North Coast Repertory Theatre Presents MY NAME IS ASHER LEV, 6/1-26

North Coast Repertory Theatre Presents:
The San Diego Premiere of...
My Name is Asher Lev
By Aaron Posner
Adapted from the novel by Chaim Potok
Directed by David Ellenstein

Featuring Craig De Lorenzo, David Ellenstein, Crystal Sershen

Previews: June 1 - 3, 2011
Regular Shows: June 4 - June 26, 2011
Tickets: $30 - $47

Press/Opening Night is:
Saturday, June 4
8:00 PM
Due to high demand for this show please RSVP as soon as possible.

Asher Lev is a young Hassidic artist torn between his observant Jewish community and his need to create. His artistic genius threatens his relationship with his parents and community and weighs heavily on his conscience. In 1999, the Arden presented Aaron Posner and Chaim Potok's co-adaptation of Potok's classic novel The Chosen to critical and audience acclaim. Posner, in consultation with Adena Potok, now introduces this world premiere based on Potok's novel, My Name Is Asher Lev.

A Note on My Name is Asher Lev
by
Gideon Rappaport, Dramaturge
The conflict within Asher Lev is ancient and universal: It is the conflict between the will of the Creator and the passion of the creature. It is a paradoxical conflict, for is not the same Creator the source of both the creature's passion and the revealed principles by which he is to live?
As an orthodox Jew Asher Lev inherits layers of moral responsibility: in the written law given to Moses on Mount Sinai recorded in the Torah (the first five books of the Bible); in the oral law passed down from Moses through the prophets, compiled by Rabbi Judah the Prince in the Mishnah, and commented upon by the sages in the sixty-three tractates of the Talmud; in the mystical tradition called Cabala as taught by the Baal Shem Tov (Master of the Good Name) and his followers, the Hasidim; and in the Hasidic traditions of the particular sect called Lubavitch (thinly-some say misleadingly-disguised in the play as Ladover).
The weight of this tradition upon Asher Lev may be summed up in two of the Ten Commandments. The second commandment says, "Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any manner of likeness, of any thing that is in the heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down unto them, nor serve them." The fifth commandment says, "Honor thy father and thy mother" (to which Asher's mother refers with the Hebrew phrase "kibud ov").

At the same time, Asher Lev is given a seemingly irresistible gift and passion for drawing and painting. This brings him under the influence of the prevailing Romantic culture of modern America, which asserts the absolute primacy of the individual, nature, and the passions in rebellion against society, reason, and tradition. Under the influence of this alternative world view, art is no longer the handmaiden of religion. Rather art is a religion, as Jacob Kahn (Asher Lev's mentor in art) asserts, and an artist is responsible only to his art.
In the world of Hamlet, the ethical platitude stated by Polonius is valid:
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
But how can one possibly be true to a self so conflicted as that of Asher Lev? When aesthetic and moral imperatives clash, how is one to be loyal to both?

David Ellenstein (Aryeh Lev, The Rebbe, Jacob Kahn, Yitzchok) David is delighted to return to the stage at North Coast Rep where he was previously seen as Matt Friedman in Talley's Folly and as Jonathan Waxman in Sight Unseen. David has acted with theatre companies across the country from New York to Los Angeles, and from Anchorage to Miami, as well as more than three dozen film and television roles. For further information, see Artistic Director's bio at the end of this program.

Crystal Sershen (Anna Schaeffer, Rivkeh Lev, Rachel) Crystal is delighted to return to the stage at North Coast Rep, where she played seven different characters in String of Pearls and Myrtle Brown in Morning's at Seven. Residing in Santa Monica, she has performed on stages throughout Southern California and has been associated with some of LA's most prominent theatre companies, including The Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, The Actors' Gang, and City Garage. Crystal received her BFA at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and her MA in Classical Theatre at NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study. She is honored to be a member of this fine cast.

Craig De Lorenzo (Asher Lev) Craig is thrilled to be making his North Coast Repertory debut! Past roles include: Amadeus (Mozart), House of Blue Leaves (Ronnie, dir. Karen Carpenter) Labor Days (Sam, Dir. Austin Pendleton) The Memorandum (Mr. Pickford) Beast on the Moon (Vincent) and Brighton Beach Memoirs (Eugene). He is a graduate of the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama. This performance is dedicated to his family.

David Ellenstein(Director) Please see the Artistic Director's bio at the end of this press release.

Gideon Rappaport (Dramaturge) Gideon Rappaportteaches English and Shakespeare at La Jolla Country Day School, where he also gives adult courses on literature and humanities. He has served as dramaturge for the North Coast Repertory Theatre, the San Diego Repertory Theatre, the California Shakespeare Festival, the Old Globe Theatre, the British-American Youth Festival Theatre (Bayfest), The Bishop's School, and La Jolla Country Day School. He has a Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Brandeis University.

Chaim Potok (Writer)Chaim Potok,1929-2002, born Herman Harold Potok, February 17, 1929, in Brooklyn, NY, was the son of Polish immigrants who had strong ties to Hasidism and was reared in an Orthodox Jewish home. His Hebrew name was Chaim Tzvi. In an interview Potok said, "I prayed in a little shtiebel [prayer room], and my mother is a descendant of a great Hasidic dynasty and my father was a Hasid, so I come from that world."

After reading Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited when he
was a teenager, Potok decided to become a writer. Riveted by the world of upper-class British Catholics that Waugh brings to life in the novel, Potok realized for the first time that fiction had the power "to create worlds out of words on paper." To learn how to write, Potok carefully studied the novels of such writers as Ernest Hemingway, WilliamFaulkner, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain. Over a period of five years, he spent most of his free time reading the novels of great writers.

At the same time, he became fascinated by less restrictive Jewish doctrines, particularly
the Conservative movement. He attended Yeshiva University and graduated summa cum
laude in English literature in 1950 before moving on to the Jewish Theological Seminary
of America, where he was ordained a Conservative rabbi.

Potok served as combat chaplain with the United States Army in Korea from 1955 to
1957. He described his time in South Korea as being a transformative experience.
Brought up to believe that the Jewish people were central to history and God's plans, he
experienced a region where there were almost no Jews and no anti-Semitism, yet whose
religious believers prayed with the same fervor that he saw in the Orthodox synagogues
at home.

He then taught at several Jewish colleges, including the University of Judaism in Los
Angeles, before moving on to become the managing editor of Conservative Judaism in
1964. After spending a year in Israel working on his doctoral dissertation, Potok earned a
Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania, and the following year he
became the editor of the Jewish Publication Society of America. He remained in that
position for eight years before becoming a special-projects editor of the publication in
1974. Throughout his career in publishing, Dr. Potok wrote numerous popular articles
and reviews.

Potok began his career as an author and novelist in 1967 with the publication of The
Chosen, which stands as the first book from a major publisher to portray Orthodox
Judaism in the United States. With its story about the friendship between the son of a
Hasidic rabbi and a more secularly-minded Jewish boy in Brooklyn, The Chosen
established Potok's reputation. Critics praised the book for its vivid rendering of the
closed Hasidic community, while many considered it to be an allegory about the survival
of Judaism. Potok followed The Chosen with a sequel two years later called The Promise.
He returned to the subject of Hasidism for a third time with the 1972 novel My Name Is
Asher Lev, the story of a young artist and his conflict with the traditions of his family and
community. Potok followed this novel with a sequel, as well, publishing The Gift of
Asher Lev eighteen years later in 1990.

Potok continued to examine the conflict between secular and religious interests in his
other novels as well, which include In the Beginning in 1975, The Book of Lights in 1981,
and Davita's Harp in 1985. His most recent works include I Am the Clay, published in
1992, The Tree of Here in 1993, and the 1995 novel The Sky of Now. Potok also
published several non-fiction works, including Wanderings: History of the Jews (1978),
in which the author combines impressive scholarship with dramatic narrative, and The
Gates of November, a 1996 chronicle of a Jewish family in the Soviet Union.

Potok served as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania in both the 1980s
and 1990s, and taught briefly at Bryn Mawr College and Johns Hopkins University. He
was a passionate lover of Israel, and lived there for several years. Potok was also very
active in the Soviet Jewry movement.

Chaim Potok died July 23, 2002, at his suburban Philadelphia home of brain cancer at the
age of 73. He is survived by his wife, Adena; two daughters, Rena, a Philadelphia-area
college professor, and Naama, an actor in New York; a son, Akiva, who is a filmmaker in
California; and two grandchildren.

Aaron Posner (Adaptor) Aaron is a playwright, director, teacher and former artistic director whose work has been seen at major regional theatres across the country including Actor's Theatre of Louisville, The Alliance, Arden Theatre Company, Arena Stage, Arizona Theatre Company, California Shakespeare Theatre, Folger Theatre, Milwaukee Rep, Portland Center Stage, Seattle Rep, and many more. His adaptations of Chaim Potok's novels THE CHOSEN and MY NAME IS ASHER LEV have been produced at more than 50 regional theatres, as well as internationally. Other adaptations include a musical adaptation of Mark Twain's A MURDER, A MYSTERY & A MARRIAGE, SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION by Ken Kesey, WHO AM I THIS TIME? by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., "WHAT HO, JEEVES" by P.G. Wodehouse, ELLEN FOSTER by Kaye Gibbons, and THIRD & INDIANA by Steve Lopez. He has won Barrymore Awards and Helen Hayes Awards for both playwrighting and directing, is an Eisenhower Fellow, is originally from Eugene, Oregon, and currently resides near Washington DC.

"I started talking with Chaim Potok almost a decade ago about how his remarkable novel, My Name is Asher Lev, might work on stage. We'd just worked together on adapting his novel The Chosen, and I was excited to explore another of his master works. Like The Chosen, I find My Name is Asher Lev to be intelligent, passionate, and moving. Many think of it as his most emotionally autobiographical novel, and the fact that it is told in the first person and covers more than 20 years makes it a particular challenge for adaptation. As a novelist, Chaim was engaged in exploring core conflicts: Conflicts within a family; within a community; and, very often, within an individual. He was deeply interested in the way human beings of passion and commitment chart their unique and difficult paths through life. And because his writings are equally rich in heart, mind, and spirit, his stories have an extraordinary power to intrigue, illuminate, and inspire. I am sorry you could not all be there for the fascinating conversations our explorations led to in rehearsals [for the original Arden production]. It has been a pleasure and an education simply to get to spend such significant time in Chaim's unique universe. I have also been honored to work closely with his wife, Adena Potok, on this adaptation. After Chaim's death in 2002, Adena and I picked up the conversation Chaim and I had begun about this amazing story, and it has been wonderful to have her be an integral part of the journey of bringing this book from the page to the stage." - Aaron Posner

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