Enter on a High Note

West Philly's newest indie theater company is on the March.

by A.D. Amorosi

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Published: Feb 13, 2008

Leo Bloom: Actors are not animals! They're human beings!

Max Bialystock: They are? Have you ever eaten with one?

—The Producers

Ryan Collerd DIRTY PROJECTORS: (L-R) Rich Wexler, Sarah Louise Hunt, Jan Brotman, Rob Goldberg and Adam Remich of Project Theater Project. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

It's a brave thing, starting a new theater company these days, or any time ever. You have to write a play or cobble together the cash to do someone else's, you gotta buy curtains, sell tickets, feed actors.

Project Theater Project knows what they're up against in putting on their first production, March of the Falsettos. It's enough that they're centering in West Philly — where theater companies are few and far between. "We wanted to produce shows that resonate with the diverse communities of West Philadelphia, our home," says PTP member Sarah Louise Hunt. "Plus offer quality free or low-cost theater for all."

"There're not enough independent or amateur theater options for performers or audiences here," says Rich Wexler, PTP member, proprietor of Sherman Community Arts and booking agent/coffee drinker at Green Line Café. "We want to change that." He notes that PTP's size and stature — each member has ties to one or several community organizations — has allowed them to take risks on subject matter, but they still needed help. Members of Buried Beds serve as the March of the Falsettos' musical director and band, and Kol Tzedek Reconstructionist Synagogue is their fiscal sponsor making all donations tax-deductible.

"We wanted to create a revolving door, community-based theater group that could put on less mainstream shows, involve 'non-professional' locals and work as democratically as possible, without a director," says PTP's Rob Goldberg. "But we wanted to do shows that raised social/political issues relevant to our community. March of the Falsettos clearly speaks to important topics that most theater still doesn't touch."

As part of a musical trilogy written for the Broadway stage by William Finn (who co-wrote the book with James Lapine of Into the Woods fame), March of the Falsettos was, in 1981, daring. It deals with the dysfunctions of being a secular Jew, married with children and gay. That describes "Marvin," the show's main character who watches as his son goes off to a child psychiatrist, how his lover and his kid deal with each other, and how his wife moves on to new sexual relationships.

Falsettos is dark and surreally humorous with flawed characters in desperate straits. "In some ways it is a musical version of The Ice Storm if everyone there was Jewish," says Wexler. He saw the play on Broadway several times as a child during its initial run and incited his company to use it as PTP's début. To him, Falsettos was ahead of its time. "As a Jew growing up in the '80s, I don't think homosexuality was a widely accepted thing. I don't think Jews — or many people, period — talked so openly about it."

Goldberg, who was responsible for getting activist rabbi/Temple professor Rebecca Alpert to speak after one performance, notes that Finn's talk of gay relationships and same-sex parenting discussed in candid fashion was unknown to the theater world then. "And sadly still today, if you look at families and relationships on TV," says Goldberg. "With March you get a glimpse into how each character sees their world — and yet not just through the prism of their sexual identity. Sex is an identity, the shows tell us, and an important one. But it's one of many."

Plus March of the Falsettos has what Goldberg calls a "New York Jewish obsessive neurotic theme" with therapy and self-deprecation to guide it. "It's got that Jewish humor you find in Woody Allen's relationship films, like Manhattan, to ease us through the darkness of the not-so-funny, serious stuff of life the show explores."

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)

March of the Falsettos, Mon., Feb. 18, 10 p.m., free, followed by '80s dance party at the Balcony atop the Trocadero, 1003 Arch St., 215-922-LIVE; Fri.-Sat., Feb. 22-23, 8 p.m.; and Sun., Feb. 24, 1 p.m., pay what you can (suggested $5-$10), followed by brunch and lecture by Rabbi Rebecca Alpert on Jewish and gay families, Rotunda, 4014 Walnut St., myspace.com/5jewsinaroombitching, shermanarts.org.

 

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