How Do You Get to Second Avenue?

[I'm very pleased to tell you about a new, in-depth Digital Yiddish Theatre Project piece on my play, Shtumer Shabes. Read it here.]

-------------------------------------------------------

You know that moment? When a Broadway show finally opens? The drama critics rush to the phone booths to dictate their reviews to their various newspaper copy desks. 

Before the cast can even finish their champagne toasts at Sardi’s (I imagine), the late edition newspaper is being delivered, along with the critics’ verdicts, and, by extension, the show’s future. It's one of my favorite movie magic moments. It’s all so brutal, but dramatically efficient. 

Life isn’t always so dramatically efficient. Or, maybe, not in the ways we ache for. 

At the end of November, 2020, I presented excerpts from my new play, Shtumer Shabes, at the Vancouver Chutzpah! Festival. This was as close as I was getting to my big opening moment amid the bleakness of 2020. Afterwards, though we didn’t all retire to Sardi’s together (halevai!) I got some truly wonderful messages from the folks who watched, especially the many Yiddishist world friends who had “attended.” 

One of the great surprises was getting warmly positive feedback from the non-Yiddishists, too. Their enthusiasm made me feel like just maybe, I could write accurate, compelling drama about a highly niche subculture and still make make something watchable for all audiences.  

And yet, I couldn’t help but feel somewhat unsatisfied. In November, there had been no opportunity for me to spy on the audience and see who laughed and who didn’t, no post-show shmoozing in the lobby, no face-to-face rehash. The delicious intimacy of theater was lost in the move to the virtual space. And I had poured so much into the text: carefully researched history, character details, in-jokes and lowbrow gags, and maybe even the memory of an old lover repurposed for my own dramatic use. The feedback I did get was lovely, but at a melancholy distance. 
 
So I was all the more thrilled when a few weeks ago, Yiddish literature scholar Sonia Gollance told me that she would be writing about Shtumer Shabes for the Digital Yiddish Theatre Project (DYTP). Sonia’s piece, Shtetl Gothic on the Virtual Stage, is out now and I’m not ashamed to say it made my damn month. It's an in-depth look at the reading we did, touching on the text, the performances, and the technical challenges of this new kind of performance. 
 
Going from critic to playwright is a harrowing prospect, if you think about it too much, which I try not to. Such a path holds way too many opportunities to be tripped (if not worse) on one’s own prior arrogance. So it was all the more gratifying to read, for example, that my “play is full of the kind of ‘thick’ Jewish cultural literacy that she regularly champions in her other work.” Whew.

Further, Sonia writes:

It is also rare to see a production that so accurately captures the highs and lows of graduate student research–the joys of discovery, the comradery of an enthusiastic but highly specialized community, the uncertainty, the dependence on an advisor’s approval. Yet other aspects of Shtumer shabes feel more universal…It is precisely because Kafrissen has so carefully conveyed these more specific worlds that she can powerfully and convincingly meld the universal and the particular…

Who knows what the immediate future holds for live theater, but I'm very cautiously optimistic that we will soon be making small steps toward live performance and being together again in theaters of all shapes and sizes. I'm hoping my play can be part of that in some way. And if you want to bring it for workshopping at your theater or cultural space, of course, be in touch right away.