Directing JTC’s Passover Stories for Preschoolers

Posted by Avital on Apr 8, 2012 in Current Projects | 0 comments

Avital directed Passover Stories for Preschoolers, a touring performance by actors Patricia Hunter * and Andrew Bray featuring the stories The Little Red Hen and the Passover Matzah and Nachshon Who Was Afraid to Swim.  You can catch an upcoming performance at Multnomah County Libraries:  http://events.multcolib.org/eventinstance/passover-stories-preschoolers

RANT!

Posted by Avital on Mar 27, 2012 in Current Projects | 0 comments

It was an honor and a privilege to collaborate with the Theatricians — and particularly my fellow SSC-assistant director Tracy Woodward — on their monologue festival, RANT!  I directed a brilliant little piece by Jessica Flietman entitle, “The Average-Sized Mermaid,” in which a kindergarten teacher (Luba Chan) reads Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid to her students.  Having been dumped the night before by her fiance, the teacher realizes that it is in fact her moral imperative to enlighten her students about all of the many things that are sexist and backward about this story and it all devolves from there…  RANT! runs one more weekend and they sold out this past week.  If you’re in LA, get your tickets now!   www.theatricians.com

A LIVE DRESS listed as a Best Bet for Fertile Ground

Posted by Avital on Jan 28, 2012 in Current Projects | 0 comments

A LIVE DRESS, a new play by Martha Jane Kaufman was listed as one of the weekend’s best bets by Marty Hughley of The Oregonian in his article about the Fertile Ground Festival:  http://www.oregonlive.com/performance/index.ssf/2012/01/fertile_ground_2012_best_bets.html.

A LIVE DRESS was presented as part of Portland’s Fertile Ground Festival of New Works.  The reading sold out, playing to houses that were standing room only.  It was an honor to work with Martha Jane Kaufman once again on this play that brings unique voice to the world of the Yiddish Theatre.  Perhaps Portlanders are learning that perhaps sometimes it’s worth buying tickets in advance…

Avital featured in American Theatre Magazine article about assistant directing

Posted by Avital on Jan 21, 2012 in Current Projects | 0 comments

Avital was mentioned in an article about assistant directing in American Theatre Magazine this January.  Here is an excerpt from “Supporting Roles” by David F. Chapman:

“…  Every season, the SDC Foundation arranges several dozen observerships and fellowships with master directors and choreographers all over the country, according to director of programs Ellen Rusconi. Participants receive a weekly stipend, travel and housing stipends if appropriate, and a one-year associate membership in SDC. According to Rusconi, the program’s success is due to the willingness of members to give back by hosting observers. While observing is often a step below assisting, one can lead to the other: Director Avital Rutenberg Schoenberg met Michael Halberstam while observing him direct A Minister’s Wife atLincoln Center Theater. He later invited her to be his assistant on The Real Thing at Chicago’s Writers’ Theatre, where he is artistic director.”

You can see the full article here at http://www.tcg.org/publications/at/jan12/overview.cfm

The Real Thing

Posted by Avital on Sep 11, 2011 in Current Projects | 0 comments

Avital is assistant directing in Chicago!  THE REAL THING is a brilliantly witty and deeply true play about love, art, and authentic relationship.  Artistic director Michael Halberstam is directing an incredibly talented ensemble of actors in this Stoppard play which will open Writers’ Theatre’s 20th anniversary season.  We’re about to go into tech and this promises to be a wonderful show.  For more information and tickets, check out www.writerstheatre.org.

Jewish Review Covers “The Other Grace”

Posted by Avital on Sep 11, 2011 in Current Projects | 0 comments

Childhood friends reunite to collaborate on play

By DEBORAH MOON, Jewish Review

1 August, 2011

Two young Jewish women who grew up in Portland and studied theater at Yale have returned to their hometown for a staged reading of a new play.

Avital Rutenberg Schoenberg will direct a staged reading of “The Other Grace,” a new one-act play by Martha Jane Kaufman. The reading will be at 7:30 p.m., Aug. 13, at Theater! Theatre! 3430 SE Belmont St.

Rutenberg Schoenberg received her B.A. from Yale University in May 2009, graduating with distinction in Theater Studies and English. Since graduating, she has served as a director and assistant director throughout the country. She is the daughter of Rabbi Laurie Rutenberg and Rabbi Gary Schoenberg of Gesher and attended Portland Jewish Academy.

Kaufman grew up at Havurah Shalom, where she still attends services when in Portland. A graduate of Lincoln High School, she attended Wesleyan University and is currently studying playwriting at Yale School of Drama. She is a Huntington Theater Playwriting Fellow. She is the daughter of Sue Kaufman and Laura Schulz and the late Richard Philofsky.

The two women started talking about collaborating on a project in their hometown of Portland more than a year ago. They met as children at Willowbrook Arts Camp and performed together in plays at Northwest Childrens Theater. Having since gone on to arts careers on the East Coast and beyond, both women said they felt it was important to give back to the community that raised them.

“This production of The Other Grace will allow us the opportunity to collaborate with fellow artists in making theatre that galvanizes the spirit, enriches community and speaks particularly to a younger adult audience,” according to the pair.

Aug. 7-13, Rutenberg Schoenberg will direct a workshop of Kaufman’s play in which the creative team and a group of actors will rehearse, re-write and discover the world of The Other Grace. The workshop will culminate in a staged reading open to the public on Aug. 13 at 7:30 p.m. at Theater! Theatre!

The play synopsis describes The Other Grace as a story about living a fairytale: “In a world after ‘happily ever after,’ Grace—the daughter of Beauty and Bashful—meets a boy named Grace in her kindergarten class. The two Graces build a mysterious friendship that throws a wrench into everyone’s best-laid plans. As Grace’s family implodes, unable to live up to the unrealistic expectations they’ve set for themselves and each other, Grace and her friend Grace escape into the mysterious forest, which is teaming with fairytale heroes and heroines. Lured into the woods like Hansel and Gretel, the Graces must forge a new path.”

The Other Grace was recently translated into Russian and performed at a June workshop at Moscow’s Playwright and Director Center. The piece was performed as part of a collaboration between young directors at the Moscow Art Theatre School and playwrights at Yale School of Drama. The August reading in Portland will be its first in the original English.

“My Russian director spoke about adults in the play-world always behaving like children, but children in the play-world showing the maturity of adults,” said Kaufman.

“I grew up with a non-traditional family that I did not see represented in any of the media, literature or cultural mythology I was given as a child,” said Kaufman. “As a writer, a lot of my work stems from that, a lot of my work focuses on breaking traditional family archetypes to make space for alternative representations of family and home. The play stems from my own experience, from a fascination with the way myth and archetype carry weight in our world and the role they play in socializing children into adults.”

The two women reunited last summer at a Willowbrook Arts Camp.

“We hadn’t seen each other for maybe eight years and I was shocked to find how much we had in common,” said Rutenberg Schoenberg. “Sure, our surface artistic interest are different—Martha’s interested in deconstruction of gender and sexual identity, I gravitate towards classic work by male playwrights who have been dead for hundreds of years. Yet at the core, we shared some very key interests that lead to further discussion: we care about heritage, about dialoguing with a larger storytelling tradition—an English theatre tradition, an American theatre tradition, a storytelling tradition and a Jewish—particularly Yiddish theatre tradition.”

Kaufman said she is particularly interested in how Jews tell stories. She said she has read Yiddish plays in translation for a number of years but is now learning Yiddish so she can read them in their original form.

“In the last five years I’ve drawn a lot of inspiration from the Yiddish theater tradition,” said Kaufman. “I’m struck by how many of these plays end in a place of irresolution. Many of them build to a point of conflict and then cut off. It awes and inspires me. It makes me wonder about the impulse in contemporary writing to resolve discord, to find redemption for suffering and salvation for characters—is this the influence of Christianity? I’m so intrigued by this Yiddish theater tradition, a story telling tradition that has space for living with dissonance, with multiple truths, with pain and suffering. Much of my writing is influenced by this style.” Rutenberg Schoenberg said she has long been fascinated with fairytales and finding ways that stories give meaning to random events in life. “Martha and I had been talking about another play when she sent me The Other Grace one day on a whim, just to show me something else she’d been working on,” she said. “We’d never talked about my obsession with fairytales before and I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ These were exactly the issues that I’ve been fascinated with for years. The Other Grace asks us about the ‘after’part of ‘happily ever after.’” So the pair turned their focus on bringing Grace to Portland. “As Jews, we are people of the book—we’re storytellers,” said Rutenberg Schoenberg. “And I think it’s a particularly Jewish thing to build new stories by looking back and taking from the stories that came before us. We are defined by the stories of previous generations, and it is only by really owning those stories that we can come up with new narratives of our own.”

Tickets are $4 under 30 or $7 general admission at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/187284; or $5 and $8 at the door. The staged reading will be followed by a talk-back with the playwright, actors and director. For more information, call 503-341-2274 or email theothergrace@gmail.com.

Shakespeare Santa Cruz’s Henry IV, Part I

Posted by Avital on Sep 11, 2011 in Current Projects | 0 comments

Avital was thrilled to serve as Scott Wentworth’s assistant director at Shakespeare Santa Cruz this summer.  Henry IV Part 1 is a mountain of the show, and it was an honor to climb it with this team amidst the redwoods.  www.shakespearesantacruz.org