Ari Roth

Ari Roth (January 10, 1961) is an American theatrical producer, playwright, director and educator. Since 1997, he has served as the Artistic Director of Theater J in Washington, D.C.

Early Life

The son of German-born refugees of the Holocaust, Roth was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago and is a graduate of the University of Chicago Laboratory High School and the University of Michigan, where he studied playwriting with Milan Stitt (author of The Runner Stumbles) and Kenneth Thorpe Rowe (author of the textbook "Write that Play") and received his first of two Avery Hopwood Awards for Drama in 1981 from noted UM alum, playwright (and student of Thorpe Rowe) Arthur Miller.

Playwright

Born Guilty

Based on Peter Sichrovsky’s widely acclaimed book of interviews with children and grandchildren of Nazis (Schuldig Geboren, serialized in Der Speigel in 1987 and published in English in 1988 by Basic Books), Born Guilty was originally commissioned by Arena Stage in 1989, and received a workshop production in The Scene Shop in June of 1990.^[1]

The play received its world premiere in 1991 in the 683-seat Arena (since renamed the Fichandler Stage), directed by Arena's Founding Producing Director, Zelda Fichandler, during her 40th season.^[2] The play was nominated for the 1992 Helen Hayes/Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play ^[3] and was published by Theater Communications Group's "Plays in Process" imprint that same year.^[4]

After further readings at Manhattan Theatre Club, Born Guilty had its Off-Broadway premiere in 1993 at the now-defunct American Jewish Theater. Jack Gelber directed a cast including Zach Grenier, Greg Germann, Lee Wilkof, Victor Slezak, Maggie Burke, Jennie Moreau, and Amy Wright. The New York Times called the play a “searing drama” ^[5] and the production enjoyed a sold out, extended run.

Born Guilty had its Midwest premiere at Chicago’s A Red Orchid Theatre in 1994. The production, directed by Shira Piven, later moved to the Famous Door Theatre Company at Jane Addams Hull House for an extended seven month run, and received widespread critical praise.^[6][7] Since then, Born Guilty has enjoyed over 40 national productions (including in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, and San Francisco) and a radio broadcast by L.A. Theatre Works as part of its “Chicago Theatres on the Air” series.

Theater J’s 2002 DC revival of Born Guilty was nominated for the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Resident Play; ^[8] the director of the play, John Vreeke, was nominated for Outstanding Director. Excerpts of Born Guilty were featured on WFMT Chicago’s “The Studs Terkel Program” and NPR's All Things Considered. It is featured in "The Best Stage Scenes of 1993" (Smith and Kraus, Inc., 1994) and was published by Samuel French, Inc. in 1994.

The Wolf in Peter

The Wolf in Peter, a sequel to Born Guilty, is based on the ill-fated political career of Born Guilty book author Peter Schirovsky and his controversial partnership with Austrian Freedom Party leader, Jorg Haider. The sequel received its premiere in 2002 when it was produced in repertory with Born Guilty at Theater J. ^[9] After further development of the play at Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey and Jewish Theatre of Austria, the sequel was again produced in repertory in 2007 at Atlanta's Jewish Theatre of the South, and in 2010 as a staged reading in New York at the Museum of Jewish Heritage presented by the Epic Theatre Ensemble and directed by Wilma Theater artistic director Blanka Zizka. ^[10] The two plays, together with Roth's family play, Giant Shadows, now comprise The Born Guilty Cycle: A Trilogy. The Cycle was presented by the Theatre Lab in a student/professional workshop at Washington’s National Theatre in 2011. Delia Taylor and Shirley Serotsky directed. ^[11]

Other plays by Roth include:

Life in Refusal

First written as a one-act entitled Proverbial Human Suffering and winner of the 1988 Helen Eisner Award for Young Playwrights from the Streisand Center for Jewish Culture, the full length version of Life in Refusal was commissioned by the Foundation for Jewish Culture and received its first production at Performance Network Theatre in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1988. It had its mainstage debut at Theater J in 2000; Wendy C. Goldberg directed.^[12] Life in Refusal was nominated for the Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play in 2001, ^[13] and published by Samuel French, Inc. in 2003. It was later anthologized in Ellen Schiff and Michael Posnick’s “9 Contemporary Jewish Plays” (University of Texas Press, 2005).

Oh, The Innocents

Oh, The Innocents was first produced as a one-act entitled Private Lessons at the Circle Repertory Company Lab; Michael Greif directed. Its eventual second act was presented as the one-act The New Veil in 1988 at The Ensemble Studio Theatre's OctoberFest. The first full-length version of Oh, The Innocents won the Clifford Davie Award for New Plays and was produced by GeVa Theatre as part of its 1990 “Reflections: A New Plays Festival.”^[14] Joe Mantello directed a cast that included Josh Brolin, Peter Birkenhead, and Cordelia Richards.

Roth made his Washington directorial debut with Theater J’s 2004 production of Oh, The Innocents, ^[15] which included ten new original songs penned by the playwright. Oh, The Innocents is featured in "The Best Men’s Stage Monologues of 1990" (Smith and Kraus, Inc., 1991), and was published in 1996 by Samuel French, Inc.

Goodnight Irene

Commissioned by Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC) with a grant from the National Federation of Jewish Culture in 1994, Goodnight Irene was extensively workshopped at MTC; Victory Gardens Theater; Atlantic Theater Company; HB Playwrights Foundation; the University of Chicago; and University of Michigan. Gilbert McCauley directed its 1996 world premiere at Performance Network Theatre in which Peter Birkenhead and Tim Rhoze starred. Goodnight Irene was produced at Theater J in 1998 ^[16] and staged by the Hypothetical Theatre Company at the 14th Street Y in 2001.^[17]

Giant Shadows

Giant Shadows was the recipient of the first Helen Eisner Award for Young Playwrights given by the Streisand Center for Jewish Culture (1986), and was presented as a reading at L.A. Theatre Works (featuring Bruce Norris); Victory Gardens Theater (directed by Michael Greif); and the American Jewish Theatre (directed again by Greif). In 1988 Evan Yionoulis directed readings of Giant Shadows for New York Stage and Film and New Arts Theater. A revised version of the play was presented in 2011 as part of The Born Guilty Cycle: A Trilogy for The Theatre Lab in Washington, DC and read at The National Theater.

Love and Yearning in the Not-for-Profits and Other Marital Distractions

Expanded from one-acts originally produced by HB Playwrights Foundation, Love and Yearning was workshopped at Ojai Playwrights Conference (directed by Susan Booth);^[18][19] New Dramatists; and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company before its 2001 premiere at Theater J. Sarah Fox’s performance in Theater J’s production was nominated in 2002 for the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress, Resident Play. ^[20]

Love and Yearning comprises four one-act plays: Prelude to a Crisis (featured in Ensemble Studio Theatre’s “Marathon ’98” festival of new one-act plays, it received critical praise from the The New York Times and New York Daily News, ^{[21] [22]} was named in "The Best Plays of 1997-1998" (Limelight Editions, 1998) and published by Dramatists Play Service in 1999); The Professor and the Whore; Terminal Connection (one of HB Playwrights Foundation’s 1999 “Airport Plays”, featuring the late Paula Gruskiewicz and Peter Birkenhead; produced by Play2C Theater Company in Berlin in 2011); ^[23] and Love and Yearning in the Not-for-Profits (published by Smith and Kraus as part of "The Museum Plays" anthology). ^[24]

The Seagull on 16th Street

An adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull (from a translation by Carol Rocamora), The Seagull on 16th Street was produced by Theater J in 2009.^[25] John Vreeke directed a cast featuring Naomi Jacobson, Alexander Strain and Jerry Whiddon.

Still Waiting

A reexamination of Clifford Odets’s Waiting for Lefty written by Roth with Adam Mckay, Adam Phillips, and Shira Piven. Still Waiting was produced alongside Waiting for Lefty during Theater J’s 1997-98 Season, Roth’s first as Artistic Director.^[26]

Recent one-acts for various festivals include Staff Meeting (Theatre Lab Dramathon, 2011) and The Great White Undulating Orb In The Bed Between Us (Source Theatre Festival, 2008).

Roth has been a member of the Dramatists Guild of America since 1987 and was a founding member of the HB Playwrights Foundation Writers Unit from 1993 to 2007.

Directing

Oh, The Innocents – Theater J, 2004.

Randolph of Roanoke by Roy Friedman – Tribute Productions staged reading at Warehouse Theater, 2003. Winner of the Sprenger Lang Foundation/Tribute Productions Nathan Miller History Play Contest.

South Side: Racial Transformation of an American Neighbor-Hood by Louis Rosen, based on his book, "South Side: Racial Transformation of an American Neighborhood" - Staged concert readings at Theater J, 1998 and 2007.

University Teaching

Since 2006, Roth has taught a course in political theater for University of Michigan’s “Michigan in Washington Program” and University of California Berkeley’s “Berkeley Washington Program”. From 1988 to 1997, Roth was a lecturer for the University of Michigan’s English and Theater departments, teaching playwriting and dramatic literature. He later taught in the Department of Theater Arts and the Genesis Institute at Brandeis University, and was an adjunct professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Roth has been a visiting professor in the Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama graduate program in Dramatic Writing, and a visiting writer at George Washington University.

Artistic Director of Theater J

As Artistic Director of Theater J – a program of the Washington DCJCC with an Actors' Equity Small Professional Theatre Tier 7 Contract and membership in the League of Washington Theatres, TCG, Cultural Alliance, and the Association for Jewish Theatres - Roth has produced over 100 mainstage productions, including 35 world premieres and 150 staged workshops and readings. He has been credited with leading Theater J to “national prominence as a home for edgy, politically charged plays – and for nurturing risky new works” ^[27] since his arrival there in 1997.

A “rare mix of professional polish, thoughtful dramaturgy and nervy experimentation - all in a spot just far enough off the New York radar for a playwright to relax” ^[28] has helped to make Theater J the “premier theater for premieres,” ^[29] host to new plays from Joyce Carol Oates’s The Tattooed Girl^[30] and Wendy Wasserstein’s Welcome to My Rash and Third,^[31] to Robert Brustein’s Spring Forward, Fall Back,^[32] Neena Beber’s Jump/Cut,^[33] and Richard Greenberg's Bal Masque.^[34]

In addition to creating a hospitable environment for playwrights and embracing provocative subjects in its season offerings, under Roth’s leadership Theater J has become known for its programming Beyond the Stage; Peter Marks has described the Theater J post-show discussion format as “a chance to digest and puzzle out en masse, in an entirely exhilarating way.” ^[35]

Controversy (as featured in American Theatre magazine)

Roth and Theater J’s rise to become “one of the most prolific producers of Israeli-oriented drama in North America” were the subject of “Heated Dialogue,” a piece by Lonnie Firestone that appeared in the February 2012 issue of TCG’s American Theatre magazine. ^[36]

Heated dialogue has become a Theater J trademark, both during the plays and at post-show talkbacks. A focus on Israel and the Middle East is one surefire way to attract passionate audiences (and occasional detractors).

[Roth] has addressed the Middle East on Theater J’s main stage as well as in a reading series he began in 2000, “Voices from a Changing Israel,” designed as a forum for discussion about Israeli culture and politics as well as a way to test plays before moving them to the main stage. Roth’s programming choices in the series have willingly embraced provocative subjects and stoked controversy on more than a few occasions.

...David Hare’s Via Dolorosa, based on [the British playwright’s] experiences with Arabs and Jews on a visit to Israel…was a left-leaning piece by an outsider; …Israeli playwright Motti Lerner’s play The Murder of Isaac...grappled with the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin..., [and was mounted] in fall of 2000, with the second intifada raging...

Alongside this new series, Roth also founded the Peace Café with Theater J council member Mimi Conway and friend Andy Shallal—another venture to get people talking about Middle East issues and to find common ground between Jews and Arabs, in this case between bites of falafel. Shallal joined Theater J’s council the following year as the first and only Arab member—a presence that has encouraged Palestinian advocates to take a seat at the table.

IT'S NOT ALL ISRAEL ALL THE TIME AT THEATER J, which is situated within D.C.’s Jewish Community Center. True, its productions all tap into Jewish identity in some way—but Jewish theatre, like Jewishness, is an elastic concept. Theater J’s interpretation is broad, including plays by Jewish writers that don’t have specific Jewish content (Arthur Miller’s After the Fall, for example) and, conversely, plays by non-Jewish writers that do (like Matthew Lopez’s The Whipping Man).

...The “Voices” series and the Middle East focus is a strong part of the Theater J mission—and it has tested the outer limits of (and even gone beyond) Jewish identity...In 2007, [Roth]changed the series title to “Voices from a Changing Middle East,” and embraced work that focused on Palestinians, Iraqis and other Arab populations...

Of all of Theater J’s Middle East productions, the one most prone to headlines was imported last year directly from its run at the Cameri Theatre in Tel Aviv (essentially the Lincoln Center of Israel). Return to Haifa, adapted by Israeli playwright Boaz Gaon from a novella by Palestinian author Ghassan Kanafani, has a story that goes straight to the heart of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict: A Palestinian couple is forced to leave Haifa following Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, and the Jewish couple—both Holocaust survivors—that moves in finds a baby boy left behind. They raise him as their own and, 19 years later, he’s serving in the Israeli army and fighting in the Six Day War of 1967. When the Palestinian parents are finally allowed to return to Haifa, they reencounter their son and reveal his identity for the first time.

What first moved Gaon about the story was the sensitivity that Kanafani displayed toward Jewish characters, particularly Holocaust survivors. Gaon returned the favor, displaying a similar empathy for the Palestinian characters in his adaptation. But the result, as Gaon told critic Peter Marks of the Washington Post, is that a number of prominent American theatres found the play too risky, turning down the chance to produce it.

Theater J, however, was on board. For the American premiere, Roth commissioned an Arabic translation for the conversations between the Palestinian couple, and the show was presented in Arabic and Hebrew with English surtitles...

Return to Haifa “played like a hit,” Roth recalls. The talkbacks in particular were a draw: Each featured a different panel of scholars, artists and advocates—44 panelists in all. One night, it was Hadar Susskind, a vice president at J Street (a progressive Israel-advocacy organization) and Jamal Najjab, a director at the United Palestinian Appeal; another night featured Rabbi Charles M. Feinberg of Rabbis for Human Rights; on another, Aziz Fahmy Farag, bureau chief and senior correspondent for Saudi TV. These discussions sparked spirited and, at times, vociferous debates. Roth was thrilled with the response: “Every talkback was good. Some nights, it was sublime.” In his view, the more diverse the audience, the better the conversation.

But the play, almost inevitably, drew protests. In this case, a group calling itself COPMA (Citizens Opposed to Propaganda Masquerading as Art) decried the play as anti-Israel and called upon a major funder to cut off Theater J. This group also took issue with the Peace Café, stating that Theater J collaborates with those who “regularly attack and denigrate Israel.” COPMA had protested outside Theater J during the 2009 reading of Seven Jewish Children, and by now the group’s presence made the board and CEO of the Jewish Community Center very nervous...

The JCC felt compelled to address some of COPMA’s concerns. The Peace Café was detached from Theater J and moved off-site; it is now hosted primarily at Andy Shallal’s nearby venue, Busboys and Poets.

[During the 2011-2012 season], as the JCC brought in a new CEO, Carole Zawatsky, Theater J held off announcing its new “Voices” series. When it did, though, it showed no signs of softening. Its opening offering was a new work by Gaon, co-written with Nir Erez: an incendiary adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, retitled Boged (which means “traitor”)...

Members of COPMA have returned to the “Voices” readings this year with the specific intent to debate. The presence of a vocal opposition has made Roth into an unlikely activist—not necessarily toward a specific political stand-point, he emphasizes, but simply in favor of the right to produce theatre that speaks so openly about the Middle East.

“I don’t want to position myself as the leader of a movement,” Roth says. “I know better peace activists. My job is to produce compelling art, and I want to keep our eyes wide open culturally. When we look at Israel, we’re looking at a full portrait, un-naïve and knowing. That’s why it was important to fight to have a reading series this year. To stay close. Staying close and staying personal is as far as my activist mandate goes.”

...The tensions born out of the Middle East are fertile ground for artists. But Roth’s strongest and consistent impulses are also his most personal: the “bridge crossing” between Jews and non-Jews. “It stems from my work as a playwright and as the child of Holocaust survivors.” Roth says. “The black-Jewish dialogue, because of my own upbringing on the South Side of Chicago, is extraordinarily personal to me, too. The encountering of Palestinians and the dialogue between the Jew and the Arab has grown out of those same impulses—the commonality of experience.”

...As plans get under way for the 2012–13 season, Roth is mulling over which new Middle East plays to present and the sort of questions he hopes they’ll ask. Whether the topic sparks interest or anger, it is always, for Roth, a conversation worth having.

Awards

Mayor’s Arts Award for Excellence in an Artistic Discipline – 2008

Hadassah Myrtle Wreath Award – 2006

National Endowment for the Arts Playwriting Grant – 1998; 2003

Helen Eisner Award for Young Playwrights – 1998 (for Proverbial Human Suffering)

Davie Award for New Plays – 1990 (for Oh, The Innocents)

Avery Hopwood Award for Drama – 1981 (for Necessities); 1982 (for The Red Guitar and A Spiral Weld)

Named in 2009 as one of the Forward 50 (“a list of fifty Jewish-Americans ‘who have made a significant impact on the Jewish story in the past year,’ published annually as an editorial opinion of The Forward newspaper since 1994.”)^[37]

Personal Life

Roth is married to Kate Schecter, Senior Program Officer for Russia & Kosovo at the American International Health Alliance. They have two daughters.

References

External links

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