Pho­to by Austin Progrob, Still from the pro­duc­tion of Anne Frank in Mt. Ver­non, Ohio

I grew up in a Mex­i­can Amer­i­can Jew­ish house­hold in west­ern Mass­a­chu­setts where all ques­tions were encour­aged. The lim­its of dis­cus­sion were the bound­aries of my aware­ness. That is not to say that any inquiry would go answered, but I was encour­aged to ver­bal­ize my thoughts nonethe­less. And I had many after I saw my grand­fa­ther per­form in reruns of the Mex­i­can sit­com El Cha­vo del Ocho. For one, I want­ed to know why he was more proud of his work on stage than on screen. His work in telen­ov­e­las were my path­way into his life as an actor. Due to the ephemer­al­i­ty of the­ater, I nev­er had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to see the three El Vio­lin­ista en el Teja­do (Fid­dler on the Roof in Span­ish) he was involved in, or any of the more than fifty pro­duc­tions that he worked on through­out his long career in Mex­i­co City. Over time, his pref­er­ence began to make sense to me. After he passed, I went to see the Yid­dish revival of Fid­dler in New York City. To sit in a room as some­one sang sto­ries, asked ques­tions about their present day, and dreamed of a bet­ter tomor­row — the expe­ri­ence was sim­i­lar to my child­hood din­ner table. Like my grand­fa­ther, my ques­tions would find a home in the the­ater when I became an actor and a play­wright. None of this was a coin­ci­dence. There is a deep syn­er­gy between the val­ues of Amer­i­can Jew­ish fam­i­lies and sto­ries told on stage.

In an act­ing career, there are rare instances when a role aligns so deeply with one’s iden­ti­ty that it feels like kismet. I had one such expe­ri­ence when I act­ed in Chau­tauqua The­ater Company’s pro­duc­tion of Paula Vogel’s Inde­cent, a play about the first kiss shared between two women on Broad­way and the Euro­pean émi­grés who brought it to life. Among the char­ac­ters I would por­tray, the most cen­tral was Sholem Asch, the author of the play with­in the play. Asch was a Yid­dish lit­er­ary giant who, flee­ing anti­semitism in Europe, immi­grat­ed to New York in 1914. Through­out his life, he was ambiva­lent about Amer­i­ca, but he under­stood its role as a safe haven for per­se­cut­ed peo­ple. For me, Asch’s expe­ri­ence as a dias­poric Jew was pro­found­ly res­o­nant. The role was an oppor­tu­ni­ty to por­tray the sto­ry of my ancestors. 

I grew up in a Mex­i­can Amer­i­can Jew­ish house­hold in west­ern Mass­a­chu­setts where all ques­tions were encour­aged. The lim­its of dis­cus­sion were the bound­aries of my awareness.

Jew­ish the­ater artists occu­py a unique space — they are one of the few minor­i­ty groups who can, to some extent, opt in or out of their iden­ti­ty. Halfway through the play, Vogel intro­duces a new char­ac­ter, Vir­ginia McFad­den, to replace a beloved cast mem­ber whose Eng­lish isn’t strong enough for the trans­lat­ed 1922 New York run of The God of Vengeance, the play with­in the play. McFad­den, a recent Smith Col­lege grad­u­ate, is intro­duced for com­ic effect as young, inex­pe­ri­enced, and exceed­ing­ly goy­ish. She has nev­er per­formed before, and after her first rehearsal, she gush­es to her scene part­ner about how excit­ing it is to play a queer char­ac­ter on stage. This moment encap­su­lates the beau­ty and impact of Amer­i­can Jew­ish the­ater. From the moment Jew­ish artists arrived on Amer­i­can stages, they left an indeli­ble mark across all dis­ci­plines, from writ­ing and act­ing to design and tech­ni­cal work. Much of that impact is not work that is explic­it­ly Jew­ish. The actress who played Vir­ginia McFad­den at Chau­tauqua The­ater Com­pa­ny hap­pened to be Jew­ish. Many of the cast mem­bers were. Some were not. After per­for­mances, audi­ence mem­bers would linger, eager to con­firm their the­o­ries about who was and wasn’t Jew­ish. It became an unre­quest­ed game of suc­cess­ful assim­i­la­tion. Some­times they guessed cor­rect­ly. Often, they were com­plete­ly wrong.

And yet, Jew­ish­ness in the­ater is nev­er tru­ly invis­i­ble. His­tor­i­cal­ly, the stage has demand­ed a defin­ing fea­ture to mark a Jew­ish char­ac­ter, often reduc­ing Jew­ish iden­ti­ty to car­i­ca­ture. The most endur­ing sym­bol of this is the nose — worn as a pros­thet­ic by non-Jew­ish actors por­tray­ing Jew­ish roles, from Shakespeare’s The Mer­chant of Venice, where Shy­lock was per­formed with a hooked nose, to Bradley Cooper’s recent por­tray­al of Leonard Bern­stein in Mae­stro. Even when Jew­ish­ness isn’t explic­it­ly acknowl­edged, its pres­ence — or absence — becomes a state­ment in itself. How­ev­er anti­se­mit­ic these car­i­ca­tures may have been, they are a win­dow into how an actor and pro­duc­tion inter­pret per­son­hood. They reveal not only how Jews are per­ceived but also how we per­ceive ourselves. 

Many of the most icon­ic Jew­ish-Amer­i­can plays—Fid­dler on the Roof, Angels in Amer­i­ca, and more recent­ly Bad Jews—con­tain humor, even in their dark­est moments. The humor isn’t inci­den­tal; it’s part of how Jew­ish sto­ries get told. It allows for vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty while cre­at­ing a bridge between Jew­ish expe­ri­ences and broad­er audi­ences. My play, Anne Frank in Mt. Ver­non, Ohio, explores the ten­sion between the two. It fol­lows a com­mu­ni­ty the­ater leader, eager to bring out­side voic­es to his small town, who decides to write his own stage adap­ta­tion of Anne Frank’s sto­ry, and a young Chris­t­ian woman finds her­self drawn to the role of Anne after a genet­ic test reveals to her a minute amount of Jew­ish ances­try. The play reflects my own expe­ri­ences with anti­semitism, many of which stem from igno­rance rather than mal­ice. It chal­lenges audi­ences to sit with the dis­com­fort of cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion while still root­ing for char­ac­ters who, despite their mis­guid­ed actions, sin­cere­ly strive to make their town more inclusive.

At its best, the­ater forces audi­ences to wit­ness con­tra­dic­tions with­out res­o­lu­tion, and to do so in com­mu­ni­ty with oth­ers. It’s a way to approach Jew­ish iden­ti­ty with­out sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty, allow­ing for con­tra­dic­tion and com­plex­i­ty. As we tell our chil­dren to ask ques­tions, we do not do so only to lead them to answers. We tell our chil­dren to ask ques­tions to encour­age them to involve their com­mu­ni­ty in their quest to find answers. Like sto­ries and the­ater, life is more mean­ing­ful when done together.

Pho­to by Austin Progrob, Still from the pro­duc­tion of Anne Frank in Mt. Ver­non, Ohio

Isa­iah Stavchan­sky is a Mex­i­can-Amer­i­can writer, per­former, and edu­ca­tor. His work has been devel­oped and per­formed at The Edith Whar­ton House, Slough Farm, New York Foun­da­tion for the Arts, The Work­shop The­ater, Williamstown The­atre Fes­ti­val, Blue Bird The­ater Com­pa­ny, The Mark O’Don­nell The­ater, and The Tank NYC. He is the edi­tor of What This Place Makes Me: A Col­lec­tion of 21st Cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can Plays on Immi­gra­tion,” pub­lished by Rest­less Books. Isa­iah is a grad­u­ate of Keny­on Col­lege and Atlantic Act­ing School.