It’s 6 p.m. on a Thursday. Quittin’ time. Miller time. Yabbadabbadoo time. But not for Stephen Steiner and Julie Gold.
After Steiner puts in a hard day’s work at the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation, he gears up for a hard day’s night in Hayward. Same goes for Gold after wrapping up a 10-hour shift shepherding her kids here and there.
Both settle in for a long evening of rehearsal. Though neither is a professional actor, Steiner and Gold are co-starring in a new production of Wendy Wasserstein’s award-winning play, “The Sisters Rosenzweig.”
Until two years ago, Gold was herself a dedicated Jewish community professional, holding posts at various Bay Area agencies — including the JCF — before taking time off to rear her two children. Steiner still makes a living in the Jewish communal world.
But these days, it’s the actor’s life for Steiner and Gold, as they have followed their bliss right onto the wings of Hayward’s Douglas Morrison Theater. “It’s not that I’m a ham,” says Steiner. “But acting gives me insight into people’s perspectives, and allows me to expand my own frame of mind.”
The beauty of community theater is that talented amateurs like Steiner and Gold get to flex their artistic muscles, act in quality productions and still keep their day jobs.
For Steiner, that job is assistant director of the Jewish Community Endowment Fund. Translation: He helps people give money to Jewish causes. Prior to this, Steiner worked as an attorney and did stints at the Jewish Federation in Chicago, as well as the National Conference of Christians and Jews.
He does love his current job because, he says, “it allows me to merge my legal background with my Jewish interests.”
The San Francisco native grew up attending Conservative Congregation Ner Tamid. He later majored in Near East Studies at U.C. Berkeley, with an emphasis in Hebrew language, and for a while he attended yeshiva. He also lived in Israel for a year, spending time in the Judaen desert as a field guide. Today he is an active member of Temple Beth Abraham in Oakland.
Some years ago, Steiner’s wife encouraged him to try out for a role in a community theater production. Though he’d never acted before, Steiner got the part and was simultaneously bitten hard by the acting bug. Nine years later the Castro Valley resident is a stage veteran, having appeared in many Bay Area productions.
Gold, on the other hand, is a rookie. She grew up in a Conservative home in Arizona. At 25, she moved to Israel. Two years later, then fluent in Hebrew, she returned to the States, settling in the Bay Area to launch her career. During a 12-year tenure, she worked in fund-raising, community development and programming at various organizations, including the San Francisco and East Bay federations, Friends of Hebrew University and Israel Center.
Along the way, Gold married and had two children. Facing the familiar dilemma of kids vs. work, she chose the kids, retiring two years ago to focus on motherhood. “My first day off was a Friday,” she remembers. “I walked down Piedmont Avenue, shopped with the kids, then said to myself, ‘OK, now what?'”
Turned out it would be the theater, even though she’d never before considered acting as a hobby. “All of a sudden it hit me, I want to do this,” she recalls. “I called the Berkeley Repertory School of Theater, and within two weeks I was hooked.”
Gold took several classes, including advanced scene study and auditioning techniques. Now here’s the spooky part: In the latter class, she prepared a two-minute monologue from “The Sisters Rosenzweig.” Says Gold: “After that, somebody told me about the production in Hayward. I went to audition mostly for the experience, and amazingly, the director asked me read the very monologue I had prepared.”
Sounds like off-off-Broadway beshert.
Now both Steiner and Gold find themselves in an ensemble cast working on a classic by one of America’s most admired playwrights (who also happens to be Jewish).
“The Sisters Rosenzweig” tells the story of Sara Goode a successful London-based banker, and her sisters, one of whom is named Gorgeous Teitelbaum (played by Gold). They’ve gathered to celebrate Good’s 54th birthday. Steiner plays Merv Kant, an executive in the faux-fur business. He is very much taken with Sara, who has been trying to shed her Jewish identity.
Gold is excited about her role. “Gorgeous is the only one in the play who is very into her Judaism,” she says. “The play’s many subtle and not-so-subtle Jewish nuances are very natural for me.”
Despite their enthusiasm for acting, however, neither is ready to get an agent and move to Hollywood.
“I have never thought of expanding,” says Steiner. “Staying just at this level is dayenu.”
Both plan to remain as active as possible in the Jewish community now and ever more. But that doesn’t mean they can’t have fun once in a while following Mickey Rooney’s old exhortation to Judy Garland: “Hey, let’s put on a show!”
Says Gold, “I figure you only live once. If not now, when?”