Native Chicago playwright Alan Gross teams up with director Steven Robman to bring his newest work, High Holidays, to Goodman Theatre.
At the center of this four-character drama—inspired by Gross’ own life and family experience—is young Billy Roman (Max Zuppa) and the anxiety-riddled preparations for his Bar Mitzvah in 1963 north suburban Chicago.
When Billy’s older brother Rob (Ian Paul Custer) returns from college for the High Holidays, he further elevates household tensions by bringing along his own ideas about his future—and the boys’ parents Essie (Rengin Altay) and Nate (Keith Kupferer) must face some difficult truths about coming-of-age in America.
Set Designer Kevin Depinet (last season’s The Crowd You’re In With) returns to the Goodman with another hometown-influenced realistic backdrop for the action.
High Holidays runs Oct. 31 – Nov. 29, 2009 in the Goodman’s Owen Theatre.
Tickets ($10 – $40) are now on sale 312-443-3800 or GoodmanTheatre.org.
Production Sponsors for High Holidays include the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust and the Goodman World Premiere Season Sponsors M. Ann O’Brien and Randy and Lisa White, and New Works Season Sponsors: Julie and Roger Baskes; Joan and Robert Clifford; Patricia Cox; Eva and Michael Losacco; Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Foundation; Karen and Richard Pigott; Alice Rapoport and Michael Sachs, Sg2; Shaw Family Supporting Organization; and Orli and Bill Staley.
“I’m delighted to host Alan Gross, Steven Robman and their wonderful cast at the Goodman with this incisive, wryly funny new play,” said Artistic Director Robert Falls, who first met Robman at Wisdom Bridge Theatre when he directed the 1985 production of Rat in the Skull, starring Brian Dennehy. “Alan’s signature wit and wisdom is at full tilt in this universally-relatable world premiere—at once gracious, sympathetic and unapologetically honest.”
Alan Gross is a native of Evanston. After studying journalism at the University of Missouri, he worked in improvisational theater with Byrne Piven, Del Close and Paul Sills.
In an attempt to merge those improvisational techniques with the structure of the “well-made play,” he wrote his first play, Lunching, in 1977. Subsequent plays included The Phone Room, La Brea Tarpits, The Man in 605, The Houseguest, Morning Call and The Secret Life of American Poets.
After a stint in Hollywood in the 1980s, Gross worked on several novels, then returned to playwriting with High Holidays, on which he began work in 2005.
His play Push Comes to Shove will be seen in a staged reading at Indiana University this winter, and he has begun work on his latest play, A Little Madness in the Spring. A published poet, Gross was awarded the Robert Frost Festival Poetry Award in 2008; his work is included in the current edition of Modern Haiku.
“I am all four of the characters in High Holidays,” said Gross, who used his own experience growing up in north suburban Skokie, IL, as inspiration. “When my mother died, we had the shards of our family given to us: her collections, our photographs, our books of vacations, as well as my Bar Mitzvah book. I put all of these things together and what emerged was a story about growing up-all of its joys, challenges and disappointments—and ultimately, what it takes to become a man.”
From civil rights upheaval to political cataclysm, 1963 was a pivotal year in American cultural and political history. The changes that are roiling the Roman family in High Holidays are more personal and mundane, but no less earth-shattering for those involved.
Billy is terrified by the prospect of reciting from the Torah at his upcoming Bar Mitzvah and desperate to find a way out of it. Rob is equally desperate to find an escape from a different sort of ritual—higher education—and embraces the growing counterculture that would come to define the 1960s.
Parents Essie and Nate feel they have sacrificed everything to provide a decent life for their children, but are now trapped between the expectations of their own immigrant parents and their children’s disdain for the family’s suburban lifestyle.
Director Steven Robman returns to the Goodman where he directed the premiere of Ron Hutchinson’s Moonlight and Magnolias in 2004. Other work in Chicago includes Hutchinson’s Rat in the Skull at Wisdom Bridge Theatre and the revival of Alan Gross’ Lunching for the Apollo Group.
He has staged plays at other theaters around the United States (Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Arena Stage in Washington, Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Actors Theatre of Louisville and Yale Repertory Theatre) and in New York (Manhattan Theatre Club, Playwrights Horizons, Chelsea Theater Center and The Phoenix Theater, where he served as Artistic Director from 1980 to 1982).
Robman has also directed premieres of plays by Wendy Wasserstein, D.L. Coburn, Fay Weldon, Adrian Mitchell and Alan Knee. He served as a staff director at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference for five summers.
A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and the Yale School of Drama, Robman has taught acting and directing at Yale University, Circle in the Square Theatre School in New York, UCLA Extension and the American Film Institute.
For television Robman has directed numerous episodes of dramatic and comedy series, movies-of-the-week and the ABC miniseries The Audrey Hepburn Story.
Tickets to High Holidays ($10 – $40) are currently on sale at GoodmanTheatre.org.
Tickets can also be purchased at the box office (170 North Dearborn) or by phone at 312-443-3800.
Mezztix are half-price mezzanine tickets available at 12 noon at the box office, and at 10am online (promo code MEZZTIX) day of performance; Mezztix are not available by telephone.
10Tix are $10 mezzanine tickets for students available at 12 noon at the box office, and at 10am online on the day of performance; 10Tix are not available by telephone. Valid student I.D. must be presented when picking up the tickets. Limit four per student with I.D. All tickets are subject to availability and handling fees apply.
Discounted Group Tickets for 10 persons or more are available at 312-443-3820.
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About Goodman Theatre
Currently playing at the Goodman Stoop Stories written and performed by Dael Orlandersmith, directed by Jo Bonney (closing October 11, in the Owen) and Animal Crackers, book by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, music and lyrics by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, directed by Henry Wishcamper (extended through November 1, in the Albert);
Named the country’s “Best Regional Theatre” by Time magazine (2003), Goodman Theatre is a leader in the American theater, internationally recognized for its artists, productions and educational programs since its founding in 1925.
Artistic Director Robert Falls and Executive Director Roche Schulfer’s forward-thinking leadership has earned the Goodman unparalleled artistic distinction, garnered hundreds of awards—including the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre (1992) and Pulitzer Prizes for Ruined by Lynn Nottage and Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet—and moved dozens of plays from Chicago to stages in New York and abroad.
Central to its commitment to the reinvestigation of classics and development of new plays and artists is the Goodman’s Artistic Collective, including Brian Dennehy, Frank Galati, Henry Godinez, Steve Scott, Chuck Smith, Regina Taylor and Mary Zimmerman.
The largest not-for-profit theater in Chicago, the Goodman moved in 2000 into a brand new state-of-the-art complex which houses two principal theaters: the 856-seat Albert Ivar Goodman Theatre and the 400-seat flexible Owen Bruner Goodman Theatre.
Board Chairman is Patricia Cox and Karen Pigott is President of the Women’s Board. American Airlines is the Exclusive Airline of Goodman Theatre.
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