The Bad Guy is a Good Guy

My friend told me that her daughter came home very upset from a Raise Your Spirits rehearsal on our new show ESTHER and the Secrets in the King's Court.
Oh no, I thought. Rehearsals are supposed to be so much fun - challenging, but fun.
"Why?" I asked, dreading to hear the response.
She said, "My daughter said, 'Ema, Sharon Katz is playing Haman. Sharon Katz is not Haman!!'"
Firstly I am flattered that someone would feel that I am definitely not a Haman. And I am especially grateful that a child felt that perhaps I reflected goodness, and therefore was miscast as a wicked monster. That's a bit how I felt when my director Toby Klein Greenwald first said they wanted me to play Haman.
I felt like an entry in my high school yearbook - Least Likely to Play Haman.

But firstly, I'd like to remind everyone that a show is make believe. One of the nicest and most beloved women in Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s was Margaret Hamilton, who played the wicked witch of the west in the Wizard of Oz so frighteningly that adults still get nightmares when they think of her.
Secondly, as Toby reminded me, I have never played a hero. I've never even really been a good guy. I've played the all-powerful Pharoah in JOSEPH, the reverberating giant Og in NOAH!, the not-too-bright power-hungry Achashverosh in ESTHER, the selfish Elimelech in RUTH & NAOMI, the confused but dignified Noah in COURAGE and the vicious Mother of Sisera in JUDGE! My characters have been funny, and filled with energy, but they've rarely been good.
So, I have been kind-of bad on stage, and now Haman is the Ultimate Bad Guy. I'll do my best to give my audience the creeps, the willies and the heebie-jeebies, while I strive off stage, just like you, to become the Ultimate Good Guy.

International Rehearsals

We're really getting an international education at our Raise Your Spirits Rehearsals for ESTHER and the Secrets in the King's Court.
All music instruction seems to be in French or Italian - allegro (briskly), bellicoso (agressive), accapella (without accompaniment). I forgot the rest. Truthfully, I'd be making it up if I listed all the European terms that our music director Gayle Berman uses all the time. We all just nod our heads with a soft smile and try to look like we know what she's talking about.
Then choreographer Sarah Orenstein takes over and she's starting it too - releve` (rise to your toes). We eventually caught on to that too.
I liked when director Toby Greenwald said, "Do your ballroom dancing with a swagger." Now, you got me, girl.
Next time, perhaps I'll bring a translation dictionary to rehearsal.

The Heart and Body Remember

Last night we had our first full cast rehearsal of the new production of ESTHER and the Secrets in the King's Court.
It was fun, exciting and great to be together again.
ESTHER is celebrating its tenth anniversary. Mazel tov. Several of the women present last night were in that production a decade ago. Others from the new adult cast members had seen it. And many of the little girls, who were born during or after the run of ESTHER had heard its music on CD.
So, when music director Gayle Berman started playing the introduction to out opening number, bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum (you can hear the melody, right?), every gave a smile of familiarity and launched into song.
We were singing away, "Welcome to Shushan, to Shushan the capital." Suddenly Gayle stopped playing. "The correct pronunciation of that word is like this. The melody should be this way." And on and on, one correction after another.
My friend, Eudice, who is also production manager, hit the nail on the head, "We learned it a different way ten years ago. It's hard to unlearn it." You see, the heart remembers song.
But, B"H, we've got enough newbies who fell right into the groove, learning the new melodies, pronunciations and rhythms with ease. The rest of us will lean on them for a while.
At the end of the evening, we played Show and Tell. That's when smaller rehearsal groups show what they learned the week before.
The first group to perform we're the King and his men. They were singing the King's 70 Years. But the King was at a wedding. Since I had played the King in the original production of ESTHER, they asked me to step in.
I hadn't sung the role in a decade, and the key didn't seem exactly right, but I gave it a try. Who could remember a part that has since been blurred by four other subsequent productions and four other characters that followed it? Yet, soon I was twirling and dancing like I did ten years ago.
The body remembers.
The heart remembers. The soul remembers. Those of us who were lucky enough to be in the original ESTHER are simply going to have to unlearn what we knew, or better...put it in the category of ESTHER1. And we're going to have to embrace the new musical arrangements and all the new surprises waiting for us in ESTHER 2. Or maybe ESTHER TOO.
It won't be easy, but with smiles and good feelings and hard work, we can do it together.
To read more about this year's production, you're invited to visit us on Facebook.

Pirkei Avot Reminder #2 - ESTHER

Again on Shabbat Parshat Chukat, I was learning Pirkei Avot with HaRav Yisrael Meir Lau, shlita, and came across another reminder that we are getting closer to beginning our trek to Shushan.
Perek Six, Mishnah Six tells us the 48 ways we can acquire Torah. They include: study, an attentive ear, serving the sages, discussions with students....
The last way mentioned is quoting something in the name of its author.
The Mishnah continues, "From this [last] you learn that whoever says something in the name of its author brings redemption to the world. As the verse states, 'Esther told the king in the name of Mordechai'. (Esther 2:22)
Rav Lau writes, "The redemption of Israel through the Purim miracle came about via Queen Esther, who spoke to the king in the name of Mordechai."
This is how we understand that our future redemption will come about when people reveal the source of their words and "quote something in the name of the author."
Rav Lau continues, "When Mordechai the Jew hear Bigtan and Teresh plotting to assassinate Achashverosh (Esther 2:21-23), he reported that information to Esther, who 'spoke to the king "in the name of Mordechai"'. Her chief concern was to increase the king's positive feelings toward Mordechai."
... Esther herself "had learned of the plot of Bigtan and Teresh through Divine Inspiration. Neverthless, she suppressed her own prophecy and did not report these words in her own name, so that Mordechai might have the honor of being recognized as the man who saved the king's life."
Thank you, Pirkei Avot for your wonderful messages of "Good luck" through your eternal words. We're on the way to Shushan.

Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) Wishing Us Well 1 - HAMAN

As we draw closer to the opening of rehearsal on our newest Raise Your Spirits production, ESTHER and the Secrets in the King's Court, everything around me seems to remind me that the journey is about to begin.

Last Shabbat was an example.

Shabbat (Parshat Korach) seemed to point the way to Shushan and the court of King Achashverosh. The Shabbat hugged me and smilingly said, "Off you go."

You see, I was learning Pirkei Avot in the afternoon – Perek Five, Mishnah 19. My teacher was HaRav HaGaon HaRav Yisrael Meir Lau, shlita, from "Rav Lau on Pirkei Avos."

I read, "Any love that depends upon something, when that thing ceases, the love will cease.

But if it is not dependent on anything, it will never cease…"

To give an example of a love that is dependent upon something, HaRav Lau spoke about HAMAN.

He said, "As long as Haman was the wealthiest, most powerful man in the kingdom, he had many friends who fawned over him and flattered him. In Megillat Esther they are referred to as his 'lovers.' But as soon as the tables turned on him and he was forced to give public honor to the hated Mordechai, Haman's friends turned on him. Instead of comforting him, they told him that he was doomed to be defeated by Mordechai – and no longer does Scripture refer to him as his 'lovers'. Now they became his 'wise men'.

And what was their wisdom, "If Mordechai, before whom you have begun to fall, is of Jewish descent, you will not prevail against him, but will undoubtedly fall before him."

I have the terrific opportunity to play the diabolical Haman in this year's production of ESTHER. How evilicious! 

Friends, we have so much to learn from the story of Esther and Mordechai and Haman and Achashverosh. And IY"H, we have so much that we can learn from one another. IY"H, it will be a fabulous adventure, and I am so looking forward to taking it with our entire cast and crew, and you, my readers and friends.

To keep updated on ESTHER, join us here every week, or on our Facebook page.

New Season, New Excitement

We're off to a new season of Raise Your Spirits. It's our 11th year of raising spirits throughout Israel. And this year we're presenting our first original musical, created exactly ten years ago - ESTHER and the Secrets in the King's Court.
ESTHER was a spectacular success a decade ago, and we're expecting great things from her now, ten years later. With a new cast and crew, new musical arrangements, new choreography and new staging ideas, ESTHER is going to bring tremendous excitement to the Gush Etzion stage, as well as other locations in Israel, IY"H.
Emails abound, getting the cast ready for a summer of rehearsals and humongous excitement is in the air.
ESTHER was written by Arlene Chertoff, Toby Klein Greenwald and Sharon Katz with music composed by Rivka Hattin Epstein. This year's production includes musical arrangements by Amit Ben Atar, Paul Salter and Mitch Clyman. Direction by Toby Klein Greenwald, music direction by Gayle Berman and choreography by Sarah Orenstein.
More news to come as we head off to Shushan!
For more information, www.raiseyourspirits.org or http://www.facebook.com/pages/Raise-Your-Spirits/295615200474928

Remembering Sarah Blaustein, HY"D

I thought of the women of Raise Your Spirits on Shavuot, as we listened to Megillat Ruth. I imagined all of them in their places on stage in the show, RUTH & NAOMI in the Fields of Bethlehem.

I didn't sing out in shul, but I did swing my bent knee to the imaginary music playing in my head.

Then I though of them again today.

We broiled this morning in the hot start-of-summer-sun, at the cemetery in Gush Etzion, as we remembered Sarah Blaustein, HY"D, who was murdered on Isru Chag Shavuot 11 years ago.

It's a sad thing to remember, but it's also the catalyst that caused me to found Raise Your Spirits.

My friend Sarah's murder, along with that of my next door neighbor Esther Elvan, HY"D, and other friends and neighbors of Efrat/Gush Etzion, led to a depression in the entire region that could not be shook.

In order to raise the spirits of the area, I came up with the idea for a summer project – a show. Our first production was the Andrew Webber-Time Rice Musical  JOSEPH and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. B"H, it was a celestial hit.
The little women's theater company that I founded to raise spirits, comfort and strengthen all of us who had been so shaken by terror truly became the mouse that roared!!

Now today, eleven years later, hundreds of women have taken the stage as a part of Raise Your Spirits.

Tens of thousands of women from all over the world have come to see the women/girls of Raise Your Spirits.

RYS women/girls have entered the hearts of so many, putting a song on the lips of women and girls from Perth, Australia, to Cincinnati, Ohio, to Bombai, India, to Brooklyn, New York.

Thanks to Arlene Chertoff, Toby Klein Greenwald and me (at left - and our company http://www.bible-arts.com/) for the words we have written over the years. (ESTHER and the Secrets in the King's Court, NOAH! Ride the Wave!, RUTH & NAOMI in the Fields of Bethlehem, and parts of In Search of Courage). And thanks to Yael Valier who joined Toby for In Search of Courage and JUDGE, The Song of Devora.

Thanks to Rivka Epstein Hattin, Mitch Clyman and others for their musical contributions.

Thanks to Toby for her inspired direction.

Thanks to Rivka Schlesinger, Aviva Karpel, Sara Halevi, Elisheva Savir, Tamar Rund, Gayle Berman and everyone else who pitched in, for bringing out the music in our casts.

Thanks to Arlene, Sarah Orenstein, Tamara Spitz, Jocelyn Odenheimer, Batya Daniel and everyone else who turned our performers in to dancers.

Thanks to Eudice, Tammy, Felicity, Toby, Yael, Arlene, me and others for their production work.

Thanks to the Board – past and present – for their guidance and hard work – Arlene, Toby, me, Shelley Bloom, Susan Suna, Jill Kuchar, Tammy Rubin, Felicity Aziz, Ruthie Lieberman and Yael Valier.

Thanks to all those talented women who appeared on stage and those talented women who helped off stage (our artists, our make-up artists, scenery designers, seamstresses, ushers, saleswomen, techies, etc. etc.). We thank all of them. "__________, you are great."

Together we ARE Raise Your Spirits.

And we have raised spirits for 11 years. B"H we're still going strong.

Sarah Blaustein, HY"D, (in life as in death) was responsible for tefillah and Torah study in Kever Rachel.

I think she'd really smile to think that women and girls sing and dance and light up the night in Gush Etzion and beyond, because of her.

May her memory and that of Esther Elvan be blessed.