Karen Sommers
Karen Sommers steps up to plate in her role as “creator/director” of the new play South of Delancey. Set in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the piece is based on remnant stories from reel-to-reel tapes formerly destined for the dumpster. The tapes were found outside the House of Sages – an existing 1940s Jewish arbitration court – and become the topic of a segment that caught Sommers’ attention on NPR’s All Things Considered in 2002.
“The tapes played during the NPR broadcast were fascinating. Some of the tapes you actually hear in the play,” says Sommers. “It was all the sound of the radio and the sound of these real people being heard in this way that we don’t have [anymore]. We’re sort of aware of ourselves when we’re being recorded or videotaped. They just didn’t have that back then.”
The plot revolves around three families: a naïve youth, her soldier fiancé and her mother; two hot-to-trot lovers in a marriage turned business deal; and a pair of acrimonious sisters. Each case is brought before local rabbis and recorded for posterity – or radio broadcast.
“The story was, basically, these people are in this arbitration court – they go to this Jewish arbitration court on the Lower East Side in the 1940s – and they complain about their problems. The panel, the court, the judges make a decision and it’s all binding. Eventually, this court was broadcast over the radio.”
South of Delancey is laced with Sommers’ flair for collaboration and gritty reality, due partly to the unusual creation process of the play’s text. The piece is an aggregate of improv, real court cases and storytelling.
Michael Rubenstone, Casey Kramer and Abigail Marks
“We wanted to figure out what happened, what caused these people to come to the court. So, I would come up with scenarios and ideas of how they met and then what went wrong, what were the different scenes,” says Sommers. “I would tell them [the actors] what their objectives were and they would improv over and over and over again and I would videotape them. Then, I would go home with the tapes and look at them and pull out the best bits and arrange, sort of, the script from that.”
Much of its documentary, telltale appeal can be attributed to the fact Sommers does not consider herself a writer. Rather, she calls herself the creator because she relied on the creative process of workshopping and live performance more so than a playwright would. Another attraction is its relation to reality entertainment. The salvaged tapes may have been a precursor to court television which is naturally theatrical in and of itself.
“I hope that familiarity brings people in the doors because what you’re going to get is so much more than the shallow tapes you get from TV. Even reality TV shows are not real and the producers are constantly messing with people. Things are set up and staged and people know they’re on TV. They’re out there,” says Sommers. “These people are not. They’re 100% real. They forget they’re being recorded and it’s really about the issues. It’s really about who they are; they’re trying to put their point forward to get validated and get an answer.”
Although the play’s origination isn’t completely unheard of – A Chorus Line creators engaged in a similar process, except they did the interviewing – everything in this play has a story. The project’s journey to the stage is just as interesting as the actual plot line.
After starting the project in 2002 under its original name, Lower East Side Project, Sommers worked as Artist-in-Residence at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center over the following year becoming the venue’s first resident director. The piece was also workshopped at the Makor Uptown-Downtown Festival, the Gowanus Art Center in Brooklyn and 3 Graces Theatre Company all within a span of about year.
Kal Bennett and Jordana Oberman
It was put on hold in 2005 while Sommers served as director, producer and sometimes host of a live studio, closed-circuit television show in the Child Life Department at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York. Her department was affectionately dubbed “the play ladies” but she didn’t mind.
“Thank God they gave me the job. It was the most amazing thing. It was this whole other niche I didn’t even know I would enjoy, of creating the programming,” says Sommers. “I basically started the whole program from scratch. We went from four shows a week to two live shows a day, 24 hour broadcasting. Then weekend programming as well.”
Strangely enough, the very same job that slowed the show’s progress gave Sommers an opportunity to bring the show to LA. Art of Elysium, where Sommers currently serves as Theatre of Media Arts Manager, is the organization currently backing the play. Sommers’ success in live performances for children, brought her to LA and gave her a job. It was after she moved to South Pasadena in 2009, just a few blocks away from Fremont Centre Theatre, when she thought about restarting the Lower East Side project. She literally wandered in off the street and ran into producer Lissa Reynolds.
“So, I was walking around, I was sneaking in. The doors were open. I was like, ‘Wow! This is so great! It’s a cute, little theater. Perfect!’ And on the door of the theater was a sign that said, ‘Artists, actors, designers, directors, blah blah blah. Come, we’re having a meeting this Saturday. We’re building an arts council in South Pasadena,” Sommers laughs. “I met Lissa that Saturday, the weekend I moved in, and I brought my resume and I brought all this stuff with me and I sat right next to her. We met at the first meeting of the South Pasadena Arts Council.”
When Sommers finally got up the courage to talk to Reynolds about the piece, Reynolds told Sommers to put together a reading. But the piece lay fallow for another year when, upon the encouragement of a friend, she eventually staged the reading.
“My friend loved it and it gave me the courage to be like, ‘You know what? I’m going to do this reading. Let’s just get it together.’ So the script was not 100% but Lissa was so happy with it. She said, ‘It could be staged the next day,’” says Sommers. “I wasn’t sure if Lissa was going to like it and I said I was going to take this opportunity to possibly get it back and maybe if Lissa doesn’t like it, go somewhere else with it. But she loved it. So, I had a theater.”
Jodi Fleisher and Barry Alan Levine
From then on, the piece picked up speed and is now set to debut on May 21 with a six-week run at the South Pasadena theater. But Sommers acknowledges she didn’t and couldn’t have done it alone.
“I always need people. I always need somebody else in order to make it happen,” she says. “If somebody else isn’t on my team, if there’s nobody else out there kind of going, ‘I’m gonna run with you on this,’ then I’m not seeing something. Then there might be something wrong with the piece. I’m really very inspired by teamwork and by that collaborative effort that goes into something.”
Sommers recommends the same for anyone thinking of or currently trying to get a project going. “I would say, show it to as many people as you can. Don’t keep it to yourself and don’t do it yourself,” she says. “It’s humbling and it’s also vital to your work to be listening to everybody and filtering it through yourself and then making your decisions because you aren’t the end-all-be-all.”
Between a full time job – which is hard to come by these days, particularly for artists – the Council and a world premiere, Sommers has her hands full and doesn’t have any specific projects on the horizon. However, she’s always open to new ways to do old works as well as other documentary performances. Nevertheless, South of Delancey remains at the forefront, and Sommers feels there is something for everyone in the play.
“You’re going to have a good time – no matter what. You’re going to see something of yourself in this show no matter where you come from. I think you’re going to see yourself on this stage,” says Sommers. “You’re going to be able to laugh at it and laugh at yourself and have a good time and enjoy yourself. And I hope you go away thinking about it and thinking about yourself more.”
**All production Photography by Dove Huntley
South of Delancey, produced by Lissa Reynolds for California Performing Arts Centre, opens May 21; plays Thur.-Sat., 8 pm; Sun., 3 pm; until June 26. Tickets: $20-$25. Fremont Centre Theatre, 1000 Fremont Ave., South Pasadena; 866-811-4111 or fremontcentretheatre.com.
