A DYBBUK’S JOURNEY A Directorial Process of Tony Kushner’s “A Dybbuk” by DAVID SHERMAN BFA, University of Alberta, 1982 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF FINE ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES THEATRE AND FILM THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA Vancouver July 2008 ©David Sherman 2008 ABSTRACT The following is a document outlining the process of directing a production of the stage play A Dybbuk as part of Theatre at UBC’s 2007/2008 season. My main objective in directing this piece of work was to explore the idea of theatre as a subject of memory and remembrance, of exploring how our knowledge of the past, present and future influence the way a work of theatre is presented and perceived, and of how history plays a role in how a work of theatre is transformed through the visions of other artists. The process included a lengthy research period in which I examined the origins of the original S. Asnky script of The Dybbuk , comparing it to other later translations and adaptations, including the adaptation by Tony Kushner which was used for this production. The life of the playwright and the world of the play, historically and culturally were also researched. This investigation is outlined in Chapter One. This is followed by a detailed Directorial Analysis of the script which is outlined in Chapter Two. A journal chronicling the entire process spanning April of 2007 to March of 2008, including reflections on my research discoveries, inspirations from a variety of sources, and the trials and tribulations of both pre-production and rehearsals are outlined in Chapter Three. A final chapter of reflection and assessment on the entire process and thoughts on the final outcomes are outlined in Chapter Four. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract …………………………………………………………………………........ ii Table of Contents …………………………………………………………………....... iii Preface ………………………………………………………………………………...... v Acknowledgments …………………………………………………………………...... vi Dedication …………………………………………………………………………….. vii Chapter 1 - A Dybbuk’s Journey Introduction ………………………………………………………………....... 1 S. Ansky – A Short Biography and the Birth Of The Dybbuk ………………………………………………………………. 1 Tony Kushner – A Playwright Between Two Worlds A Short Biography ………………………………………………………….... 3 The Frame …………………………………………………………………..... 4 Other Frames, Other Writers ………………………………………………... 5 The Neugroschel Translation ……………………. …………………….......... 7 The World of the Play – Background Chasidism ……………………………………………………………......13 Kabbalah ………………………………………………………….......... 15 WWII – The Holocaust ……………………............................................16 About Our Production ……………………………………………...………. 17 Design Process …………………………………........................................... 18 Chapter 2 - Directorial Analysis ……………………………………………………… 20 iii Chapter 3 - Director’s Journal The Early Days …………………………………............................................. 95 The Computer Era ………………………………………………………...... 103 Chapter 4 - Reflection ……………………………………………………………….. 124 Appendix A - A Dybbuk Glossary…………………………………………………..... 128 Appendix B - Production Information ………………………………………………... 138 Footnotes - ………………………………………………………………………........ 140 Bibliography/Works Cited - ………………………………………………………...... 141 iv PREFACE As stated in the Abstract, this document is a summary of the process involved in directing the play A Dybbuk and should not be considered an academic paper. The creative process in directing a piece of theatre is a little like trying to capture light – elusive and illuminating at the same time. Just when you think you have it in your hand – it may slip away, sometime reappearing where you least expect it. The text that follows represents and reflects that process. v THESIS AKNOWLEDGEMENTS Camp Hatikvah/Massada, where I first met The Dybbuk Professor Stephen Heatley – who is probably why I am here writing this And of course, To my adviser, Prof. Stephen Malloy, for probing, prodding, questioning, supporting and in the language of my people, “noodging” me every step of the way. vi DEDICATION To my parents Fay (Fayge bat Avram) and the late Gerry (Gedalia ben Yaakov) Sherman And to my Zaide, Jack (Comedy in Seven Dialects) Sherman, Who I never met, but somehow I feel inspires me. vii CHAPTER ONE – A DYBBUK’S JOURNEY Introduction “It is impossible to regain the historical purity of a work and see it through eyes innocent of events that have happened since its creation…. The Dybbuk is a Kaddish, a prayer for the dead, which asks us to remember the dead. But along with our nostalgia, we bring to the film a sense of the tragic that may not have fully been there to begin with but that makes the film more beautiful and painful to watch. And yet the film dramatizes death and loss ultimately to get beyond them, to suggest other paths, other realities that we may not see or understand that we may certainly sense and feel”. 1 My production of S. Anky’s The Dybbuk is greatly influenced by history, as is the adaption of the play by Tony Kushner. As is pointed out in the quotation above, it is impossible to divorce the play from the past or from the future that came after it. When The Dybbuk was first written, the shtetl life as presented in the play was already in decline. That decline was followed by obliteration, with the coming of WWII and the Holocaust, wiping out an estimated 6 million Jews and more specifically, almost 90% of the Jewish population of Poland. In choosing the Kushner adaptation, I was interested to see how the play had changed, from the earliest surviving version, through various other translations and adaptations, up to the adaptation at hand. What had Kushner added? What had been left behind? How much of the play was Kushner and how much Ansky? And how did the answers to those questions lead me to my concept and approach to my production? I was interested in tracing the roots of the story. Where did the “plot” of The Dybbuk actually come from and how did Ansky take his ethnographic collection of folk tales and music and turn it into a play? How have other authors approached the text and what, in the text chosen for production, is Tony Kushner saying about how The Dybbuk still has resonances for a modern and mostly non-Jewish audience? The original title of the play was Between Two Worlds (in Yiddish “tsvishn tsvey veltn”). This was also a jumping off point for my exploration. What did the phrase mean to Ansky and to Kushner? How could that meaning and implications affect my production? S. Ansky – A Short Biography and the birth of The Dybbuk Shloyme Zanvl Rapport, later Semyon Akimovich An-sky, was a contemporary of another, more familiar Yiddish/Russian writer, Shalom Aleichem, whose Tevye Stories became the basis for the musical Fiddler on the Roof. Rapport was born in 1863 in the town of Chshniki in the Vitebsk district of what is now Belarus. His mother Anna ran a tavern and his father Aron was at one point a messenger for a wealthy family. Under circumstances that remain unclear, Aron eventually deserted the family leaving Anna to raise Shloyme and his two sisters alone – not an 1 easy task for a single woman in the 19 th century. Shloyme had a typical Jewish education of the period, attending a cheder, or Hebrew/Religious school and then beginning his yeshiva studies. By the time he was 17 he had moved away from traditional Judaism and was beginning to make stronger connections with the secular and Christian world. Besides speaking Yiddish – the every day language of shtetl life – and Hebrew, he could also speak Russian, which was unusual for a Jew of the time. From this early age he found himself between two worlds – between secularism and religion; between Russian and Yiddish; between being early socialist in Tsarist Russia Around 1881 he began ten years of wandering around Russia and various parts of Eastern Europe. One of the ways he earned a living was teaching Russian and secular subjects to the children of wealthy Jews in larger towns and cities. Trying to get to know and better understand “the working man” and peasants, he also did manual labour, working in a salt mine and a coal mine. In 1882 he published his first novel, The Stepchildren , written in Yiddish but published in Russian. He continued to travel throughout the rest of the 1880’s and into the 1890’s, working and writing articles about peasant life and on Jewish themes. He met with limited success as a writer. There are also records of his having a few run-ins with the law as a political organizer and activist, an “agitator”, a role he was to play for the rest of his life. In 1891 he began to publish under the name An-sky. The roots of this new name are unknown and remain unclear. Was it a derivation of his mother’s name Anna? Or was it a way to hide his Jewish identity to gain wider fame in Russia? He expanded his travels through Western Europe visiting Berlin and Bern in Switzerland. He also found work as a bookbinder. In 1894 he travelled to Paris to work as a private secretary. He soon fell in with the large ex-patriot – and very political – Russian community there. He remained in Paris until about 1900 when he returns to Russia. On his return, he continued to be politically active, becoming involved in “The Bund”, the Jewish Labour movement. He was very well known and respected within Labour politics as an organizer and pamphleteer. In 1914 he headed a Jewish Ethnographic Expedition, sponsored by a wealthy patron. He set off with a small team of researchers and photographers, recording folk songs, collecting manuscripts and ritual objects. The work was cut short by the outbreak WWI. Work on The Dybbuk began at about this time, inspired by a story he heard of a rich father marrying off his daughter, while her heart belonged to another. There is still debate as to whether these early versions were written in Russian or Yiddish. A first reading of The Dybbuk took place in 1915 though in a slightly different form than the version than is familiar to us now.