All Grown-Up

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.”