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The name Jason Grote is on the mind of every current theater student at Montclair State University. Not only is his play, 1001, being mounted by the graduating class of theater studies students, but Grote is also bringing a new musical adaptation of the same play to campus as well as teaching a class about theater for social change. Grote is no stranger to the Montclair campus, as he graduated in 1993 with a BFA in Acting and Directing. Over the last month I kept an online dialogue with Grote to ask him questions about theater for social change. Read more »

When I was first hired to direct The Laramie Project I admittedly knew very little about the piece. Apart from a brief historical description, the one thing I did know was that this was more than just a play. It was a potential catalyst for a discussion on hate. The play was created from interviews with people from a Wyoming town where a young man, Matthew Shepard, was brutally murdered for being gay. Anyone I knew that had seen it recounted an incredible emotional response from being witness to the play. I wanted to achieve more than an emotional response; I wanted to incite discussion. Read more »

Choreographer Wayne McGregor

As a choreographer, my primary aspiration has been in the communication of ideas through the medium of the body. Attempting to make sense of the world in which we live and commenting upon it, through choreographed language and form. Choreographic communication is dependent on placing the body as the central interface for the assimilation of experience and understanding. We understand the world through the body, our senses working in collaboration to generate emotion and create informed meaning. 

This has naturally led me to an ongoing fascination with the “technology of the body,” not only from a physiological perspective, probing the organism to test what a 21st-century body is actually physically and psychologically capable of, but as importantly being actively curious about its evolutionary path. This open and thirsty curiosity parallels contemporary scientific investigation. With the developments in molecular biology, biochemistry, and genetics, there have been major advancements in sports science, nutrition, dancer training, injury prevention, and rehabilitation making dancers stronger, more flexible, healthier, and better able to perform physically demanding and challenging work. The capacity of the dancers instrument—the body—has been radically enhanced, improved, and evolved. The opportunity I have to utilize these augmentations in choreography provides a new dynamic stimulus. 

At the same time, the revolutionary influence of biologist Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution and natural selection continue to pervade our contemporary culture. From Richard Dawkin’s concept of the “meme,” through the development of self-replicating mutating systems for viral marketing, to state-of-the-art genetic classification, Darwin’s unique vision has been and continues to make a provocative impact. In its most basic form, this approach to evolutionary research—collecting, systemizing, classifying, and labelling information for it to be interrogated, to accumulate a body of knowledge that then bears insight, through translation and interpretation, is very close to the creative process. 

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One of the most remarkable things about theatre is that it affords you the opportunity to escape reality while simultaneously forcing you to recognize the reality from which you are escaping. This is not always the case, and in a modern theatrical climate that is more focused on ticket sales than cultural relevance, most audiences walk away without recognizing much of anything. I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t at times captivated by the glorious world of theatrical entertainment for the sake of entertainment, in fact that’s what got me into theatre in the first place. I was that theatre geek that walked around brandishing Little Shop of Horror t-shirts, while belting out show tunes in my room, much to the joy (or annoyance) of my parents. 

But midway through my training at Montclair, I became more in tune to the world around me. Perhaps it was that brief moment in time where it was considered cool to be politically and culturally aware that began the reshaping of my thoughts on life and theatre. Barack Obama was in the running for President, and suddenly everyone, including myself decided maybe they should put down People Magazine and pick up The New York Times. Suddenly I realized how much was going on in the world that I had allowed myself to ignore. 

With this realization came a self analysis of my life’s future direction. Was theatre really something that was worthwhile? Why am I trying to spend my life entertaining when I could be using my energy and skills to help others? In the midst of this examination of my career goals, I was asked to direct Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues. The producers of the show initially booked a female director, but at the last minute she backed out, and I was the only one they knew available to take on the production. When I first agreed to take on the role of director, I merely viewed it as an opportunity to advance my skills as a director; however, as I plunged myself into the production I began to realize that this was a piece of art that could really help other people. Suddenly it clicked. This is what I can do with theatre, with art, to make a difference in the world.

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While creating this show @ American Repertory Theater years ago, I never thought of it as a “Jewish musical comedy.” I wouldn’t have known (and still don’t know) how to create such an event. It is a play about a middle-aged couple (Shlemiel & Tryna Ritza) w/two children who have fallen into habit and out of love years ago and are playing out the alternating irritation and ennui of a mismatched alliance with no exit in sight. Then, by a bizarre and very funny miracle, Shlemiel is forced to go on a journey away from Chelm, and through farcical machinations of clever script plotting, he winds up where he started out. Oh no! Oh yes! And because he’s a “shlemiel” he imagines he’s in another town just like his own town and there’s a house like his own house and two kids like his own kids and another Tryna just like his own Tryna— except for one thing: THEY CAN’T KEEP THEIR HANDS OFF EACH OTHER. They re-fall madly, passionately in love and are willing to fight the powers that be, to “get together” and stay together.  

Now, admittedly, there is gorgeous Klezmer music, conducted by Zalmen Mlotek, and the brilliant and witty and beautiful lyrics of Arnold Weinstein, and the tilting topsy-turvy set by Robert Israel, and all the foolish sages who transform (in “fat-lady pinafores”)

into their own wives and sing about their own husbands and the musical travel scene with rocks and trees and musicians pulled on cloths, and a wooden chair dance for the Sages and Gronam Ox to “Rumania, Rumania,” and Yenta Pesha does sing about blintzes (and latkes and knishes get mentioned) BUT I WOULDN’T, NO I WOULD NOT, CALL IT A “JEWISH PLAY.”  

I would call it a furiously paced postmodern farce with contagious hand-clapping, foot-tapping Klezmer music by Hankus Netsky and Zalmen Mlotek, conceived and adapted by renowned Robert Brustein, from a play by renowned Isaac Bashevis Singer, with the sweetest love-song lyrics and the most hilarious patter-song lyrics by renowned Arnold Weinstein, choreographed, directed, and edited very sincerely by David Gordon.