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Session 38 Co-op History/Discussion Club Dec 16, 2012
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[In April 1988, APRICOT, the Amalgamated/Park Reservoir community theater
group staged a major production of the musical Fiddler on the Roof. The
production involved 92 people and attracted over 1000 attendees for its
six performances over two weekends. In the run up to the performances,
cooperator and Yiddish poet Peretz Kaminsky kept a diary of some
incidences connected with the production. Below are excerpts from his
diary which appeared in the May 1988 edition of Community News published
by the Joint Community Activities Committee (JCAC).]
Community News May 1988
LOOKING AROUND
A Visit to Anitevka
by Peretz Kaminsky
2/1/87
Walking on Orloff Avenue...a hand waves from across the street; if a hand
waves, I wave back, what else? But when a voice calls across, "Hello
Rabbi," it must be a mistake. What is with the Rabbi business? I peer
across the street to see who the hand-waver is. I see Dominick Cohen and
realize that to him, I am the Rabbi. So who is Dom to me? I call out,
"Lazer Wolf, a blessing on your head." Dom nods, smiles, waves again, and
walks on.
I find this interesting and worth thinking about.
Zero Mostel? Hershel Bernardi? Topel? No and no and no. They don't exist.
Steve Roberts! He's the real Tevye...our Tevye, the way Sholem Aleichem
imagined him when he wrote the stories that became the musical, "Fiddler
on the Roof."
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1/10
The rehearsals for "Fiddler" are going on. We're learning how to BE Tevye
and Golde and Lazer Wolf and Tseitl and all the people who live in
Anitevka. Some of the players are having identity crises and walk around
thinking we can't become the people we are rehearsing to become. The
business about Lazer Wolf greeting me on the street as "Rabbi" is really
understandable. I wonder what will happen when we get up on the stage in
front of the audience.
Watching Nancy Velez turning into Hodl, Golde and Tevye's daughter, is
like watching a magic transformation. Domenick has grown a beard in order
to FEEL like the butcher, Lazer Wolf; and no one can convince me that Lynn
Polasky isn't really Golde, Tevye's harassed wife.
1/11
Participating in "Fiddler" is teaching me that there is more to
making a play than learning the lines. Bernie Kassoy, who is Avram in the
play, is also designing the stage sets; music is under the direction of
Lewis Levin who also plays the guitar. Judah Goldstein plays the
synthesizer and Sydelle Reiner plays the piano...and yes...the Fiddler on
the Roof really exists, his name is David Rosenthal. The dance director is
Sheila Krstevski. And then there are our director Dan Kelly, and Ad-die
Kramer, our assistant director. They are the ones who give the production
its dramatic shape and movement. It is an experience, watching them work
out new ideas and changes, improvements and corrections; the
production keeps growing like a flower. I keep being amazed at the talent
we have living in The Cooperative.
2/15
When I came into the auditorium for this evening's rehearsal, you could
have knocked me over with a hammer; the stage is almost twice as big as it
was yesterday. What a cooperative the Amalgamated is...amazing!
2/17
The play is moving slowly toward readiness. We've started to rehearse
almost every night, with two rehearsals on Sunday
2/18
Mindy Walters drove down to the paint store today and picked up eighteen
gallons of paint; then on to the lumber yard for more wood needed for the
sets. Mindy, in addition to being one of the most faithful all-purpose
wonders as a cooperator, is also one of the people in the cast. A blessing
on her head.
And speaking of the blessings of cooperative life.,..one of the most
wonderful things about this theatre piece is that we have people
participating who are from eight years of age, all the way up to
seventy-three, with a large group of teenagers in important roles. There
are twenty-nine people in the cast, and another dozen or so who are active
in other aspects of getting the show ready for opening night. This is the
most cooperative activity I've ever had the joy of sharing.
2/19
We went through all of act one, from the very beginning to the bitter
end...all of it...for the very first time. Then, late as it was, we went
through the rest of the play. It was terrible, but there were moments when
it came together and the real magic of theatre happened. When the timing
of action, the meeting of cues, the diction, the voice color, when all of
it is in the right place and rightly done, it is so very
exciting...Everyone's eyes become bright with the wonder of it!
2/21
Friday evening. The whole crew back to work shoveling coal...a run-through
of dialogue to sharpen shoddy cueing, to work out stage business...all the
blood, sweat and tears of mounting a play. What fun!
2/27
Saturday night...coming through the Eighth Building cellars, going from
the Gale Garage to my apartment, I look into an open doorway and see Uri
Grachev painting scenery for the play, he is working in a vast empty
storage space with all kinds of pipe and building materials laying in
corners. We talk a few minutes. While we talk, he works; like a
demon...fast...he doesn't stop shmearing for a moment. I say good night to
him, he waves the brush at me. I walk away while he paints and
paints...and paints.
3/2
I look into the space that has become the temporary scenery workshop and
see Irving Glazer, our master carpenter, all alone, hammering, sawing,
talking to himself. He looks up, sees me, smiles, waves his hammer as
though it were a magic wand and goes on hammering.
3/7
Most of the scenery was leaning against the walls in Vladeck Hall when I
got to the rehearsal this evening; the wagon, the bed, the Fiddler's roof,
all of it looks wonderful. We're getting close to the count-down.
3/8
We rehearsed tonight with some of the scenery around us. It really makes a
difference. I begin to understand how people can be captured by theater as
a life work.
A play, even a musical comedy, is a living thing, a complicated organism;
and if it is to be any good, it should do something more than to entertain
us. It occurs to me that I've never been as close to any work for theater
as I am to "Fiddler." The fact of nightly repetition of lines, gives me a
greater understanding of this play than any other play that I've seen or
read. It isn't my lines, they are very few; I listen to all the roles,
have even learned some parts of them. Yes, "Fiddler," is humorous; and
yes, it has lively, lovely, singable songs; and it has...not one love
story, but four; Tseitl and Motl, Hodle and Perchik, Chava and Fyedka,
Golde and Tevye. The play has been translated into every European
language, some Asian as well, and Hebrew; and it has been a hit in every
one of them. The stories by Sholem Aleichem, about a mud-hole of an
out-of-the-way Jewish village in a forsaken corner of Russia, written at
the beginning of the twentieth century, deals with problems that continue
to plague people in every place and culture on the planet.
Beneath the seeming lightness of the narrative style, with its many
throw-away gag lines, its sentimentality, and the real impoverishment in
the lives of the protagonists; the problems in Sholem Aleichem's Yiddish
shtetl are identical to the lives of people in all parts of the world. A
Japanese fisherman will be jus, as disturbed as a Jewish dairyman when the
children change or ignore the accepted custom. The inhabitants of Japan
are just as worried today, as the inhabitants of Anitevka were almost a
hundred years ago, about the dilution of traditions and life styles.
3/9
My birthday. Another evening of rehearsal. We are staying later and later.
Dan (the director) is starting to yell at us. Will this thing ever get to
be a presentable play? There are days in which I doubt it. Got home at
11:30 P.M.
3/17
The final dress rehearsal. It was too discouraging last week to write
anything. We've been flubbing different scenes each night...but tonight
was a disaster. All of us have the jitters and shakes...losing lines and
cues. I shudder to think about tomorrow's opening. It is so easy to lose
the rhythm, the flow! We throw it out of kilter so often. I hope the
audience doesn't boo us off the stage when we open. God help us all!
3/18
We opened and God helped us
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