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.”