Our team loves sharing information that's free, free, free and we suspect that the brass at Theatre for a New Audience feels the same way. That's why they created the 2015 Open Books series, featuring John Lahr, Andrea Most, and Alisa Solomon and the three free evenings of lively, engaging conversation with the authors of some of American theatre's most acclaimed new books at Polonsky Shakespeare Center, 262 Ashland Place.
Mark your calendars because Alisa Solomon, author of Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof, will speak Monday, March 23, at 7:00pm; John Lahr, long-time drama critic for The New Yorker, will discuss his biography Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh Monday, April 6, at 7:00pm; and Andrea Most, author of Theatrical Liberalism: Jews and Popular Entertainment in America, will take the podium Monday, May 4, at 7:00pm.
Books. Real books will be available for purchase (and to be signed), and each evening will include a conversation with moderator Jonathan Kalb (two-time winner of the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism), an audience Q&A, and a meet-and-greet with the author.
Complimentary food and drink will be served.
Reservations are encouraged, and can be made at: www.tfana.org/openbooks.
Here is a preview of what's good:
Monday, March 23, 7:00pm
Alisa Solomon
Wonder of Wonders traces how and why the story of Tevye the milkmanthe creation of the great Yiddish writer Sholem-Aleichemwas reborn as blockbuster entertainment and a cultural touchstone. Award-winning critic Alisa Solomon follows Tevye from his humble appearance on the New York Yiddish stage, through his adoption by leftist dramatists as a symbol of oppression, to his Broadway debut in one of the last Golden Age musicals, a major Hollywood picture, and far beyond. The book takes readers into the rehearsal room where Fiddler was hammered into shape, onto the stage where it was rapturously received, and out into the world where its powerful legacy continues.
"As rich and dense as a chocolate babkaso crammed with tasty layers that you have to pace yourself....As brilliant a piece of reporting as I've read this year."
The New York Times Book Review
"An intellectually serious, playful, and insightful account of popular art's power to shape memory and transmute history into universal myth, Wonder of Wonders is a soul-stirring joy to read....The richest, deepest, most far-ranging, and delightfully surprising book about a single work of theatrical art I've ever encountered."
Tony Kushner (Angels in America)
A theater critic and general reporter for the Village Voice from 1983 to 2004, Alisa Solomon has also contributed to The New York Times, The Nation, Tablet, The Forward, Howlround.com, killingthebuddha.com, American Theater, TDR – The Drama Review, and other publications. Her first book, Re-Dressing the Canon: Essays on Theater and Gender, won the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism.
Monday, April 6, 7:00pm
John Lahr
Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh follows John Lahr's other ground-breaking theatre biographies to give intimate access to the mind of one of the greatest American playwrights. This brilliantly written, deeply researched biography sheds a light on Williams's warring family, his lobotomized sister, his guilt, his plays, his turbulent homosexual life, his misreported death, even the shenanigans of his estate. An unforgettable portrait, Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh is as much a biography of the man who created A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof as it is a trenchant exploration of Williams's plays and the tortured process of bringing them to stage and screen.
"This is by far the best book ever written about America's greatest playwright. John Lahr, the longtime drama critic for The New Yorker, knows his way around Broadway better than anyone. He is a witty and elegant stylist, a scrupulous researcher, a passionate yet canny advocate… He brings us as close to Williams as we are ever likely to get."
J.D. McClatchy, Wall Street Journal
"Could this be the best theater book I've ever read? It just might be. Tennessee Williams had two great pieces of luck: Elia Kazan to direct his work and now John Lahr to make thrilling sense of his life."
John Guare (Six Degrees of Separation)
National Book Award finalist John Lahr is the author or editor of 11 books on theater, 6 volumes of collected theater criticism, and several novels and play adaptations. He was the senior drama critic of The New Yorker for over two decades, and has twice won the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. His biography of the murdered playwright Joe Orton, Prick Up Your Ears, was adapted for film, and he is the first critic ever to win a Tony Award (coauthor, Elaine Stritch at Liberty).
Monday, May 4, at 7:00pm
Andrea Most
In Theatrical Liberalism, Andrea Most illustrates how American Jews used the theatre and other media to navigate their encounters with modern culture, politics, religion, and identity, negotiating a position for themselves within and alongside Protestant American liberalism by re-imagining key aspects of traditional Judaism as theatrical. Discussing works as diverse as the Hebrew Bible, The Jazz Singer, and Death of a Salesman, Most situates American popular culture in the multiple religious traditions that informed the world-views of its practitioners. With extensive scholarship and compelling evidence, Ms. Most shows how the Jewish world-view that permeates American culture has reached far beyond the Jews who created it.
"This book will transform how many plays, performances, and texts are read, discussed, taught, and performed...Theatrical Liberalism is an important, original book that gets right to the heart of why Jews have been so disproportionately involved in popular performance."
Theatre Journal
"Makes new sense of aspects of popular culture we have all grown up with and thought we knew only too well…. [Theatrical Liberalism] will help us see better how Jews and their Jewishness did not merely 'enter' American popular culture, but did so much to invent it."
Jonathan Boyarin, Leonard and Tobee Kaplan Distinguished Professor of Modern Jewish Thought, University of North Carolina
Andrea Most is a Professor of American Literature and Jewish Studies in the Department of English at the University of Toronto. Her first book Making Americans: Jews and the Broadway Musical won the 2005 Kurt Weill Prize for distinguished scholarship on music theatre. Her second book, Theatrical Liberalism: Jews and Popular Entertainment in America was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish Culture.
In case you didn't know Theatre for a New Audience was founded in 1979 by Jeffrey Horowitz, and Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA) is a modern classic theatre. It produces Shakespeare alongside other major authors from the world repertoire, such as Harley Granville Barker, Edward Bond, Adrienne Kennedy and Wallace Shawn. It has played off- and on Broadway and toured nationally and internationally. The Theatre's productions have been honored with Tony, Obie, Drama Desk, Drama League, Callaway, Lortel and Audelco awards and nominations and reach an audience diverse in age, economics and cultural backgrounds. TFANA created and runs the largest in-depth program in the New York City Public Schools to introduce students to Shakespeare, and has served more than 127,000 students since the program began in 1984.
Theatre for a New Audience's Humanities programs are supported in part by a permanent endowment established at the Theatre by a Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Celebrating 50 Years of Excellence, with leading matching gifts provided by Robert H. Arnow, Perry and Marty Granoff, John J. Kerr and Nora Wren Kerr, and Theodore C. Rogers. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in these programs do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional support for the Theatre's Humanities, Education, and Outreach programs also comes from The Elayne P. Bernstein Education Fund.
The Polonsky Shakespeare Center, 262 Ashland Place in Brooklyn, is easily accessible by public transit:
Get the Metrocards ready it's super easy access.
Subway: Take the 2, 3, 4, 5, B, D, N, Q, or R trains to Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center; the C to Lafayette Avenue; or the G to Fulton Street. Check the MTA website for service changes.
Bus: The B25, B26, B38, B41, B45, B52, B63, and B67 buses all stop within a few blocks of the Polonsky Shakespeare Center.
LIRR: The Long Island Rail Road stops at Atlantic Terminal, two blocks away from the Polonsky Shakespeare Center.