to life.

Erstein: What is the potential for gaining new donors?

Tyrrell: Very clearly the Kravis Center is world-class in their fund-raising operation. The community feels very comfortable contributing to programming in that building.. So we feel it will provide us enhanced opportunities for fund-raising.

Erstein: What about conflicts with the Kravis’s fund-raising efforts?

Tyrrell: We said to Judy (Mitchell), “How do we make sure we don’t step on your toes?” And she said, “I don’t have toes that are step-on-able.” She was very open in that regard. She said, “People should have the opportunity to support a menu of cultural offerings that we may be providing, you among them.” That’s so classy, so smart and so right.

We’ve been given a grant by the Addison Hines Charitable Trust, which is a perfect example of why we think it will be easier to raise money when we are at the Kravis Center. Because in their letter to us giving us the $50,000 grant to make the move, they said that Addison Hines would want to be remembered at the Kravis Center.

Erstein: Does Florida Stage have any formal fund-raising plans?

Tyrrell: For our 25th anniversary, the 2011-2012 season, we’ll be starting a capital campaign now, which will give us two and a half years to raise $2.5 million for our 25th anniversary. A million dollars for endowment, a million for cash reserve and $500,000 as a lead gift for the naming of the stage.

Erstein: Will you have your own separate box office?

Tyrell: Yes. We’re going to initially have our box office as we have had it. Change is hard for people. So at least initially, we want to provide people with the same level of service, the sane phone numbers they can call, the same people who they’re used to speaking to here. But the Kravis has a world class box office operation, so we are looking forward to making blocks of tickets available through their box office too.

Erstein: Separate marketing department?

Tyrrell: Well, we’ll have separate marketing, but we hope to benefit from a presence in the Kravis brochure every year and we’ll want to piggyback on their world-class marketing machine. They’re really good at what they do. Why would we not want to take advantage of that?

Erstein: You are renting the Rinker, and that means you will have to pay for reconfiguring it to your specifications?

Tyrrell: That’s right. But the reconfiguration, relative to building a new theater, is pocket change. It’s under $500,000.

Erstein: Will it be flexible enough to have different set-ups for various plays?

Tyrrell: Yeah, that potential is there. If we add another section of seats, it becomes an arena, a theater-in-the-round, should we ever want to do that.

Erstein: What will your rent be?

Tyrrell: I think it amounts to, including offices, something like $250,000 a year.. But that’s totally inclusive. It includes all the utilities, all the facility management and security issues. Out of the gate, for the use of the theater, it is $130,000 less (than Manalapan)and then utilities are about $120,000 a year saved. That’s if we didn’t ever have to replace a A/C unit. We have ten of them on the roof. Every year so far that we’ve been here, one‘s gone out at $30,000 a pop. So when you start adding in those things, you realize very quickly it is a cool $250,000 savings.

Erstein: Have you calculated what ticket prices in your first Kravis season will be?

Tyrrell: Having just last year raised our prices two or three dollars, we’re not looking at raising our tickets right away. We feel very strongly about remaining accessible from a cost perspective.

Erstein: Is this an interim move to get you past the rough economy, until you can afford your ideal theater?

Tyrrell: I see it as a permanent home. I love the idea of the implied collaboration. I love the idea that the Kravis Center will now have a complete cultural offering including a resident theater company with a mission like ours.

With the economic shift that’s happened over the last couple of years, it would be foolish to think that it is just a momentary glitch in the economic realities. This is the new normal.

Erstein: Haven’t you long wanted to have a second space for develop less accessible material?

Tyrrell: I think what is in the cards, and Judy, Lee Bell (Kravis senior director of programming) and I have talked about this, is a possible cabaret operation up in what they call a rehearsal hall. I call it a second black box, where there can be the sort of experimental work can be developed and produced.

Erstein: Will your sets still to be built in your existing scene shop in West Palm Beach?

Tyrell: Yes, which is much closer to the Kravis than it is to here.

Erstein: What about your rehearsal space and costume shop in Lantana?

Tyrrell: We’re not sure. The lease on our rehearsal space carries on for another year, which will give us a good opportunity to determine what we want to do. We figure it’s enough to move the theater and the offices for now. It may make sense later to look for space in West Palm Beach proper.

Erstein: What about housing for your out-of-town actors?

Tyrrell: It would be great to try to convince some of our donors to purchase the very affordable apartments that are in CityPlace or elsewhere in downtown West Palm Beach. For investment purposes, right now is the time to acquire the kind if space that a theater like ours would need for visiting artists. For donors that would want to make that kind of investment, it will probably only appreciate in the years to come. If they could then make a contribution to the theater through the use of those units or charge a nominal rent that we could afford, that would be ideal.

Erstein: What challenges loom ahead, as you see them?

Tyrrell: The challenges that I am now able to focus on as I approach my 60th birthday are kind of fun. For my 40th birthday, we moved here, so here we are 20 years later and I get to have the birthday present of moving to a new theater at the Kravis Center. I’m thinking in terms of the inauguration of a Florida cycle of plays. This will to be to establish a fund that will commission 20 and more plays on Florida stories.

I tried to think of some minuses and found it really difficult to come up with things. As I said, change is hard for people in general. But we think that’s going to be minimal here, because of the fact that virtually everybody who comes to Florida Stage has been to and goes regularly to the Kravis Center. And then there are tens of thousands of people who go there who don’t come here, so that’s a plus.

My drive to work will be longer.

Written by Greg Stepanich | 30 November 2009

 

When James Judd takes the stage during the first week of December to lead the Boca Raton Symphonia and the Master Chorale of South Florida in three performances of George Frideric Handel’s oratorio Messiah in Boca, Miami and Fort Lauderdale, it will mark his first appearances with local musicians since 2001.

The former conductor of the Florida Philharmonic has been busy leading orchestras all over the world since then, notably as music director of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, with whom he recorded frequently on the Naxos label, particularly in the work of Douglas Lilburn, New Zealand’s most eminent composer.

At 60, Judd’s home base is still a house in Fort Lauderdale, where he lives with his wife and daughter. The British conductor is currently heading up the Miami Music Project, a music-education initiative in the Miami-Dade County public schools working off a three-year, $1 million grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Palm Beach ArtsPaper’s Greg Stepanich spoke with Judd on Nov. 9 in his spacious studio, once a garage but now given over to a piano, scores and books. What follows are transcribed excerpts of their conversation, with questions edited for length and clarity.

Stepanich: The Messiah performances will be your return to local stages. So, are you back?

Judd: Well, we’ve always maintained this house, actually. We’ve been here. My daughter’s in school in Florida. For a while we were living between London and Florida, and she had two schools. The notion was that my wife and daughter could be a bit closer to me, because now I work about a third of my year in Europe, about a third in Asia, Australia and New Zealand, and about a third in North America, South America. I work quite a lot in Canada, every year a few times.

But that became too complicated and crazy. So we’ve been actually living here, my daughter goes to school at Nova, she’s 15. We’re here, there just hasn’t been anything to do here.  But now, the Miami Music Project, which I just volunteered for, that’s my passion. Locally we have this incredible opportunity.

So the chorus asked me: Would I like to do Messiah? And I had this time free, and I thought it would be fantastic. Because you know, we started the chorus all those years ago, and they were just getting better and better and better. And I thought it would be lovely, because I’ve done Messiah in different places in the last years, in Seattle, in San Antonio, last year was up in Ottawa. From time to time you get asked to do it, and I’m always thinking, you know, God, it would be so nice to work again with the chorus and with musicians from here. And it’s actually worked!

Stepanich: So you’re doing the complete Messiah?

Judd: Yes.

Stepanich: Not just the Christmas portion?

Judd: No.  I’m a real believer that Handel was very careful about the way he organized the story and the way he wanted to tell it. And so when we can, I think we should try to perform it complete. It’s a wonderful drama, isn’t it? It’s not an oratorio, it’s an opera. At times it’s so amazing, the pacing is so incredible.
And so I love the timespan of it.

Stepanich: We see a lot of performances of Messiah at this time of year. It’s always struck me that a lot of it is very difficult for amateur choirs.

Judd: Well, there’s a lot of it, isn’t there? Last week, I was doing [Mendelssohn’s] Elijah in Australia, and realized: My God, there’s a lot of this. But there are two less choruses in Elijah than there are in Messiah.

I mean, it’s a huge sing. And as you say, not only [do] some of the well-known choruses require incredible agility for a chorus to sing properly in Baroque style, but a lot of the choruses that are not sung very much, so often for choirs are a new learn. And they’re wonderful pieces.

So I love the flow of it, I love the way he so carefully juxtaposes recitatives with solos, with chorus, and when you have this big span, when you come to that final Amen chorus, it really means something. It’s like you’re reaching the culmination of a great Wagner opera or a Bruckner symphony.

And you need that stuff before, you need everything, to really get the most out of it. It changes the piece, the spirit of it.

Stepanich: It may be that choirs of the Victorian era had an easier time with Messiah because they were more familiar with those styles ...

Judd:  I’m not sure, because that tradition of performing style of Baroque in the Victorian era, in the early part of the 20th century, was a very Romantic version. People did not appreciate, at that point they did not think about, Baroque style. They didn’t have the knowledge we have today.

On the other hand, [Messiah] started in Dublin with very small forces, but it quickly grew, and well before the 20th century, the late part of the 19th century, there were performances with hundreds of voices. And probably, just as with the Fireworks music, with the Water Music, Handel had hundreds of winds. You know, they would double the oboe parts.

It’s funny, today we think of Baroque music, also Classical music, the fact that Haydn, that  Mozart, had a Paris orchestra of 100 musicians, is sort of inconvenient for us today to remember because we like to think it was small forces for everything.

Stepanich: And you’d like to think the composers were thinking, this is what we’ve got, but I’d sure like four horns there.

Judd: Of course. We learn everything we can, we keep up to date with performance practice and everything, but eventually it’s about the authentic spirit of the music. We’re going to have around 80 voices for this performance, and I like doing it with just three desks of firsts [violins], three seconds, very small orchestra, a Baroque orchestra.

Then you have this lovely mixture. When you need a bit of heft, you’ve got it, but when you need delicacy, you also have that, a small orchestra playing Baroque style for the solos. We also beautiful young soloists coming from Curtis [Institute of Music], which is lovely.

Stepanich: I remember seeing your Messiah performances with the Florida Philharmonic and being struck by the very brisk tempos in a lot of places. It seemed to fit with what Roger Norrington and others were doing with [Baroque and Classical] tempos…

Judd: I think we think that more about Baroque music today. I think that there’s a great variety of tempo, because everything used to be a bit middle-of-the-road. After all, they were also performing Messiah in those versions like Sir Thomas Beecham orchestrated, with trombones and side drums and all kinds of things.

So everything kind of slowed down a bit, and there was a little [too much] uniformity of tempo for my taste. I think you have to go with the text, you go with the tempo of the text. There were no metronome marks, but there is a sense to the drama in the text that kind of dictates the tempo.

Stepanich: You’ve done Messiah many times. Do you go back and review the score each time and find something new?

Judd: Oh, yeah. That’s the fun of what I do. I do a combination during the year of new things all the time and old ones, and having time to just go back and restudy, and rethink, and just – well, first of all, there’s a natural progression I think  comes, doesn’t it, just from performing. That fact that you’ve done something before, it’s going to be different next time. There’s a certain maturity or whatever you want to call it that goes on without any thought.

But when you have time to look and rethink things, there’s a lot to think about: What do you double-dot, and what do you not? The tempi, like you were talking about. And you rethink things also on the spot depending on the kind of soloists you have, on the chorus, the level of the chorus and so on. You find a way to get the performance together.

Inevitably, it’s going to be different everywhere you go. The tempi are going to be slightly different depending on circumstances, acoustics. But the rethinking, the restudying, is just one of the great joys and pleasures in life for me.

Stepanich: You’ve got different versions of the music, too: The pifa is longer in one, there are different soloists …

Judd: Yes, there are legitimate choices in Handel’s own time, not just swapping voices –– maybe this time on an alto, this time on the bass, could be either. Also, there are different versions of some of the arias, different time. He redid some of them, even changed some of them from aria to Recit., you know.

Stepanich: How does the English tradition with Handel differ from the tradition here in the States?

Judd: I don’t know that it differs a great deal. When I grew up, they were big performances. Every town had a choral society, 100, 200 people. And we grew up with performances with symphony orchestra.

But before long, the awareness of Baroque styles came, and it probably started in England. There were these scholars and conductors who started to do things well before Norrington and [John Eliot] Gardiner, a generation of new thought about Bach and Handel in particular, and so it started early there. We’ve got a big tradition in England, in Holland, in Germany, of not only Baroque music but Classical music, about the use of vibrato, about the articulations of music.

But we’ve got to the point now, which I find very, very interesting, if you look at people like [Nikolaus] Harnoncourt, who’s worked a lot with the Vienna Philharmonic,  with [the Amsterdam] Concertgebouw, for example, with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, with traditional instruments but getting people to play in what they perceive to be authentic style. Although Harnoncourt -- I know I heard him interviewed one time -- said, Look, I’m not doing authentic Bach. All I can do is authentic Harnoncourt. Which makes the point, modestly.

But it’s interesting now that in European music schools, and I think more and more in this country, students are being taught to play in these different styles. If you’re now a string player coming out of the London Conservatory, and you’re asked, you will play Baroque style on a modern instrument. You’ll know how much vibrato to use, the sort of bowing and what’s expected. And more and more, I think, symphony orchestras will be, at the request of a director, able to play in different styles: Mozart this way or that way. And I think that’s fascinating.

Stepanich: What’s also interesting is whether musicians will be asked to be conversant with, say, the period practice of the Mahler style, with portamento.

Judd: That’s something I feel strongly about, because that tends to be neglected. People are too shy about that performance style. But if we listen back to [Dutch conductor Willem] Mengelberg, listen to the recording of Mahler Four -- and you know, I’ve studied his score, and Mengelberg marked all these things which are incredibly extreme by today’s standards, but it’s probably a damn sight closer to Mahler than what we tend to hear today. But it’s not convenient. You have to accept that Mahler, who wrote so much detail into his score, [that] that was still only just the beginning.

Stepanich: I think conductors have an unusual problem, and we’ll take Mahler since that’s what we’re talking about, in that they have to try to identify with a mindset that’s impossible to re-create.

Judd: Well, that’s exactly it. For example, you listen to the Mengelberg [Mahler Fourth] recording of the ‘30s. Look at his score, which is there in The Hague for you to study. Read the letters between Mengelberg and Mahler, listen to Mahler’s piano roll, listen to the other performances of the era, read what Mahler had to say about Bruno Walter as opposed to Mengelberg, read what Mahler said about the Vienna Philharmonic’s preparation and the Concertgebouw’s preparation, go and look at the scores – I’ve done all of this – go and look at the score of Mahler Four in Vienna that they have, Mahler’s conducting score.

And even in that score, for example, the horn parts – 1, 2, 3, 4 – he has arrows to say: In the Concertgebouw, this way around, in the Vienna Philharmonic, this way.  So he was thinking so practically all the time. But you know, when you put a lot of that stuff together, the circumstantial evidence, you begin to get a picture of a very different sort of performing.

Stepanich: Did you ever get to a point where that picture crystallized in your head?

Judd: Yeah, I think so, but it’s constantly changing, your perception of these things. And what you’re fighting sometimes is safety. I’m lucky enough to work with wonderful orchestras all over the world, but wherever you are, sometimes you’re fighting a tradition where people are frightened to take risk.

And one of the things, to realize some of these ideas -- for example, portamento you talked about. Today, people are embarrassed, often. You say: “Play portamento,” then they play it in a certain way, but the fingering was very different in those days, a sort of shifting, and you have to do it that way, or it doesn’t sound right.  It just sounds clumsy. And you have to do it because you really feel it. If you can get an orchestra doing that, then suddenly the music transforms.

…The gulf between how they used to play Baroque music and now is kind of understood. We know the pitch was different, we know more about it, as far as we can guess. But the sort of end of the 19th century, the beginning of the 20th century, to now, they were just as different. I mean, look at the way the orchestra’s changed. Look at the orchestra for The Rite of Spring, the sound of the instruments.

Listen to Elgar’s recordings of his symphonies: even in the early ‘30s, late ‘20s, in England they were still using gutty strings on the violin, even though the metal were available. Strad magazine advertises them from the 1890s. But they couldn’t afford them, probably, in England, so they’re all gut strings. It changes the sound.

The woodwinds in England were still French woodwinds. They were using these pea-shooter tiny trombones, so when Elgar writes “fortissimo,” you still hear the pungent French bassoons playing, it doesn’t drown the strings. So you have to understand all that. And you have to, these days, often with orchestras that don’t necessarily know that, you have to explain a little bit of that, otherwise it’s going to sound overblown and ridiculous.

So there’s so much, it’s so fascinating. I always like listening to dead performers: just listen, not copy, just listen.

Stepanich: Tell me a little bit about the Miami Music Project.

Judd: It’s been in the making for a number of years, actually. And it’s various ideas which have fused together. And so what we are left with is this:

Some time ago, I was put together, so to speak, with Richard Harris, who was a trombone player with the New World Symphony, who was very, very keen on similar ideas. And I’d known Richard a little bit, we’d met before [and decided] Yeah, we can do this.

So we were very lucky to receive a feasibility study project from the Knight Foundation initially. It was about three months in the making. We talked to all the arts organizations in town because we’re a collaborative organization, we’re not trying to pretend we know the answers to everything.  But we tried to see where the need is. Richard, with his small team of volunteers, was going around, and thanks to the cooperation of the arts organizations in town – it’s [Miami-]Dade County we were concentrating on initially -- questioning audiences about what they would like to have, and what they thought was missing in classical music.

We produced a big feasibility study which was very thorough, and as a result of that and all the long process, we were lucky enough to get a grant from the Knight Foundation for the Miami Music Project of $1 million over three years, which we have to match. And I do it as a volunteer, like I am for the Messiah; I think we’ve got to give back something, we’ve got to really do something for the arts.  I have a great experience going and working with great orchestras all over the world and doing concerts and being well-received or whatever, asked back: that’s great.

But there’s something missing everywhere, and that is everybody’s searching for the new generation of concertgoers.  Everybody’s searching to redefine, a little bit, orchestral life. The New World Symphony Orchestra does it in an amazing way down in Miami; that’s fantastic.  I’ve always felt that we’re looking for young audiences, everyone wants new audiences. Well, why would young people be interested in what we call classical music --which I hate as a title, anyway, but it’s all we’ve got, I suppose -- when much of it is just subscription concerts, more or less?

I always use the example of Beethoven. Even when we play the Eroica Symphony, for example, there may be a very good program note, the conductor talks about it and we discuss the fact that Napoleon was his hero, then he scrawls the name out [on the symphony’s title page] on realizing he was no democrat. And Beethoven is there in troubled circumstances, with the French bombing Vienna and so forth.

So he’s not writing a familiar subscription menu for us, he’s writing music that is absolutely communicating with people, with issues. He’s writing politically cutting-edge, he’s writing as a humanitarian to connect with people, and today they tend to be, at best: Well, that was a nice whistleable tune.

More and more, I feel, we’ve got to get back to what was the cutting-edge reality of this music. And it might be that it poses difficult questions for us. And you can’t isolate music, or music education, from other things in our society. And if we want a proper society, we have to realize culture can be, in a way, dangerous to politicians. It teaches people to ask questions. And I’ve been very afraid that there is a large part of our community, that despite the great teaching available, the resources for the public schools have been cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.

And it’s sort of convenient to some political mindsets not to have culture, not to have part of the community properly educated generally because we can keep them in fear, and not asking questions is probably very good, so that [Rupert] Murdoch can preach to them. I dare say it looks a very deliberate policy over a certain number of years. And then you tie them up with ludicrous exams, SATs or whatever that nobody likes -- I haven’t found a single person -- it may be convenient for some, but it seems to me to be a very daft way to educate people, with all due respect.

So we thought: “How can we address some of these things? How can we help a little bit with education? How can we put in the minds of people that some of this great music we’re listening to has another dimension as well, if you’d care to think about it and let yourself go into that arena?” So we decided we would audition an ensemble of musicians, however many we can afford.  We started off by auditioning for 10 musicians all over the country, the best talents we could.

We selected the musicians, and the goal is, this year we have 10 adopted public schools in the Dade system, 200 kids in each school, 2,000 kids, on a regular basis with our ensembles, sometimes it’s a smaller ensemble, sometimes a larger one. As we get the finances together hopefully it will develop.

My principal responsibility right now is to raise the money. We’ve got a basis of an extremely good board, and now, you know, it’s a big ask, but it’s doable. But we decided to start a little bit smaller than we originally wanted. There’s a thirst, there’s a need, for as many weeks as we can possibly do. It’s been incredibly well-received.

Stepanich: There are those would say that kids need to be studying math and science, and that music is not necessary, it’s just a frill. I would guess you’d disagree with that.

Judd: Of course. It is necessary.  It’s just a political convenience to say it’s not necessary. Music is around us all the time. It’s just a natural human state. We were probably making music, making vocal noises and singing, and had rhythms, before we had language. It just can’t be denied.

It also is a cliché that it is an international language, that wherever you are in the world and you play a minor chord and a major chord: Which is happy, and which is sad? For some reason, everyone’s going to know. When you play a fast rhythm, a slow rhythm, everyone’s going to know which one is going to be exciting, which one is funereal. Why? Why?

So it’s nature, it’s just nature. So don’t ignore it. And as we then go further and further, we realize then the power of music to manipulate, if you want – that’s a derogatory term – but to affect our emotions, or how we can manipulate our emotions with music. This is what composers are doing, they’re bringing us all together.

More and more, the popular music culture has become quite aggressive.  It’s quite tough and hard. I think more than ever we need to, through education, not deny that -- I enjoy listening to that, my daughter has taught me a lot about a lot of music I didn’t know existed, and I can really get into it. It’s not one or the other at all.

The great thing about so-called classical music is that the kids they’re used to an age where we concentrate for short soundbites, where music is all about pretty hard rhythms, sometimes very cool, lovely melodies and beautiful lyrics as well, but I think for the most part there will be a tremendous need for music that gives more space around them. I think the sort of music we offer can provides absolutely a sort of oasis, a therapeutic and healing oasis, and by listening to such music, it develops sensitivities, it allows sensitivities to emerge. 

And of course, the other side of it is, as you get to listen more and more, and music can teach you to listen, then you start to hopefully listen to language of your neighbor, and language of somebody who looks different from you, and then maybe you’ll start listening to politicians and realizing that you’re being sold rubbish. You know, you start to demand more than the Murdoch headline.

Stepanich: I wanted to ask about New Zealand briefly. You’re now the emeritus conductor of the New Zealand Symphony; is there state support in that country for music?

Judd: Oh, yeah, and it was amazing there, still is. The government really underwrites the orchestra, basically. Anything extra you want to do, you have to find some extra money. For example, while I was there [1999-2007], we did a few tours. We went to the Proms [in England], we went to Japan a couple of times, we went to the Concertgebouw, we were doing lots of recordings. And if you want to start doing that stuff you have to find some other government funding, maybe trade and tourism. And you have to find some individual money, but there’s not a lot of individual money down in that part of the world. There’s no tradition of giving. So there’s always corporate underwriting.

Basically, while I was there, we had this incredible prime minister, Helen Clark , who is now the No. 3 at the United Nations [head of the U.N. Development Program). And she always went, before she was prime minister, bought tickets for everything: symphony, ballet, opera, loved music. And music there, they have an absolutely fantastic music education still in the schools. And I was so impressed being there, and I got to know her very well. We used to have dinners with her and her husband, when my wife was in town, with guest artists, just talking about life.

And I was so impressed, there was a woman who had an idea of how music was connected to how we look after people’s health, how we look after the Maori and the Pacific culture. You know, everything glues together. It’s a natural part of life. And it’s a fantastic example.

It seems to me to be so awful when we give things labels. You would call it a socialist government, but what is a socialist government? It’s just so daft that these labels get given, like “liberal” and “conservative” in this country. Liberal in this country would be sort of a Conservative government in England.

This health care thing I think one has to talk about in connection with music, because if we’re so ungenerous, so inhuman, as to not understand that everybody should have health care, and we use these awful arguments protecting just the insurance companies. Look: I don’t know any conservatives in England who would ever speak out against everybody having the same kind of basic health care, or paying taxes to do that. I mean, it’s part of being a human being. And that’s a problem. It’s a problem.

Because if we don’t understand as human beings that we have to not just pay lip service to, but genuinely just give a little bit more of ourselves if we can afford it, so everybody can have basic health care, so that everybody can have a basic good standard of education, then how on earth can we understand what music is, how on earth can we do it? This is troubling, deeply troubling.

Stepanich: Although we’ve had a lot of problems in music education these days, technology has helped classical music a lot in that it’s gotten rid of barriers such as getting dressed up and going to concert hall for a lot of people. So has it been a double-edged sword?

Judd: I think it’s a good thing. Having said we’re searching for these new audiences, I think we’re in a period where we’re searching for a lot of answers and we’re beginning to find them.

First of all, if you look around, there are more concert halls than ever before. We’re still building concert halls, right? All over the world, and in the United States. More people are listening to classical music than ever before. Now, the big recording companies, the few big ones that there used to be before Naxos was so successful, those became disinterested in classical music, didn’t sell enough, didn’t have enough profits, so they disappeared.

So the headlines were: Classical music is dying. That’s rubbish. The problem we have is, as you don’t educate people in music, decision-makers, be it politicians, individuals, philanthropists, corporate leaders, have no music in their background, therefore, they don’t understand value-cost arguments. It’s like you couldn’t build St. Paul’s Cathedral today because it would be impossible to heat. The bottom line would be so ludicrous they’d say: “Build it 10 times smaller.” But it’s there.

It’s like with Beethoven. If we’re going to keep Beethoven alive, we have to have orchestras to perform it. If we sell out every ticket in a modern hall, we’ll struggle to probably get 25 percent of box office of the costs. But if we want Beethoven to survive, somebody’s going to have to find money for that.

I think government should play a bigger part, because if it considers that music is important and it should -- and it’s wonderful to see Obama at least has had that Classical Day, he’s had a Jazz Day [at the White House]. But we need more than that. We need money from a few missiles to support a few orchestras, a few ballet companies, opera companies. Think of what it would take. Nothing from the national budget, nothing.

Stepanich: I was talking with someone the other day about large and small orchestras, and whether large orchestras are really sustainable these days, and whether you couldn’t just get an ad hoc larger orchestra together when you need it, but otherwise stick with smaller orchestras. I wondered what you thought about that.

Judd: You can have small orchestras, but for the most part they don’t work very well, and the reason is an obvious one. The public, especially in this day and age when we’re trying to attract audiences, likes the bigger pieces. They like the Romantic repertoire. If you try to play that Romantic repertoire with four desks of first violins, and in some places they have to try to do that, it doesn’t sound good. You’re not going to get people coming back.

I often use that argument: You go into a museum, and the museum buys beautiful Renoirs, and it decides that it wants to have smaller walls, and so cuts the Renoirs in half. I mean, you can do it if you want.

I also have one overriding thing, and that is that quality matters. I remember when I was assistant conductor in Cleveland years ago, and the belief was you always are the Cleveland Orchestra, whatever we do. We go into a high school, we take Cleveland Orchestra quality, because kids know quality. And anything that’s not first-rate quality won’t survive. It just won’t. It’s just nature.

Because everything artistic has to be competitive, you have to be better at what you do tomorrow than you are today, you have to. So you can’t fight that, as economically nice as it would be to do. And look, I believe you can probably have a symphony orchestra that has a basic six double basses instead of eight, and adds to them sometimes. There are orchestras that are really just large chamber orchestras in the world, that add players, but people are never happy doing that. There’s always a compromise, and the compromise often is just too much.

Stepanich: Which brings me to the Florida Philharmonic: The funny thing about its demise is that it just doesn’t seem like it should have happened. And I think it seems that way to a lot of people.

Judd: I feel the same. There were just a series of circumstances that kind of somehow worked together, and contrived for it just to happen. And it happened. And so many people did the best they could. Everybody acted in their best faith, everybody tried to do their best to try to find a way out of it. None of us could, and it happened.

It’s sad, but my own perspective on things is yesterday becomes history very quickly to me. And I have, in my life, I always have so much to do, that it’s not that I am not caring about the people who lost their jobs, I’m deeply caring about that. It’s just awful, the way the poor musicians have to scrap around. This is really, really tragic.

But, you know, tomorrow is another opportunity. I don’t have any room for negativity. I just don’t have the energy for it. I used to let things get on top of me, but I learned several years ago now [to] just forget it. I’m only interested in working together with positive people, and trying to do something. Whatever we do in music, we have to try to make an impact with it, and believe in it, and perform with a genuine passion, not a contrived one.

And if we’re going to do education, we’ve got to do it for the right reasons. And if we’re going to keep orchestras alive then orchestras had better perform and look like they mean it, and play well.

It’s a fascinating time. Now, with these incredible initiatives of the Knight Foundation, this fantastic concert hall we have, this opera house, the New World Symphony building their new hall: this is going to become one of the centers of art and culture. Look what’s happening in the visual arts world in this area. The fact that we don’t have a fulltime resident symphony orchestra is a shame, but it mustn’t take our eyes off the fact that there is now so much happening.

Messiah will be performed complete this coming week at three different South Florida venues. James Judd will lead the Boca Raton Symphonia, the Master Chorale of South Florida and four Curtis Institute soloists -- Sarah Shafer, J'nai Bridges, Joshua Stewart and Thomas Shivone -- in George Frideric Handel's oratorio at 8 p.m. Friday in Miami's Trinity Cathedral, at 8 p.m. Saturday at Spanish River Church in Boca Raton, and at 2:30 p.m. Sunday at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts in Fort Lauderdale. Tickets: $30 in advance, $35 at the door. Call (954) 418-6232 or visit the Boca Symphonia and Master Chorale Websites.

Written by Hap Erstein | 29 October 2009

 

Playwright Seth Rozin is the founder and producing artistic director of Philadelphia’s InterAct Theatre Company. But when it came to premiering his latest script, Two Jews Walk Into a War . . ., he thought that Florida Stage was a better fit.

So continuing in Manalapan through Nov. 29 is the seriocomic tale of a Middle Eastern Odd Couple, the last two Jews left alive in war-torn Afghanistan, a play inspired by a true story. They should be working together to see that they, and their religion, survives in this hostile land, but they hate each other’s guts.

Rozin was unable to attend rehearsals of his play, because he was busy readying another writer’s work for its opening night in late October at InterAct. Still, he took the time to talk to Palm Beach ArtsPaper’s Hap Erstein about Two Jews, the Torah and the intersection of Samuel Beckett and Abbott and Costello.

Erstein: Seth, tell me about discovering the factual story that led to your play.

Rozin: I was working on a show that was also Jewish-themed here in Philly and my assistant director brought in this article from the New York Times a few years back called something like, “The Last Two Jews of Kabul.”

It was a great story that just immediately suggested a theatrical dramatization. Basically, someone had died and these two guys determined that they were in fact the last two Jews probably in all of Afghanistan. They shared the one remaining synagogue which was partially destroyed by the Taliban, had endured a lifetime of oppression and brutality and the kicker, of course, is that they hate each other. So the truth was not far from what I ended up writing.

It just immediately said to me, “This has got to be written.” I got into it, wrote three or four scenes and was having fun with it when I discovered that there was another play inspired by the exact same story, something that had already been produced.

I read a review; it seems to have had one production, I believe in London, I think the play was called Brother’s Keeper. The review made it sound like it didn’t go anywhere with the idea, all it was about was these two guys who hate each other.

Erstein: Whereas you wanted to use the story to examine the limits of their faith, right?

Rozin: I did. I wasn’t 100 percent sure what, but I knew it had to be more than Grumpy Old Men. What I tend to be interested in with anything I write is exploring why people believe what they believe and what would shake that foundation, what would get them to believe something different.

And this was a great circumstance, two people who hate each other. So what would get them to feel differently about each other? But more importantly, they have been stubbornly, aggressively, defiantly staying in this not very tolerant place for their entire lives while they watched their families and others leave. So they obviously believe strongly in something about the place.

So that’s what I started to invest in and create -- this was all invented -- why each of them stayed and what motivates them to stick it out against all odds, and how that leads to some kind of leap of faith that they need to take together.

Erstein: You weren’t thrilled to hear there was another play on the same subject, but that did not lead you to toss yours away, I guess.

Rozin: Well, right, I thought I was on to something a little different and I now needed to pursue that. It sounded like the first one didn’t go anywhere, so I felt fine about that. But then a few months later, I think it was in February of this year, I learned that there was yet another play called The Last Two Jews of Kabul, written about the same story, the same title as my play at that point.

Erstein: That New York Times sure gets around.

Rozin: And Lou (Tyrrell, Florida Stage’s producing director) called me, this was right after he had expressed interest in it, and he brought this to my attention and I said, “Gee, I didn’t know about this one.” So I went online and read about that, and again it turned out that the very same impetus, but again one production and it seemed limited to just where the story stopped.

By that point my play had been far enough along in a whole new direction, so I was confident in the play itself, but I had to come up with a new title.

Erstein: Your title is meant to sound like the set-up for a joke, I assume.

Rozin: One of the ways I think this play is different from the others was the whole notion of using a vaudeville start to it. I love the phrase “Two Jews” and I wanted something that would let people think it was more comedic. I thought it was better to start comedic and turn dark than to have it be serious and people not want to come because they think it’s going to be a dark play.

Erstein: Dark or not, putting “Jews” in a title is a good way to sell tickets in South Florida.

Rozin: Yes, well, that too.

Erstein: How did Florida Stage get hold of the script?

Rozin: I sent it to just a handful of colleagues in the National New Play Network, either because I thought they would like the play or because they had a substantially Jewish audience. And Lou got back to me almost immediately. It was partly a lucky break in that they had originally planned to have a different play in this slot, a new play by one of the writers they have worked with quite a lot [Deborah Laufer’s Sirens].

Mine was also not 100 percent ready, but I think because it was far enough along in conception, they knew me, and because it was a two-character, very manageable play, I think they felt more confident in it.

Erstein: It seems to have echoes of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Intentional on your part?

Rozin: I was very aware of Godot, but that comparison is almost inevitable because of the story in the first place. It was hard not to think of the existential, absurd predicament that these guys were in. So anybody who was going to write that play, I think, was going to seem at least a little bit like Beckett.

But the play surprised me, frankly, because I am not a religious person. I was not brought up with any allegiance to Judaism, I’ve never read the Torah, I was not bar mitzvahed, I didn’t have any religious upbringing at all, though I’ve always been somewhat interested in religion in general and in why people believe what they do.

So when I came up with the whole idea that they were going to try to recreate the Torah, I had a lot of reading to do. So I started looking through it and it was fun and challenging. I didn’t read literally the whole thing, but I poked through and found the parts that were useful, both in terms of funny or meaningful.

Erstein: The other influence I hear is Abbott and Costello. Are you a fan of theirs?

Rozin: Yeah, and the Marx Brothers, that sort of whole tradition of schticky dialogue, fast-paced, witty banter between people who are angry at each other, as opposed to just Bob Hope lightness. I like humor with an edge.

Erstein: How did you turn the corner into more serious territory?

Rozin: I think it was after I had written three or four scenes and I realized that all I had done was what the others had done. That that was fun, but there wasn’t really a play there. There had to be a journey, something had to change. That’s when I realized that something had to happen between them, that they had to do something together, something that would force them to work together that would either blow up into tragedy or bind them in some way. The thing I was really trying to avoid was sentimentality. I wanted there to be a friendship, but a dependence that grows without them being aware of it or wanting to acknowledge it.

Erstein: While the two characters sift through the Torah, they find some humorous contradictions in it.

Rozin: I’ve always believed that there were all kinds of hypocrisies and contradictions in religious thinking. I thought the whole sexuality thing was going to be useful, because it’s such an opportunity for comedy. And then the other stuff, like with the animals, that stuff I mostly found in service of the larger question, which is that there are things to interpret.

What happens is Ishaq seems to be the more devout, the more serious Jew, so to speak, in the beginning. But as we go on we learn that he in fact is a little bit of the take-it-at-its-word, don’t-question-anything type. That this is God’s word and that’s that.

And Zeblyan, who is in some ways more irreverent and less serious, and less faithful in a classic way, I guess, is actually asking the real questions. He’s losing his belief a little bit, but he’s asking the big questions, along with the stupid little ones.

Erstein: Do you tend to outline carefully or just put your characters in a room and watch where they lead you?

Rozin: Actually, I usually start with some kind of a question or circumstance that thrusts me into something and then I start to say, “What would they do?” “What would they say?” “What would they feel here?” And then as I get to know these people better and better, they start to tell me what they would ask, what they would do, what they would say. So, no, I didn’t know where this was headed.

Erstein: Why isn’t InterAct premiering this play?

Rozin: Well, first of all, when I sent it to the few colleagues I sent it to, it was in a slightly different form. It was a little less political and our mission is more overtly political. That’s one reason, but frankly, as much as I’ve been incredibly grateful to InterAct, it’s always nice as a playwright to have your plays get the affirmation that somebody else likes them before you put them up yourself.

Erstein: You got to know Florida Stage through the National New Play Network that your theater and Lou’s belong to?

Rozin: Absolutely. We became very, very close colleagues. Nan Barnett and I served together, I was president and she was vice-president of the network, for four years. And I’d gotten to know Lou a little bit through that and since working on the play I’ve gotten to know Lou really, really well and that’s been a real pleasure.

Erstein: Have you seen any of Florida Stage’s work?

Rozin: I’ve seen, I think, four productions there and I just know the high quality of the work. And it just felt right.

Erstein: How have you and Lou worked on the play together?

Rozin: I knew I wasn’t going to be there for rehearsals, so they brought me in for a three-day workshop in August with the cast. That was awesome, because we were really able to talk through the text. For me it was great to hear the actors. For Lou, it was great to try things out. I made some adjustments, I rewrote a couple of scenes and a whole bunch of little sections in scenes.

Then, since rehearsals started, I’ve gotten a rehearsal report every day, in which there is usually a couple of questions about lines or sections for me to look at and occasionally Lou would have to call and have me explain something.

Erstein: There doesn’t seem to be much stage action indicated in the script.

Rozin: I think that Lou is adding some stuff, some vaudeville stuff that I think is appropriate. There’s a scene where there’ll be some door slamming, because I think it needs some of that. There’s a real danger that it could be a little static.

Erstein: Were you concerned that Gordon McConnell, who plays Ishaq, is not Jewish?

Rozin: No, he’s a terrific actor and had no problem getting the basic sense of the character, though he was playing it with a kind of stereotypical New York Jewish accent. That was not quite right, but apart from that there really was no issue at all.

Avi [Hoffman, author-performer of Too Jewish?, who plays Zeblyan] of course brings all kinds of history to it. They also brought immediate chemistry to it, they had a great time together and that was fun to see. Because there has to be a lot of chemistry there.

Erstein: The Torah was new to you. Did you have what you wrote about it vetted by a rabbi?

Rozin: I did not. As I was writing it, I was actually working off of official sources so I didn’t feel like it was inaccurate. The interpretation is obviously up to whomever. But we did a reading here in Philadelphia, and one woman there asked me if I had consulted a rabbi because she thought it was very appropriate in terms of its content. So I mostly got affirmation.

Erstein: Are you prepared for the humorless audience members who will be offended by your play?

Rozin: Yeah, I know there will be some. Every show I’ve ever done, someone in the audience during the run says, like if we were doing Waiting for Godot, “Well, I have a son whose name is Estragon and he would never act like this,” or whatever. There’s always one person who thinks that their experience, as it relates to the play, trumps everything that’s in the play.

But probably the biggest surprise in writing it, and I think the surprise for those who are going to see it, is that it ends up being an affirmation of faith. I didn’t expect to write that. I’m not a person who is all about writing about faith and how great it is. So I think the people who are going to be the most offended are probably the people who think it’s not true, because in the end there’s real value to this, as opposed to there not being.

Erstein: Three theaters in the network will be producing Two Jews this season, won’t they?

Rozin: Actually four. Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey and New Jersey Repertory Theatre, who are pretty close to each other, are doing it together as a co-production, December through February. And then Florida Studio Theatre in Sarasota is doing it, sometime in the spring.

Erstein: You’ve written several other plays. What do they have in common?

Rozin: I think they have two things in common. One, as I said before, this notion of beliefs. There’s always characters that believe things and they have some kind of journey in which those beliefs are challenged and either shaken or not. And the other thing is there’s always at least one character who is impenetrable or stubborn or has a major blind spot, who at the end -- usually at the very end -- has some kind of a breakthrough.

Most of my plays have a lot of intellectual discourse, but resolve in a very emotional place. That’s really important to me.

Erstein: So why should we come see Two Jews Walk Into a War …?

Rozin: Well, I think it’s funny, I hope it’s funny. I think it’s human, in that you will go on a journey that has a satisfying, emotional punch to it. It’s short. I think it doesn’t overstay its welcome. I think you’re going to see two terrific actors have a good time onstage.

And I also think you’re going to be provoked to think about some interesting things that are relevant in the world today, about how we interpret things that we’ve been told or that have a particular meaning. Whether you’re religious or not. If you’re not religious, you’re going to resonate with the questioning, and if you are religious, you’re going to appreciate the affirmation of faith.