All Grown-Up

 Barbara Brooks is a compact, cheerful woman who, rather than reveal her age, describes herself as “halfway through a very exciting life journey.” For the past thirteen years, this journey has led Brooks to her calling as a devoted mother and as the producing artistic director of the Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company, which has blossomed over time into one of the Twin Cities’ most reliably interesting small theater companies. MJTC kicked off its thirteenth year with a b’nai mitzvah party, a celebration that, in the Jewish tradition, marks the passage of a boy or girl into adulthood. “Congratulations,” Brooks said to herself and to her one employee and board members—“we have finally grown up.”

Brooks, a native New Yorker, came to producing in a roundabout way. As a child, she was trained in classical voice at Juilliard’s now-defunct conservatory preparatory program. She earned a bachelor of arts in music at Vassar College and while there was exposed to psychology.  She went to the University of Minnesota to pursue a master’s degree in music therapy, and after graduating she spent eight years in St. Paul public schools using music therapy to help profoundly retarded, handicapped, and autistic children.

Brooks left the school system in 1988, then commuted back and forth from Minnesota to her hometown, acting in plays and musicals. All of her traveling highlighted the differences between the two communities. “In New York, as I perceived it, ethnicity was not an issue,” she says. “In Minnesota in the 1980s and 1990s, I felt it was, even though we’re culturally diverse. When I was temping at a law firm [in Minnesota], someone actually said to me, ‘I’ve never met a Jew before.’ That struck me.”

In 1993, Brooks gave birth to her son and became a stay-at-home mom. “I’d think a lot while I was nursing, and I started thinking about music as a tool for change in autism. I thought that the same thing could be done with theater. I had read a study that most Jewish people felt no connection to Judaism and thought that both Jews and non–Jews would be into [seeing theater about Jewish heritage].” One year later, the Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company was born.

MJTC’s first hit was in 1997, with Old Wicked Songs, a Pulitzer Prize–nominated, oddly structured play about a fragile vocal coach who sets out to teach a young American pianist how to sing Schumann and Heinrich Heine’s song cycle Dichterliebe. Old Wicked Songs has both German and English text, and while it touches on anti–Semitism, its themes also encompass everything from music to suicide to Leonard Bernstein to artistic roadblocks.

During the sold-out run, Brooks realized that her project had the potential to become a “real theater.” She called Sheila Livingston, the Guthrie Theater’s director of education and community programs, to find out more about audience development. Today, MJTC is diligent about audience surveys, and its core demographic is approximately 40 percent non–Jewish, which is not particularly surprising, says Brooks. “As individuals, we’re more balanced if we know where we come from, and part of that is knowing our own histories and cultures. That applies to everyone.”
Brooks makes sure that MJTC’s productions don’t reduce the history and culture of Judaism to violence, pogroms, and genocide. In 2007, Woman Before a Glass, for example, celebrated the life of Peggy Guggenheim, winning Sally Wingert an Ivey Award and MJTC wider exposure. This season featured Cherry Docs, a two-person play about a misled skinhead youth and his court-appointed Jewish attorney who becomes obsessed with his case and client—a story that indirectly parallels the lives of Jewish lawyers working with Muslim clients in Guantanamo Bay.

MJTC’s seasons have run the gamut from holiday shows to world premieres to plays by Israel Horovitz, Donald Margulies (Sight Unseen), Lanford Wilson (Talley’s Folly), and John Logan (Never the Sinner). MJTC has also developed two complementary initiatives: Doorways is an ongoing program of forums, lectures, and symposia designed to facilitate greater understanding of the plays that MJTC presents. Wellsprings is a play-development program that has resulted in several successful world premieres at MJTC.

For all her dedication and grit, Brooks almost gave it all up in 2000. Raising a child and running a theater company on fumes was exhausting, she says—but a pivotal letter convinced her not to quit. After seeing an MJTC show with his class, says Brooks, “a black kid wrote to his teacher that one of our plays ‘taught [him] not to hate Jewish people.’ ” The letter restored Brooks’s belief in MJTC’s mission.

In March, MJTC is coproducing the musical Parade with director Peter Rothstein’s company, Theater Latté Da. Parade is about the real-life trial of a Jewish factory manager named Leo Frank, who, in 1913, was (wrongfully) accused of murdering a thirteen-year-old employee. His trial was sensationalized by the Atlanta media and aroused the dormant anti–Semitism throughout Georgia. The Anti-Defamation League was formed partly in response to the kangaroo court’s verdict and Frank’s subsequent hanging by a lynch mob.

The musical itself has had a checkered history. The subject matter was so out of the box for a musical that Stephen Sondheim—who has written musicals about murderous barbers and would-be presidential assassins—is said to have turned down the job. Parade eventually received a substantial amount of critical acclaim, winning two Tony Awards, nine Tony nominations, and six Drama Desk Awards—but the show itself wasn’t very popular: Parade closed after only 200 performances. This, of course, begs the question, Why do the show in the Twin Cities? Heck, why do the show at all?

“I’ve always had an affinity for music theater,” says Brooks. “And our audience has been mostly older—fifty-five and up. I wanted to work with Latté Da to help bring in a larger audience and a younger audience base. I also thought Peter [Rothstein] would be great to work with.”

But it was Rothstein, one of the most sought-after directors in town, who pushed to make Parade happen. “I’d seen the premier production at Lincoln Center and thought it was really powerful,” he says. “The composer and lyricist, Jason Robert Brown, is one of the best writers for musical theater. There’s huge merit in producing living writers. . . . Also, this is a huge show. There are still not a lot of opportunities for local actors to do musical theater in town, and there are about twenty-seven parts in this show.”

Initially, Brooks didn’t share Rothstein’s enthusiasm. “I told him, ‘Yeah, right. I’m going to produce a musical about hanging a Jew.’ ” They decided instead to do Fiddler on the Roof, but the rights were denied and Brooks was left scrambling to fill the gap in MJTC’s season. Rothstein again suggested Parade; Brooks gave it another listen and green-lit the project.

The show features many familiar Latté Da faces. Dieter Bierbrauer stars as Leo Frank; Ann Michels plays Frank’s loyal wife, Lucille. Jody Briskey, who was a knockout in Latté Da’s production of Gypsy, and Tod Petersen—best known for A Christmas Carole Petersen—are featured too. Brooks herself makes a brief appearance as the governor’s wife. (Yes, she had to audition.) MJTC usually mounts its work in a small space at the Highland Park Library, but Parade is a breakout production that will be presented at the History Theatre in downtown St. Paul.

Rothstein, who is not Jewish, says that Parade, like any good piece of dramatic writing, has universal themes. “It deals with big ideas and the culture and psychology of that time,” he says. “It’s a complicated and fascinating look at race and racism and the white power structure. It was an emotionally charged event in our history, and that’s perfect for a musical form. Musicals work best when something is so emotionally charged that talking about it isn’t enough. A successful musical has to have epic ideas in it and [the writers] found a way to make this story epic.”

Bierbrauer, an opera-trained singer who has been a regular in Latté Da shows—Floyd Collins, A Christmas Carole Petersen, A Man of No Importance—says he enjoys stretching his metaphorical wings as an actor and is excited to play Leo Frank. “It’s really important for people to know that Parade is not just based on a true story—it is a true story,” he says. “It hasn’t been fashioned in a way to attack or blame one thing or another. I can see the different reasons people wanted to go after Frank. The fact that he was Jewish—that helps—but [I believe] it was reasons other than just that. In my mind, [this musical] is not a political statement—it’s about telling the story and making sure that it is heard.”

The girl’s murder, notes Bierbrauer, occurred during a Confederate Memorial Day parade. Frank was a Brooklyn–born, well-educated Jew who had a lot of money in a city still struggling to recover economically from the Civil War. “Frank was not your run-of-the-mill Southerner,” he says. “I think there were people who really wanted to go after him because he was a Yankee, not just because he was a Jew. They were celebrating a war they had lost, and it may have given them something to latch onto.”

Parade does not have a kick-line or happy ending, which may discourage folks who like their musicals frothy—but Brooks isn’t concerned. “I want people to come, obviously, but I’m never going to pander or change our mission to get people here.” The mission is what sustains the theater and that isn’t going to change, she says with an amused glint in her eye. “A few years ago, someone from a larger theater called and told me they were going to do a Jewish play [and were after our audience]. I told them, ‘Good. If you’d done this years ago, I wouldn’t have had to start this theater in the first place.’ So we’re going to promote Parade the way we do all our shows—and people will come.”

Parade runs February 21–March 16 at The History Theatre, 30 E. 10th St., St. Paul, 651-292-4323