BRUCE SABATH ORAL HISTORY

NINA PICK: This is Nina Pick, and today's date is March 21st, 2019. I am here in New York City with Bruce Sabath, and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Bruce, do I have your permission to record this interview?

BRUCE SABATH: You certainly do.

NP: Thank you. To start off, can you tell me briefly what you know about your family background?

BS: Sure. I was born and raised in Rochester, New York, and my mother's family all had a long history in Rochester, and my father moved there after college. 1:00So, my mother's family -- I believe my mom was actually a sixth-generation Rochesterian, a German Jew, her maiden name was Guggenheim. She's not one of those Guggenheims, but her family came from a town called Guggenheim, Germany, sometime in the mid-1800s. And so, like many German Jews of that era, they had come and wanted to kind of assimilate strongly into the American culture, and so by the time of my mother's generation, they were very, you know, American. There was certainly no Yiddish in their background, but they were just regular folks living among everybody else in Rochester. They still had a Jewish identity and were part of the Reform synagogue tradition there, but the traditions were very 2:00much diluted. My father was actually born in Savannah, Georgia, which is where his mother's family lived. And so when my grandmother was pregnant, they actually moved back to Savannah from where they actually lived, which was Rock Island, Illinois, where my grandparents had moved and had settled like a number of Jewish immigrants of that era. There was sort of a movement to try to get Jews to leave the East Coast and settle in these communities in the Midwest. My grandfather, Sholem Sabath, actually immigrated as a twelve-year-old, I think, in about 1912, with his two brothers, and they came from a small town in the 3:00Ukraine, somewhere outside of Kiev, very much like Anatevka. And the three boys came by themselves, as I'm led to believe, on a ship that came to Galveston, Texas, not to Ellis Island, where the majority of immigrants seemed to be coming, but to Texas. They had a brief stop in Mobile, Alabama, and then somehow worked their way up north to Illinois to Rock Island. Yeah, so they, as far as I understand, spoke Russian in their village in the Ukraine, and the three boys all came and settled in the Midwest, and then when my father went to college in 4:00Illinois, he became an engineer, and moved to Rochester to work for Eastman Kodak, and the rest is history. (Laughs)

NP: And were there any particular stories that were passed down in your family?

BS: In terms of --

NP: Like life in Ukraine, or from your ancestors?

BS: Well, I do -- let's see, what do I know? My grandfather's father in the Ukraine was a bootmaker. He apparently made boots for the czar's army. (Laughs) That's the detail that I know about his life. I did have a photo, which I wanted to share with you guys, of my grandfather and his brothers and their parents 5:00and, I believe, either grandparents or some other relatives about the time a few years before they left. It's one of those great serious photos of -- everyone's sort of looking very serious at the camera. But they looked like they were fairly well off, and they're nicely dressed, probably the best things they had for the photo. But yeah, I mean I can only really imagine what their daily life was like there. But whatever it was, something must have been either concerning to them, or -- I'm gonna to have to say that, because I can't imagine it was for the opportunity that they decided to send their three children to America 6:00without themselves at the turn of the twentieth century. When my grandfather came here and moved to Rock Island, and he became a young adult, he actually studied dairy farming and became a dairy man working for Borden in a factory in Rock Island. So I always have this sort of funny irony that my grandfather was a dairy man like Tevye. (Laughs) Although a very different context.

NP: And could you describe the home you grew up in?

BS: Yeah, for the most of my youth, I lived in a suburb of Rochester called Brighton. Lived in a four-bedroom house. I have a brother who's two years older than me who currently lives in Seattle. He's a research doctor, he runs a 7:00research lab in hematology at the University of Washington. But it was the two of us boys and my parents, and on a very nice suburban street. Four-bedroom house, two-car garage, nice lawn. Dad took great pride in taking care of the yard. They were very much children of the Depression, both my parents, very careful with their budgeting. I can always remember their little notebooks that they kept to track all of their expenses by category. They would take dad's paycheck from Eastman Kodak and they would sort of break it up into, This is this fund, this is the car fund, this is the clothes fund, this is the house fund, this is the savings fund. It's like, had all these manufactured, imaginary 8:00funds for all these things that they were saving for, because they both had grown up in families where they had very little, and had fallen on hard times as kids, so they were very protective of making sure that they didn't go into debt. They never borrowed on credit cards or anything like that, and -- but always, you know, were prudent in making sure that they could buy the things that they wanted, and we always pretty much had what we needed.

NP: And what, if anything, about your home felt Jewish?

BS: It was very much a Jewish-identity active home. We were always members of synagogue. We belonged to Temple B'rith Kodesh in Rochester, which is a Reform 9:00synagogue, and were pretty active in synagogue. Mom was officer of the sisterhood, and my dad was an officer in the brotherhood. And of course, my father had grown up in a Conservative household, so he had much more background in sort of ritual and Hebrew and stuff like that. But you know, we went to Hebrew school of course, objecting all the time. (Laughs) And -- but went. And both my brother and I were also very active in youth group, and also very active in Jewish summer camps. My brother went to Camp Eisner, which was a UAHC camp in Massachusetts, and for some reason, I think because a friend of mine had gone, I 10:00went to Olin Sang Ruby, which was another UAHC camp in Wisconsin, which was -- like nobody from my area really went there except I went, most of the kids there were from Chicago and the Midwest. But those were great, sort of Jewish cultural experiences. We were both very musical, both my brother and I, both guitar players. We were both song leaders in the Jewish youth movement, leading, coming into Shabbatons and conclaves and various other youth group conventions with hundreds of kids, and leading these massive song sessions, which was really fun. And before those camps, we had also gone to our local JCC camp, which was great, 11:00Camp Seneca Lake, and which was less, had less Jewish content, but also had, always had, you know, a Shabbat dinner, everybody always wore a white shirt on Friday and was always chicken. (Laughs) That was pretty much the extent of the Jewish exposure at the JCC camp as far as I recall. But actually, that was where I did my very first production of "Fiddler on the Roof" playing Third Townsperson from the Left with remarkable skill, I must say. When I was like, you know, ten or something like that. (Laughs)

NP: And were there aspects of Jewish culture that were particularly important to you as a child?

BS: Well I definitely would say music was sort of my main link into Jewish 12:00culture, my favorite part of it. But food was a big part of it. All the holidays were celebrated. My mom was a really good cook. She took to the Jewish -- I think even in her very nontraditional home growing up, the food still survived as a big portion of Jewish culture there, and then she got more involved when we had a home and she got married to my dad, and Jewish cooking became more of a deal. Definitely a homemade matzo ball maker and various other kugels and pot roasts and briskets and things like that. What else? It was a very tight and 13:00warm Jewish community that we grew up in, I would say. In fact, my parents' friends, I always felt, were very unique sort of in the world, even still in the sense that they all stayed in Rochester. This was a very large sort of Jewish community, both in our synagogue and the sort of adjacent Conservative synagogue, which is called Beth El. And you know, people, they did mix (laughs). But people, the couples who were friends with each other, and there were dozens of them in that group, they all stayed in Rochester. There were virtually no divorces. And I didn't really realize it at the time, but I found when I grew up 14:00that that was kind of unusual. So many of the people that I knew, you know, their parents' friends, either their parents, their parents' friends had also split off, and they didn't really have that sort of lifelong connection to their parents and their friends. I mean, there are still people who are friends with my parents -- with my mom, my dad has passed away. But they're all still together, unless the spouses have passed away, and they're all still connected, after decades and decades and decades. What was the question? (Laughs)

NP: Looking back on your childhood, what values would you say your parents were 15:00trying to pass on to you?

BS: I would say, you know, working hard, education was a major value, definitely culture, arts. My mom was always very active in the Rochester Philharmonic and the theater in Rochester. She was a piano player. My dad had grown up playing trumpet, although we never really saw that. But they were definitely very enthusiastic audience members of the arts, if not participants in it. My father 16:00was an engineer and so I feel like, both by skill and by sort of demonstration from him, the concepts of mathematics and engineering were definitely passed on. I, before I was an actor, I was basically, I would say, an engineer. I was an applied math major in college, with a concentration in computer science, and I spent several years in computer consulting and financial, and I've worked on Wall Street for a while, and in management consulting, before I became an actor. And I'm sure that was both a combination of sort of genetic skills that were 17:00passed on to me from my parents, who were probably good at math and things like that. But also, sort of the value of that way of thinking. Organized thinking, processed thinking, that sort of thing, which is definitely -- like I said, they had those budget books, but that was just part of my dad's organizing of his seasonal maintenance duties in the house. During October, we clean the garage or whatever (laughs), during March, we do this. You know, it's like, he had a whole system set up, and so the concept of systems in life is definitely something that's been passed along to me.

NP: And were there experiences in childhood that inspired your later work as an actor?

BS: Well definitely going to the theater and going to various musical 18:00performances were key in developing my love of all those things. I was also, from a very early age, given lessons. I started with piano in first grade and then clarinet in fourth grade, and it wasn't actually until high school actually that I started studying voice. But I was participating in choruses and choirs and various ensembles of all kinds, and doing theater in middle school and high school. That certainly sort of sparked the bug for both acting and musical theater from a very young age. But it was interestingly -- (coughs) excuse me -- 19:00interestingly, I think it was probably because of all that other stuff, in terms of the value of education, the growing up in the Depression and aspiring to make something of your life that's dependable and reliable and all of that, that the idea of actually becoming a performer was something that was never even on the table. I mean, I never considered it growing up. I thought that theater and music were something you go and watch. I mean, aside from when you're a kid, of course, when you do it and you participate, and then you grow up, and then you do something grown up, which is what I in fact did. And so it actually took about thirteen years after that before I actually was like, Hmm, this isn't 20:00actually what I'm supposed to be doing. So, it's kind of this irony that I was exposed to all of this performance stuff and all of this music and arts, and then asked to sort of ignore it. (Laughs) And I think that's probably the case for many people in a lot of places.

NP: And did you ever see Yiddish theater when you were a child?

BS: I don't think so. I'm trying to think if I was really ever exposed to that. I'm going to say no. (Laughs)

NP: So you mentioned coming to acting later in life after your career in finance. And could you talk a little bit more about your journey and your 21:00transition into becoming an actor?

BS: Sure. As I said, I went to Harvard, I studied applied math and computer science, and you know, it was all very intoxicating that, coming from Midwest, Rochester -- sort of Midwest, feels like the Midwest -- and then you come and you learn about New York and all of these new things that you never really had been exposed to, so it's very exciting to sort of make a transition into a whole new sort of world of possibilities. And so I was very excited when I left college and got a job as a computer consultant working for Arthur Andersen in New York. And it seemed like I was right out of college making more money than I 22:00could even imagine, compared to anybody in Rochester (laughs). And I did that, and it was also very exciting because we were working on new things, modeling these fancy new financial securities that were just being developed at that time, so we were right at the cutting edge of a lot of new technology. I moved from there to work for the Boston Consulting Group. I'm sorry, First Boston first. First Boston, which is an investment bank, which became Credit Suisse, First Boston, working more on the front lines, underwriting new securities, and also doing more financial modeling, and sort of starting to feel like, Well there's nothing really tangible here, is this really what I want to be doing? I 23:00think I'll go to business school and get a broader exposure, and maybe that will lead me to where I really want to be. So I went to Wharton. I came out and worked for the Boston Consulting Group. Got that right. And I thought, Well this is also gonna be great because it's gonna give me exposure to all kinds of different businesses, I'm definitely going to find something that really piques my interest. And I worked in a lot of areas, some were finance, some were manufacturing, some were technology. And all along I'm like, This is not quite right, I don't know what's going on here. And all along, I was sort of dabbling in -- I was taking an acting class here when I was business school, I was in the Wharton Follies, you know, I was doing that on the side. But those were just like sort of squeezing it in in between. And after I worked for BCG, the Boston 24:00Consulting Group, I went to work for American Express, in a strategy function there. They had a internal strategic planning group. And again I was like, Oh, well I'm sure something in American Express, huge company, there's gonna be something that I'm gonna find that's going to really call to me, and I'm gonna find it, and I'll be super happy. And I worked on all these different things, and I kept going like, This isn't right. And then one day, a woman who I worked with who was an alum from McKinsey, another big strategy consulting firm, who was fantastic, she was smart, she was great with people, she was organized. She was a person that people were saying like, This person is gonna be the future CEO of American Express, just keep an eye on this one. She comes to my office 25:00one day and she said, "Bruce, I'm leaving Amex." And I was like, "Oh my god, where are you going?" I figured she must have gotten some huge job at MasterCard or Visa or something, and she says, "I'm gonna go paint." And I was like, "What do you mean?" And she said, "Yeah, I've been studying painting, and I just love it. And I decided that I wanna do that full time so I'm leaving Amex. I'm gonna be a painter." And it kind of like, blew my mind, because how could this person who is clearly on this track and climbing this ladder and has this huge clear future just jump off and do that? And it completely sort of ripped apart my construct (laughs) of sort of what you're supposed to do, and what you have to do, and all that. And I had been thinking about leaving American Express, and 26:00trying to figure out what the next step was, because I hadn't found the perfect position there. And I had participated in sort of a career discovery program, which is called, "What Color Is Your Parachute?," which was popular back in that era, to try to find the career that suits you the best. And as part of that, you write essays about things from your past where you felt fulfilled and accomplished and so on, and then you would read them aloud to a group. And one of the essays that I wrote about was when I had done "Fiddler on the Roof" actually, my junior year in high school. And then actually, and again my senior year in college, both times playing Tevye. And I wrote this essay about this, 27:00and just afterwards, the group was like, Oh my god when you read that, you changed, your face lit up, you were so excited just reading about it. Have you ever thought about going into acting? And I was like, "No, that's ridiculous, how could I do that?" And they're like, Why not? Lots of reasons. Anyway, so the seed had been planted, and then one day after my friend at Amex decided to leave and I was sitting there with my spreadsheets of different jobs, the pros and cons that I was considering doing afterwards, and thinking of what interviews I was gonna go on and so on, and my wife said to me, "Put that away for a minute." She's like, "If you were gonna do anything in the world that you could do, forget about your pros and cons, what would you do? How would you spend your 28:00time? And I was like, "Well, if I could do anything I would act, but I can't do that." And she said, "Why not?" I said, "Well, obviously because you work at night, you never know if you're gonna be working, the pay stinks, you have to travel, da-da-da-da-da, all these things." She's like, "Yeah, but when I asked you what you wanted to do, you didn't even have to think about it, you just knew. How could you ignore that?" And I thought, and I said, "Hmm, that's kind of a sensible conclusion." So that's when I really started looking into it and thinking, Maybe I could actually do this. And within a couple of months I left American Express and I started on a summer program at the William Esper Studio, which is a great acting program in New York, which of course I had found through great research. And I spent two months there, and when that summer finished, I was invited to join the two-year program at Esper, studying with Bill Esper 29:00himself. And that was a life-changing experience. Bill is one of the greatest American acting teachers. He had been head of the Rutgers Mason Gross School for many years, and had studied with Sanford Meisner, who is one of the major founders of the American acting technique, sort of along with Lee Strasberg and -- I'm blanking on the other one -- Stella Adler. The three of them -- Stella Adler, Lee Strasberg, and Sandy Meisner -- really composed what was the group theater. They had studied with Stanislavski and brought back the more realistic approach to acting that came from the Russians, and brought it to America and modified it in different ways, and that's where Esper came from. So, I spent two 30:00years with him and then another year in his master class studying Shakespeare and movement and various other things, and then started working in theater and some film and a little TV, and the rest is history. And actually Bill just passed away in January, and has left a huge legacy of actors who have studied with him. Many people that you will know, and he's just, you know, one of the most gifted teachers in the history of American acting.

NP: Well that's a great segue to our next couple questions, so I'd like to turn now to a discussion now of your work in the off-Broadway production of "Fiddler on the Roof" in Yiddish.

BS: Mm-hm.

NP: So to start off, could you describe your role in "Fiddler"?

BS: Yes, I play Lazar Wolf, the butcher, the lovelorn butcher who is a widower, and we find out at the beginning of the story that he has fallen in love with Tevye's eldest daughter, Tzeitel, and has, because she is a customer who comes every week to this butcher shop. (Laughs) And so he has asked the village's matchmaker, Yente, to make a proposal to Tevye for the hand of Tevye's daughter Tzeitel, that results in a meeting between Lazar and Tevye at the tavern in which there's some misunderstanding, and while Lazar believes that he is talking about a proposal to marry Tevye's daughter, Tevye thinks that Lazar is there to 32:00buy his dairy cow to slaughter. And so they have this great conversation where -- it's one of the classic comedy routines (laughs) in American musical theater, which I have a great time with Steve Skybell playing Tevye every night. And of course, you know, doesn't go well. Even though they decide to make the agreement and have the match, Tzeitel has a different idea because she is in love with her childhood sweetheart, Motel the tailor, and they have already decided they're gonna get married. And Tevye, being the sweetheart that he is, succumbs to his daughter's wishes, and then has to figure out how he's gonna get out of the agreement that he's made with Lazar Wolf, and comes up with this dream, and of course, then Tzeitel does marry Motel, but then Lazar is left at the wedding 33:00kind of with egg on his face. (Laughs) I'm also understudying the role of Tevye, which was a new responsibility that I took on after we left our six-month run down at the Folksbiene last fall, so I got wind off that just as we were leaving the Folksbiene at the end of December, and so spent every waking moment (laughs) since then learning the role of Tevye, which even though I played it numerous times in English, learning in Yiddish was a major undertaking.

NP: And could you describe how you got involved with the production?

BS: Yeah. I saw an audition notice for this production back in March, about a year ago, that the Folksbiene was doing "Fiddler on the Roof" in Yiddish and 34:00that Joel Grey was gonna be directing it. And I was like, This is going to be incredible. (Laughs) I gotta be in this. And so, I started, I called the casting director, who I had known for years, like "I gotta audition for this." I called my agent, I was like, "I gotta get an audition for this." And originally, I actually went in with the hopes of doing Tevye, and I audition both for Tevye and for Lazar. But as I said, I really didn't know any Yiddish, and so the prospects of doing that entire Tevye role in Yiddish were quite daunting, and I think possibly scary to the production team, to hire somebody who didn't really 35:00have any Yiddish experience -- even though I think I did a great job in the audition -- of pulling off the Yiddish, but it truly would've been a big bite to take. Steve had Yiddish in college and had worked with Joel actually, so he was a more obvious choice to take on Tevye, and he had also played Tevye. In fact, both of us in college at the same time for exactly the same class. He was at Yale, I was at Harvard, we were both playing Tevye in college at the same time, in our senior years. Funny story. Anyway, so they offered me Lazar Wolf, which I was very happy to do, and over the months of getting exposed to the Yiddish, the concept of adding Tevye to my book of tricks in Yiddish became more viable, so I 36:00went in and learned that for the new production. But yeah, I got the audition, they gave us -- the Folksbiene is really professional and experienced at bringing in non-Yiddish-speaking actors and getting them to learn it before auditions, which the auditions were in Yiddish. It's like, you're not gonna come and audition in English and then say, Oh, fine, then you'll do it in Yiddish. No, they audition you in Yiddish, so they're good at that, and then also good at coaching actors in Yiddish through the process so that when they come to the stage, they are prepared and know what they're talking about, and sound right. (Laughs) But it was probably one of the hardest, time-consuming auditions that 37:00I've ever prepared for. It didn't just (snaps fingers) come to me immediately. Even though I spoke German as a student in middle school and high school, learning Yiddish was definitely a challenge. Took a lot of time, and even when I thought I had it, there's all these little pronunciation things that I would constantly get wrong because my mind would take me to the German pronunciation of little words, and I kept having to fix it, and I kept going back. So yeah, it was definitely challenging. But I booked Lazar. Steve and I actually auditioned opposite each other in the audition room, so when he played -- he was playing Tevye, I was playing Lazar, and they felt that we had great chemistry, and so off we went.

NP: And could you describe your process of learning the lines in Yiddish?

BS: Yeah. I mean, because I had -- well I would say, as background, I think a lot of times when people, particularly for opera and other things, when they learn texts in foreign languages, they're doing it kind of by rote. They don't know the language, they're really just trying to get the syllables out. But because I knew German and because I'm just a process, geek, I was like, No, I'm gonna learn it, really learn it. So every word I translated and I understood what I was saying, and also, because I knew German, I understood the grammar, so I could kind of -- it kind of made sense mechanically to me. But even so, there are so many little things that I didn't understand about Yiddish that I do now 39:00in terms of the way words get dropped in and so on that the sentences still didn't make sense to me, you know, from a rhythmic point of view for a long time. So I was always dropping words, reversing words. It was a long process. But once it kind of got into my mind and so on, all of a sudden it was like, Oh, okay I got it, and it became easier. But I did -- I learned it the way I often work in English, which is I work backwards. Just because there's a human tendency to over-study the beginnings of things and kind of not have enough time for the end, I always do the opposite, and I learn the last lines first, and I get those down. And then I do the lines before that, and I learn those, and I 40:00sort of read from there to the end. And then I add another line and I keep adding more on top and on top and on top until I get to the beginning, and then you have, you've done the end so many times that even if you haven't said those words in several days, you've got them. So by the time you learn the beginning, the end is hopefully still locked in. So that's kind of my process and I've used that for Yiddish too. The other thing that's interesting about having to learn something where you translate every word is that, from an acting point of view, when you're working in your own language, there's this idea of endowment of meaning. So when you say a word, you have to really know what you mean by that word at the time. And it's easy, when you're working in your own language, to 41:00just kind of slough through because you can just read it and you can pass through words and not really think about what you mean by them. But the fact that you -- working in a foreign language, you have to actually go word by word and think about every single word as you're learning it. What does that word mean? It forces you actually to go through that acting process of like, what does it mean, what does it also mean to me? So it almost forces you into a rigorous acting exercise just because you have to learn every word and understand its meaning deeply.

NP: So you've had numerous experiences with "Fiddler on the Roof" in English. Would you say your experience performing in Yiddish has changed your relationship to the play? And if so, how?

BS: It's interesting, yeah. I mean, I think performers as well as the audiences 42:00have felt like hearing these characters speaking Yiddish is a revelation, because we're hearing them speak in their own language instead of somebody's idea of what they would say translated into English. And it's not only the character's own language, it's the language that they were first written in by -- in the source material by Sholem Aleichem. So the rhythms seem to work so well in Yiddish that the play flows in a way, and the characters seem more authentic speaking Yiddish. Not that they didn't seem authentic in English, but there's just something about having them having these conversations in Yiddish that makes them just that much more real. That together with having them speak 43:00or listen to the Russian characters speaking in Russian, which also happens in the show, and sometimes the crossing of languages between the Russians and the Jews, where the Russians are speaking Yiddish to the Jews, and the Jews are throwing Russian into their discussion with the Russians, you know, which becomes bad Russian. It's very interesting to have this language barrier, which is attempted to be crossed by these two cultures, which is also just a really cool revelation. There's also some Yiddish phrases or liberties that were taken by Shraga Friedman, who did the original Yiddish translation, that I think he 44:00pulled from the source material, which had been bypassed by the writers of "Fiddler on the Roof" in English. So he was able to go back to some of the Sholem Aleichem text and put it back in, which also gives it more of an authentic flavor.

NP: And could you describe one of your most memorable experiences with the show?

BS: With Yiddish "Fiddler"?

NP: Yeah.

BS: Let me think. (Laughs) Give me a second on that one. (pause) Well, certainly one of, or a category of those come with some of the people who have come to see 45:00the show. First there's the people who are involved with "Fiddler" in the early renditions of "Fiddler." So to be able to perform the show for Topol, and have him come and talk to us and tell us how it impacted him, was kind of mind-blowing. And just the generosity of the words that he gave to us after the show was really wonderful. And then when Harold Prince came to see the show, which was actually, I think, on the occasion of the anniversary of the opening of "Fiddler." I think this is now the fifty-fourth anniversary of the original production of "Fiddler," so we had an event that night, and Harold Prince was there, and Joel Grey, our director, also was there, and Hal was in tears, and 46:00just feeling like, "Yes, this is --" and he said it in interviews -- "This is 'Fiddler on the Roof.'" (Laughs) So to be able to be a part of that is kind of mind-blowing and very, very exciting and unforgettable. And then there have been other people not connected to the show who've come to see the show. I'll never forget when Christine Ebersole came to see the show, and -- the first time she came to see the show, she's seen the show several times -- but she came backstage afterwards and she was just a blithering -- just crying, you know, just her nose running. She could not speak because she was so emotionally 47:00affected by the show, and she's not Jewish. (Laughs) And she came back, because she was crying so hard the first time that she had to come back to like see it. And she cried again but she could hold it together a little bit more. But that's exciting when people who you have great respect for in the industry also are so affected by the show. And then, you know, a lot of it has to do with, you know, people, other people experiencing the show, and getting to see it from their eyes. You know, I mean when friends come, and I had a group of people from college who came to see the show, and they were just -- again it's like, afterwards, no words, you know, just so, so affected by the show. And then when 48:00my mother came to see the show, you know, and who was in a wheelchair, and she saw it when I was in high school, and when I was in college, and unfortunately, she missed the one in -- my professional debut as Tevye in St. Louis because she had just had a stroke, so she couldn't see it. But we got her in the car and we rolled her down to the Folksbiene and got her in that theater in her wheelchair, and she was super excited to see the show. So that makes you feel good. And we're looking forward to when I will be on as -- we have some dates that we know coming up in May that I'll be going on as Tevye, and she's gonna come back and see, and get to see me do Tevye, and so that'll be exciting, we'll roll her down from Ridgefield, Connecticut again, and let her get to see her son play Tevye.

NP: And what in your opinion is it about the show that touches people so deeply?

BS: Well I think that the ideas in the show are connected to people in so many ways, so many different ways. I mean, just the universal themes of tradition, trying to maintain your way of life in a changing, conflicted world. There's the universal themes of parents and children, you know, kind of butting heads, kids trying to make their own way in the world where parents have ideas about how their lives should be, and, Why would you do something different from the way we've always done it? That sort of thing. Those are the things that have always 50:00made "Fiddler on the Roof" universally beloved by everyone, including people from cultures all over the world. I mean, the Japanese production -- everyone talks about, when Sheldon went to Japan and the producer there was like, "I just don't understand how you produce this in America. How could they appreciate such a Japanese play? And by the way, how did you write --" (laughs) and then there's the specific connection that Jewish families, Jewish people have to the show. I can't tell you how many times, because of the Yiddish specifically here, middle-aged women -- this, I'm saying women because this is what I'm seeing -- 51:00middle-aged women bringing their elderly mothers to the show, sometimes with their kids in tow. The grandmother speaks Yiddish, the middle-aged woman doesn't. She knows a bit because her mother spoke it. The kids don't even know what they're talking about. And they all come, and they're all just connected by this thing in a magical way. (Laughs) And I've seen that so many times in the lobby, you know, downtown. And I keep seeing it here too, but there's that Yiddish. People are trying to grab on to something from the past. People will say, Oh, you know, I didn't speak Yiddish, but my parents spoke it. They never taught it to us, they used it as a secret language, so that they could talk about things when they didn't want us to know. You know, so there's this 52:00connection. People know a few words of Yiddish because it's all mixed into the American language. "Schmoozing" and "meshugaas" and everything that everybody kind of knows as to be -- they don't know they're talking Yiddish, but they know a few words. And it's just -- yeah. And I think when people -- it's such a simple production too, I think that it's very affecting in that way. The costumes are specifically designed to be a combination of period and modern. And even if you don't know that you're seeing that, you have to kind of take it in. Like, Lazar Wolf wears New Balance sneakers, and Perchik is wearing a modern-man jacket or something. (Laughs) Meanwhile the women are wearing babushkas and 53:00skirts. It's this weird combination, but it's sort of like, you see something that's from the distant past, but other elements are right there from your life, and it pulls you into it. I think that was the designed concept. And then when -- it's also just so spare that when the Fiddler walks onstage and just climbs this little stack of chairs and tables, and starts playing that simple theme, and Tevye walks out by himself, and there's nothing on stage other than the two of them, and the word "Torah," it's just like (laughs) -- and he says, "A fidler afn dakh. Meshuge, neyn? [A fiddler on the roof. Crazy, no?]" -- and the audience goes, Bah! (Laughs) Laughter and tears. They're in it, it works.

NP: And what would you say the success of Yiddish "Fiddler" might suggest about the future of Yiddish?

BS: Well there's definitely -- it makes people interested in it. I see it even from the cast, we have people trying to learn more about Yiddish than they needed to, to do the job. That includes me. I mean, I've been reading some books, trying to get some more context of the Yiddish, and I keep learning like new things, like, Oh, that's why they say it that way. For example, Motel says to Tevye in his nervousness when he's trying to tell them about the sewing machine and everything at the beginning of the play, it's the Sabbath, and he 55:00can't get up the nerve, and he says, "Gut-shabes, reb tevye [Good Shabbos, Rabbi Tevye]," and Tevye says, "Gut-shabes, gut-yor [Good Shabbos to you, lit. "Good Shabbos, good year"]." And I never understood what that was, and I was kind of reading about it. I happened to read a reference to the use of "Gut-shabes, gut-yor," or "Gut-vokh [Good week]," and understood that it's this topping concept, where if somebody wishes you a thing, you wish them a hundred things back at them. So, if someone wishes you a good Shabbos, you wish them a good year, and that's why Tevye says that. That's a traditional response to something. It's done in many other contexts as well, but that's what that is. I was like, Oh. (Laughs) It makes it, you know, it deepens it when you learn that. And there's all these little -- I don't know if Yiddish is going to have a massive resurgence, but you see it coming in different places. I mean, the 56:00success of "Indecent" on Broadway last, or a couple years ago, which is also very much in Yiddish, the awards that it got and the fact that it's being produced all over America now is kind of interesting in itself. And "Fiddler" has definitely been a huge boon to the Folksbiene, has brought them a lot of new enthusiastic supporters, and it'll be interesting to see if that translates. I mean, it's definitely translating into a very successful fundraising for them. It will be interesting to see if it translates into larger audiences coming to their next season of Yiddish theater, the traditional Yiddish theater that they used to do before they did "Fiddler on the Roof." You know, the kind that is a hundred years old and that was originally produced in Yiddish. So yeah, that 57:00remains to be seen. But it definitely sparked some interest, and it's -- the profile or the exposure about Yiddish "Fiddler" has been nationwide. I mean, talked to people from all over the place, and they're like, Oh yeah I heard about this production of "Fiddler on the Roof" in Yiddish. You're in it? (Laughs) So it's definitely raised the profile of Yiddish, and it can't help but increase the interest in Yiddish itself.

NP: So we started off the interview talking about your family background, and I'm wondering what performing in Yiddish "Fiddler" has meant for you personally. Have you seen meaningful connections between the play and your own ancestral history?

BS: Well, I've always felt like "Fiddler" was very connected to my family. The Yiddish, as I had said, didn't seem to be, because according to my mother -- 'cause I asked her about that, I said, "Do you remember, did dad's father speak Yiddish?" And she said, "I don't think I ever heard him speak Yiddish. He spoke Russian." And I was like, "That's so interesting." It's sort of like, it didn't really make sense. I was like, How was it that these guys came from what seemed to be Anatevka (laughs) -- I can't remember, I don't actually even, I'm not sure if I know the name of the village that they came from, but it seemed to be 59:00Anatevka-like -- How is it that they spoke Russian and not Yiddish? And it's a mystery. I don't know if they actually didn't speak Yiddish, or if they spoke Yiddish and when they came to America they kind of made a pact to disband the Yiddish because they were going to really work hard to try to speak English, and they would only speak English, and they would speak Russian if they needed to. I don't know. It doesn't seem like there was Yiddish, but it's possible and it definitely, definitely raises questions. But the fact that my grandfather was a dairy man, and the fact that "Fiddler" -- I was born in '62, "Fiddler" came out in '64, so for my entire conscious life that LP was playing on my parents' record player, and so much so that there were scratches in it that were 60:00permanent, and there were skips in the recording that I thought were actually part of the song. So there were little sections of lines that I never knew existed because they were skipped (laughs) in the LP. But this is the show that I've always loved. When I did it four years ago -- that was the first time I played Tevye in a professional setting -- it was really exciting to me and meaningful. And in fact there were members of the community in St. Louis, where I did the show, who were Japanese who were so impacted by the show again with that same universal connection to their Japanese background, and issues with the 61:00internment camps in America, and being other in this country, and so it impacted them in this incredibly universal way. So to be able to do it again, to do it in this context, is just deepening in terms of my connecting to the show, and it causes you to sort of pull out those old memories of the Old Country and the connection to it and the questions. And I think about my grandfather as being about the same age as Bielke and Shprintze who came to America as children and had to navigate in this new world. And I think about my twelve-year-old grandfather (laughs) and his brothers coming and what that must have been like. 62:00And so doing "Fiddler" just brings that back into mind.

NP: And do you have some wisdom or some personal learning that you've gained during your time with this show so far that you'd like to share?

BS: Hmm, wow. (pause) I don't know, there's something interesting about a play about community that brings people together. I would say that there is a camaraderie in a production of "Fiddler on the Roof," whether it's in Yiddish or 63:00any other language, that sort of goes beyond just, you know, a company of a show, because you are a village, and there's a very strong sense of belonging and, you know, responsibility to each other and all of that that comes from the play, but which really comes from the culture, about the tight community, and we support each other, and we do. And it has been amazing and gratifying to see a company of people of a wide range of ages and backgrounds. Only about half of us are Jewish and virtually none of us spoke Yiddish, only one or two. But the way 64:00that the cast comes together to support each other and other things. When the shooting happened last fall at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, we were actually on hiatus for a week. That's a whole nother story, because we weren't supposed to be at the Folksbiene past the end of August, and so when we extended, they were like, Well you can come, but we have all these obligations for the theater, this week here, this week here, because we booked it out, we never expected you to be here this long. So the producers were like, All right, whatever. So we closed for a week. Anyway, we were closed that week that that happened, and the cast, we had a massive, you know, email sharing list that -- for a lot of other things, but people started going like, What do we do about this? And we were in the middle of our Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS 65:00fundraising season at the time, and we decided, Well, we need to use that opportunity to raise money for the victims and the community in Pittsburgh. And everyone was like, Done, yes. And so we worked to find out like how logistically we could do that, and we worked with Broadway Cares to get them to allow us to basically use the red buckets specifically to raise money for a fund that had been created by the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh for the victims and the families and the community of that incident. And everybody was on board, and that was great. And we're actually doing the same thing right now for the victims of the mosque shooting in New Zealand, sadly.

NP: So we're at the end of our time here, and I'd like to ask, by way of conclusion, could you share a particularly memorable line or lyric from the show?

BS: (Laughs) Oh I wish I'd thought of that beforehand, there's so many. (Pause) I happen to love -- well you know, Tevye has so many great misquotes of the Bible, which also goes back to the Sholem Aleichem texts, and he sort of misquotes biblical things or takes them out of context. And one of the sort of 67:00wittiest ones I love is, when he's telling Perchik that he can't marry Hodel, and he says, "Vay'er' vay'boker, pertshik, a nekhtiker tog [And there was evening and there was morning, Perchik, no way]!" So, the "vay'er' vay'boker" is from Genesis, "And there was evening and there was morning," with the idea being, and it flowed from this thing to the next thing and to the next thing. And "a nekhtiker tog" in Yiddish is literally like, "on no day." (Laughs) And so he's basically saying, And this leads to this, and you know what, not on your life. (Laughs) But he says it in Yiddish. And it's just like this, you know, you have to kind of speak Yiddish to understand -- and Hebrew (laughs) -- to kind of 68:00get that joke, but it's one of my favorite little special things about this translation of "Fiddler" in Yiddish.

NP: Wonderful. Well thank you so much. I'd like to thank you both personally and on behalf of the Yiddish Book Center.

BS: My pleasure. Thanks.

[END OF INTERVIEW]