Not Just Any Old ‘Shlemiel’

As a playwright, actor, director, teacher, artistic director, critic and author of 11 books, Robert Brustein for three decades has been one of the most versatile men in the American theater. He also is one of the most influential--and controversial. Brustein, the 1995 recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters award for distinguished service to the arts, most recently made news with his debate with playwright August Wilson over issues of black separatism and multiculturalism in the theater.

Writing for the New Republic, Brustein criticized Wilson for a speech in which he declared that blacks should not participate in colorblind casting--in which blacks play roles traditionally considered white--and should form their own separatist companies. The pair then aired their differences in January in a high-profile confrontation at New York’s Town Hall.

Never one to back down from public faceoffs--he sometimes even seems to revel in them--Brustein is passionate in his conviction that the theater should be first and foremost an art form, not just a political platform.

Born in 1927 in New York, Brustein began his professional life as a stage and television actor before taking up his current post in 1959 as drama critic for the New

Republic. From 1966 to 1979, he was dean of the Yale School of Drama; in ‘66, he also founded the Yale Repertory Theatre. Those were turbulent years for Brustein and the school, and in 1980, after a clash with Yale President A. Bartlett Giamatti, Brustein moved to Harvard University, where he founded the American Repertory Theatre, taking the company members with him.

Brustein currently is a professor of English at Harvard and director of the Loeb Drama Center. He also continues to work both sides of the proscenium: Among his recent projects is the klezmer musical “Shlemiel the First,” which he conceived and adapted from a script by Isaac Bashevis Singer based on the author’s own stories. “Shlemiel,” which was choreographed and directed by David Gordon, opens at the Geffen Playhouse on May 14.

Brustein’s writings are diverse--the current American Repertory Theatre season included his new adaptation of Ibsen’s “The Wild Duck” and the theater is also reviving his version of Pirandello’s “Six Characters in Search of an Author.” Brustein is also at work on a play about noted acting teacher Lee Strasberg. The piece, based on Strasberg family memoirs, may be produced at American Repertory next year.

Known to be as volatile as he is indefatigable, Brustein can also be as charming as he is acerbic. In a wide-ranging conversation from his office in Cambridge, Mass., he spoke of his current projects and his thoughts on American theater today.

Question: You’ve gained a reputation as a man with a taste for edgy, often-confrontational work. What made you decide to do a kinder, gentler musical like “Shlemiel”?

Answer: I had been invited by Joel Grey to a benefit--he introduced an evening of jazz and the Klezmer Conservatory Band. They began to play, Joel Grey began to sing along with them, and I was so transported by the quality of the music. I never knew it was a form that had so much integrity, with the brilliance of both jazz and classical music. Whenever something like that happens to me, I instinctively try to figure out how I can get this on my stage.

We had done a play at Yale in the ‘70s that Singer wrote, based on his “Shlemiel” stories, but it was top-heavy. It ran out of plot after 20 minutes, then it was a series of anecdotes. But the idea behind it [was strong]--that a man would go away to tell the world about [the fictional village of] Chelm and end up coming back to it and falling in love with his own wife again. So I proceeded to call [composer] Hankus Netsky, David Gordon and [lyricist] Arnold Weinstein, an old associate of mine from the Yale days.

“Shlemiel” does have a powerful point to make. It opens up all kinds of questions about marriage. In fact, it’s been a source of considerable anger for certain older Jews in Florida. The younger Jews love it; the older Jews really feel offended by it. It reminds a lot of people of what they’d rather forget--the shtetl.

My father came from Poland when he was 7. I remember when he would see one of these Chasids, he would spit. I never would understand. But Chasids are Jews full-blown; you can’t miss it.

Q: Were you drawn to the material because you’re Jewish?

A: I think it’s one of the reasons I’m doing it.

Q: But does “Shlemiel” fit your profile as a man of the avant-garde, or is it a departure?

A: It’s a dessert. It doesn’t fit in. It wasn’t intended to. It’s cutting-edge by virtue of the director [Gordon, best known for his avant-garde dance works, has more recently been doing theater]. But it’s quite often that experimental artists enter the mainstream at some point. I remember reading Singer’s “Gimpel the Fool,” which Saul Bellow translated, in Partisan Review. Singer was writing for [Yiddish-language newspaper] the Forvartz then, and that made him avant-garde. It’s hard to say what’s cutting-edge anymore. The mainstream has adapted experimentation.

Q: In the ‘80s, you presented high-profile works by a number of controversial auteur directors--including Andrei Serban, Liviu Ciulei, Robert Wilson and Richard Foreman, not to mention Jo Anne Akalaitis’ infamous “Endgame,” which Beckett publicly disowned. What kind of directors are you bringing to American Repertory Theatre these days?

A: Robert Woodruff, Robert McGrath, Andre Belgrader, Marcus Stern. Directors who are very, very visual in their approach, or metaphorical--to use a word that I use often and try not to define--is what I look for.

The goal is to try and have people in the audience take away something that lasts and will haunt them, be it either a subject for debate or of their dreams. They’ll have an unresolved experience.

Q: What do you think made multiculturalism such a powerful force in today’s theater?

A: It happened about 15 years ago because the government was backing off programs that could help alleviate poverty and result in a more equitable distribution of wealth. A mild form of socialism was taking place, but it was dropped. As a result, the problems didn’t go away. The foundations picked it up, but they were in no position to solve the problems. One of the ways they tried to do it was by making culture do the work of politics. They thought that by giving their money not to art, per se, but to art that was connected to sociology, that would work. With the exception of the Mellon and Shubert foundations, everything else was poured into multiculturalism.

Lila Wallace [Reader’s Digest Foundation] had a [program] that was exclusively devoted to changing the nature of the regional theater audience--by doing plays that were by people who were the color of the audience. As a result, these various nonprofit theaters were going into contortions trying to qualify for the grants. The result was August Wilson blew up all over them because the money wasn’t going to black theaters.

Q: You have a reputation as a foe of multiculturalism, and yet you’ve also got a strong track record when it comes to giving key breaks to emerging nonwhite artists--people like Han Ong and Suzan-Lori Parks. What bothers you about the trend?

A: That track record is based on the quality of the artists, not on the fact that they’re multicultural. I do believe in multiculturalism in the sense that cultures enrich each other. But there is a kind that is a separatist expression which has its apotheosis in August Wilson saying that blacks can’t be in white plays. I’ve been screaming about this for years, and there it is. It’s racist. It has nothing to do with giving opportunities to gifted people.

To say that you have to be black in order to get money can easily be turned around to say that you have to be white to get government or foundation funds. There has to be some consistency. Thirty or 40 years ago, you could not make laws or awards based on race, religion or gender. It seems to me a complete contradiction of what America should stand for. What I worry about is the next twist of the pendulum--when we go back to discriminating against minorities because the minorities have now taught us to discriminate against the majorities.

Q: Have you ever found yourself slipping into the color-coded approach?

A: I committed the ethnographic fallacy by thinking a Jew would be the best Shlemiel. Tommy Derrah, a Baptist, turned out to be a perfect Shlemiel, with a [flair for] physical comedy. The way he played it gave me the idea for the “Postmodern Times,” a Charlie Chaplin piece we’re going to do at ART next year. The cast of “Shlemiel” isn’t all Jewish; there’s a black woman and others.

Q: How have the multicultural priorities of grant givers affected what we’re seeing onstage?

A: The grants were directed toward [expanding] audiences. Did people sit around and say James Joyce has written “Ulysses” and only 500 people bought the book? If we were to judge him by the size of his audience at the time, that would have been the end of Joyce.

Q: But as an artistic director, don’t you have to concern yourself with filling seats?

A: Joe Papp once said about a play that lost a lot of money, “I don’t want to learn a lesson.” Every time I thought I could second-guess what would work, I’ve stubbed my toe. You think something worked once, then it’s going to work again. But really the only thing you can do is put on something you’re passionate about and hope it will communicate itself.

[Director] Andre Belgrader did “Ubu Rock” here--it was an adaptation [of “Ubu Roi”], an attack on what is mean-spirited and vicious in the human soul. I saw it every night. We couldn’t draw flies. We lost a fortune. Every time we do a Robert Wilson, we lose 3,000 subscribers. I know that anything German is not going to work here, but we’ve done [an adaptation of German Expressionist playwright Frank Wedekind’s] “Lulu” and Brecht’s “Seven Deadly Sins.”

Our audience will respond to intellectual demands, but it doesn’t like any meddling with the classics, so we always get in trouble, because that’s what we do. People sit there with their scores and they’re looking for all the deviations. But there’s also a large number who love that departure and cheer it. They associate us with that. That’s what they say we do. They’ll complain, but they’ll come.

Q: Traditional wisdom in America has long held that one can’t be both an artist and a critic, that it’s a potential conflict of interest. In fact, few dramatists aside from George Bernard Shaw have succeeded at both. What do you think?

A: Being a critic exposes me to a lot of work that I normally wouldn’t see and makes me think about it and conceptualize it. I often think, “Wouldn’t it be best if I left [the New Republic]?” but I enjoy writing more and more as time goes on. That side of it is a wonderful expression for me, because I mostly sublimate that in my job as an artistic director.

Q: As someone who has long championed not only groundbreaking directors but also new writers, what’s your evaluation of the state of creativity in American theater today?

A: If we talk about the last five years, I think we’re in a strong period as far as playwriting. You don’t see it on Broadway, because Broadway can’t support playwrights now--not even Neil Simon. But there’re nonprofit theaters that have been working hard to develop playwrights. I’ve also seen some extraordinary directorial work being done. I just saw Elizabeth LeCompte do “The Hairy Ape,” for instance. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’m not writing “finis.” I’m always hesitant to say where we might be headed, because the artists always lead us. To tell you the truth, I just follow the artists.

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* “Shlemiel the First,” Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood. May 14 through June 8. Tuesdays to Thursdays, 7:30 p.m.; Saturdays, 4 and 8:30 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. $27.50-$37.50. (310) 208-5454 or Telecharge, (800) 233-3123.