Festival for fruition
THE REVISIONIST” will be presented on the second night of NJ Repertory Company’s “When the Circus Comes to Town,” a Festival of the Arts, to be held Sept. 20-30 at the company’s future home being readied on West End Avenue in Long Branch.
The one-act is part of the company’s signature Theatre Brut series, 32 short plays presented in eight sessions, with audiences “traveling” from room to room to see four works in each session.
The festival includes an art show, a photography exhibit, poetry readings, and children’s storytelling. It is also a benefit for a project that NJ Rep artistic director SuzAnne Barabas and her husband and executive producer, Gabor, have been assiduously working to bring to fruition: transforming the 28,000-square-foot building into the West End Arts Center. When complete, it will house two theaters, an art cinema, a rooftop cafe, classrooms, and studios.
The company’s current home, at 179 Broadway, was donated in 1997 by Margaret and David Lumia.
Each writer represented in the “Theatre Brut” plays — selected from several hundred submissions from around the world — “interpreted the theme in their own way, so the plays run the gambit,” Barabas said.
“The Revisionist” is also an example of one of the Barabases’ core commitments. Both, she said, “were brought up in observant Jewish households; Gabor is the child of survivors, and we have always had a place in our hearts for Jewish-themed plays.” Over the years, they have produced several that, above all, “speak to everyone.”
— ABBY METH KANTER
comments