Alan Gross’s newest play, “High Holidays,” might seem like the perfect comedic setup: 13-year-old Billy Roman is preparing for his bar mitzvah, when his rebellious older brother returns from college during the High Holiday season. But Gross says it’s much more than a simple Jewish comedy.
“It’s about a generation that’s trying to find a grip, that’s lost, and all of the old answers are not satisfying,” Gross said. “It’s about how to be a man.”
Set in the 1960s, the play speaks of an entire generation that realized “just getting a clean haircut and a clean shirt and going out and calling people ‘sir’ didn’t cut it,” Gross said. That’s not to say the play won’t have its share of laughs as the Roman family examines coming of age in the Jewish tradition.
“High Holidays” premieres at the Goodman Theatre Oct. 31 and will run through Nov. 29.
Gross got his start in children’s theater in Skokie, where he grew up, and returned to theater after a career in advertising and magazine writing. He is the author of a dozen plays, including “Lunching,” “The Phone Room,” “The Conversion of Leo Novotny,” “The Man in 605” and “The Secret Life of American Poets.” He has written several books for children, most notably “What if the Teacher Calls on Me?” Gross is also a prize-winning poet and lives in Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood with his wife, Norma.
JUF News recently caught up with Gross to talk about the upcoming premiere and Jewish elements in his writing life.
JUF News: What inspired “High Holidays”?
Alan Gross: While I was in Indiana [staging the play “Lunching” with Indiana University’s Dale McFadden], I saw a lot of plays. And they taught me that the great American play was all about family. I hadn’t touched a family play. I did comedies, and love, and love-comedies, and work plays, but I didn’t have any family plays. I wanted one that I felt was central to my family.
At this time, my mother died. Suddenly, I was deep in family, where I hadn’t been in a long time. Knowing that I wanted to think about that, and the shards of her life coming to me in photographs and crystal and letters and bills and things, made me start thinking about the family play.
I had seen [plays by Clifford] Odets, [Thornton] Wilder, [Tennessee] Williams, and Neil Simon, and I never felt satisfied. When you see plays and say “that’s true,” I never felt that way. That was not the way it was in my family. I see jokes, I see social commentary, but I don’t necessarily see my family. I wanted to create something that would give me a chance to see my family.
But the mother in “High Holidays” is definitely not my mother. My real mother was a very friendly, encouraging woman.
How involved are you in the staging and directing of “High Holidays”?
You get it on the page, and get [the director] to agree to it on the page, and then he’s off on his own. I’ve learned it over the years—I don’t want to panic and be the copy department, running around cranking out pages because there’s something missing in the middle of the rehearsal. It’s chaos. What we do is, we agree—[director Steven Robman] and I—when we work we agree early. We have the script down because it’s too hard for the director to make script changes in rehearsal.
Milos Forman said this to me about casting: “Always be in love with the girl you take to the dance, it just makes the dance better.” The four people who are doing my play I am much in love with. The casting department at Goodman is as good as any I have ever seen anywhere, and I’ve done much casting in my life for theater, television, commercials.
What do you hope the audience will take away from your play? If someone saw “High Holidays” on opening night and was still thinking about it several days later, what are they thinking about?
There are three levels of thought in art. One is “that’s what I say!” The second level is “that’s what I’ve always thought, but I never was able to articulate it before.” That’s a pretty high level—if you get to that level, you’re all right. And the third level of thought is “my god, I’ve never thought about that in that way before.” That’s a very high level. And I want people to get at that level. If I can [make them go to that level] then I feel I’ve communicated artistically. I want to expand their horizons a little bit.
And I want them to say “I’m calling my cousins in New Jersey and telling them to see it when it’s on Broadway.”
Are you a Jewish playwright or a playwright who happens to be Jewish?
My writing is very Jewish, and I don’t understand where it comes from. I don’t live a particularly Jewish life. I’m not a very religious person, but I find the Jews to be a wonderful bunch.
It’s so much a part of me. Mike Nussbaum has told me that I was “absolutely a Jewish writer” and David Mamet “was a writer who happened to be Jewish.”
The Broadway director Hal Prince once said that “a director directs—and if you did it badly, the world will let you know.” So it is with playwrights. You have to write what you can, and the world will tell you whether you’re a Jewish writer or not.
