One of my marching orders is to expand the offerings of the Cultural Arts department and increase the level of "Jewish-ness," for lack of a better word, in upcoming performing arts seasons. Another of my marching orders it to find ways to connect the current performing arts season to Jewish culture.
This is easy with a play like Beau Jest, coming up in December. But it wasn't so easy with a production like Avenue Q, which opens November 5th.
What's Jewish about Avenue Q?
I had to answer this question for an essay that is featured in our Playbills. It stumped me for quite a while. Then, in one of those flashes of clarity that always seem to happen at 3:00 a.m., I lit upon a connection. Here's what I wrote for the Playbill. Enjoy.
One of the main tenants of
Jewish thought is the concept of tikkun olam; repairing the world. Making it a better place.
One of the most wonderful
functions of theater is its
ability to provide reflection; to hold a mirror up to the world around us, enabling
us to see ourselves more clearly.
Theater allows us to view our problems through the lens of fiction. It allows us laugh at ourselves. To cry. To feel. It
opens us up to the experiences of others in a way that can make us more
understanding and tolerant.
Theater makes us more human.
So what does this have to do
with an R-rated production with full-puppet nudity?
Avenue Q is a coming-of-age parable, satirizing the issues
and anxieties associated with entering adulthood. Its characters struggle with
the schism between the world of Sesame Street and the world in which they now, as adults, must
live. Big Bird told them that they
were “special” but they have discovered they are no more “special” than anyone
else. This world in which they now find themselves is a far cry from the world
they grew up watching on television; that world had simplistic problems and
happy resolutions. This
world? Not so much.
So perhaps Avenue Q is about kids growing up with the concept of tikkun
olam and then trying to find ways to
live that philosophy in a world that makes it remarkably difficult to do
so.
You can do anything. You can be anything. You can change the world. But can you? Can you really?
In
“Money Song” the cast trades riffs back and forth about how good it feels to
help others. The song culminates
in with the lyric, “Give us your money! / Every time you do good deeds / You're
also serving your own needs. / When you help others / You can't help helping
yourself.”
Seems
cynical, right? But real. All too real. And with a good outcome. Even if the intent of helping others is to make yourself
feel better, you still helped. And
by helping, even in your small, self-centered way, you have made the world a
slightly a better place. Sounds
kind of like one of the most often quoted portions of Pirkei Avot; “You are not obligated to complete the work, but
neither are you free to desist from it (2:21).”
Avenue
Q is full of cynical optimism. Life sucks, but everything is temporary
-- the good and the bad. It’s funny and raunchy but also poignant and full of
life lessons.
But
in a way, Avenue Q also
represents the distance between the heady concept tikkun olam and Pirkei Avot 2:21. You are
supposed to fix it. You can’t fix it.
You still have to try.
To
quote a character in Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, “An awful place, this sea, this gulf between the
Intention and the Act, that people call ‘the world.’” Avenue Q provides
a possible blueprint--a racy, profanity-laden, hysterically funny and extremely
uncomfortable blueprint, but a blueprint nonetheless--for navigating the gulf.
Krista Lang Blackwood, Director of Cultural Arts
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