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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/40026/full/40026/tjt-actor-chosen-for-role/ <br /><br /> <b>TJT actor ‘chosen’ for role</b> <br /> Thursday, October 1, 2009 | by dan pine <br /><br /><p>Corey Fischer says something will be missing from The Jewish Theatre, San Francisco’s upcoming 2009-2010 season: Corey Fischer.</p> <p>That’s because the co-founder of TJT (formerly known as Traveling Jewish Theatre) and mainstay of its productions over its 31-year history, is taking on a more advisory role, turning the reins over to a younger generation of leaders.</p> <p>That doesn’t mean Fischer has lost the acting bug. It’s biting harder than ever, especially now that Fischer is available to other local companies for the first time. Case in point: He’s starring in TheatreWorks’ new production of “The Chosen.”</p> <p>The play runs Wednesday, Oct. 7, to Nov. 1 at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. Aaron Davidman, a longtime friend of Fischer’s and currently the artistic director of TJT, directed the TheatreWorks production.</p> Based on the popular Chaim Potok novel, playwright Aaron Posner’s 1999 theatrical version was written under the watchful eye of Potok himself. It tells the post–World War II era tale of two sets of fathers and sons, including Reb Saunders, a Chassidic rabbi, and his brilliant but rebellious son. <p>Fischer plays Reb Saunders, the wise and imperious leader of a New York–based Orthodox sect. Instead of wrestling with God, he wrestles with his son, Danny, whom he had been grooming to one day take over as rebbe.</p> <p>But Danny has other things in mind.</p> <p>“You see [Reb Saunders} about four times,” Fischer says, “and each time it’s a very different aspect. You get this prismatic approach to his character. He realizes by the end he has really transformed, that he is not the strict fundamentalist he appeared early on. At essence [the play] is about fathering.”</p> <div class="capDivLeft" style="width: 360px;"><img alt="Achosen" class="left" height="241" src="/images/uploads/z_photos_2009/l10_02_09/Achosen.jpg" title="Thomas Gorrebeeck (left) and Jonathan Bock in “The Chosen.” photo/courtesy of the tjt/david allen" width="360" /> <div class="caption">Thomas Gorrebeeck (left) and Jonathan Bock in “The Chosen.” photo/courtesy of the tjt/david allen</div> </div> <p>A popular 1982 film version of “The Chosen” starred Rod Steiger as Saunders and Robby Benson as Danny. Fischer remembers that film well, but he says the 1967 novel itself had a stronger impact on him.</p> <p>“That was among the books I read in my 20s that really got me interested in my Jewishness,” Fischer recalls. “I was bar mitzvahed, then I left it all and got very uninterested. Then in my 20s, I was just exploring the world in general, and read books like ‘The Chosen,’ and the Chassidic stories from Martin Buber. They got me curious.”</p> <p>That curiosity led him, along with two other actors, to found Traveling Jewish Theatre in Los Angeles (the company then moved to San Francisco). Since then Fischer has written, directed and starred in numerous plays at TJT, all with Jewish themes.</p> <p>He stuck with Jewish themes in “The Chosen,” but working with an entirely new company has been a revelation for Fischer.</p> <p>“It’s wonderful at this point in my life to work in an organization that is so well funded,” Fischer says with a laugh. “Somehow, as big as they are, there’s a real hamishness about the whole operation. At the first rehearsal, they gather everyone who has any connection — from the women who do the stitching of the costumes to the box office to the custodial staff.”</p> <p>And of course, with their encyclopedic knowledge of all things Jewish, Fischer and Davidman offer up their insight into the finer points of Yiddishkeit for their fellow players in “The Chosen.”</p> <p>After this production wraps, Fischer has several irons in the fire. TJT recently received a grant from the Creative Work Fund to create a stage work about Stella Adler’s famous Group Theater of the 1930s. Fischer’s running point on that one, teaming up with local Jewish filmmaker Sam Ball’s Citizen Film. He’s also writing a new play.</p> <p>Last year TJT faced closure due to a severe budget crisis. An emergency fundraising effort saved the theater, but Fischer now knows how tenuous a career in the arts can be. That’s why he’s grateful to still find challenging roles, both at TJT and beyond.</p> <p>“For me the exciting part is after 31 years to be stretching out,” he says. “[TheatreWorks] is a different kind of theater, a different culture. Yet for me it’s the best of all possible worlds.”</p> <p>TheatreWorks’ production of <strong>“The Chosen”</strong> runs from Wednesday, Oct. 7, through Nov. 1 at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro St., Mountain View. $24-$62. Information: (650) 463-1960 or <a href="http://www.theatreworks.org">http://www.theatreworks.org</a>.</p>

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