Zero Hour in NY #14: Helen Hayes Awards

More Great News for Jim: Helen Hayes Award Nominations.

The Washington DC Helen Hayes Awards are highly respected in the theater community. So, we are thrilled and honored to get two nominations today. Jim Brochu for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Non-Resident Production and "Zero Hour" for Outstanding Non-Resident Production.

When you look at the list, you can see what he's up against. All four of the other productions are from the Kennedy Center. They're huge, famous, first class touring productions of Broadway hits or international star productions. August: Osage County, Spring Awakening, Jersey Boys and A Streetcar Named Desire (with Kate Blanchett).

That the nominating committee also found and nominated our little Theater J production is high praise and an even higher honor. Those productions cost millions and millions of dollars. Ours, uh, didn't.

That this news came on the same day as the news of our transfer to the DR2 Theater makes this a wonderful week, indeed. And it helps bring always-needed (free) publicity.

The Profane Cafe

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The Profane Cafe
A true story (uncut version)
by Steve Schalchlin

I looked over at the little empty cafe from a baby grand piano, which was positioned between two massive marble pillars in the expansive, historical lobby of the DC Jewish Community Center, itself proudly located within viewing distance of the White House on 16th street in Washington DC.

It was the night before Rosh Hashannah.

The bare set of tables and chairs, kitchen door was sealed shut, seemed odd and out of place because all the other rooms of the busy community center with its gym, meeting rooms, school rooms, library and theater were usually teeming with life. But this small area had a sign posted in front that said CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE, followed by a list of nice restaurants over on 17th.

Jim Brochu and I had been here, at Theater J, located upstairs, for a couple of weeks with the run of his play, "Zero Hour," about the art, career, life and blacklisting of Zero Mostel, and we passed by the unplayed piano every day. Out here in this public space. Just waiting to be played. But, no. I was terrified of making a scene and being told to stop.

But, today, no one was around except Monty, an open-hearted woman watching over the door, usually buzzing people in. But it was quiet. So, heart thumping in my chest, I sat down and...god bless every one involved, but the shiny Steinway was in tune. Thank you.

The harmonies of strings and wood enriched the air as they reverberated off the tall, storied walls of the lobby/reception area/cafe; complex, yet clear and clean. Like adding oxygen to confined space.

I felt like a VW driver who suddenly gets to drive a Mazzarati. A well tuned piano in a room with perfect acoustics, with just enough reverb, is a space made in heaven. I decided right then and there that someday I would sing a concert in this place.

But, still, something felt wrong when I again looked over at the cafe behind me and off to the right. CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

I saw barren wooden furniture -- black sticks like charred empty tree branches -- silhouetted by stark light from behind.

I scanned toward the door until I saw the pillars of the wall opposite mine. There, before me, as if suspended from the ceiling, were long rows of golden nameplates -- brass -- honoring the mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and families who sacrificed to make sure this community center would always stand proudly in our nation's capital.

I couldn't see Monty because there was a marble pillar between us. Delia, who works for Theater J, passed through and stopped, briefly, but she was setting up a play reading in the library adjoining.

So, essentially, I was just singing to myself. The sound that the room brought to the piano was so beautiful, I got caught up in the moment. Not just in the self-satisfaction one has of hearing one's own voice actually sounding good, like in a perfect shower stall, but awed by the history and the tradition of the community that built this monument to its own survival and culture.

I thought to myself, "This is a sacred space."

At the conclusion of the song, I peeked around the pillar and then walked over to Monty; she had tears in her eyes.

She said, "You made me cry. You're good. But you know you're good, don't you?"

I hate that question. No, I think I suck, but yes, I've written and played music my whole life and I can fake it with the best of them.

I asked her about the empty cafe and she said it had been shut down for breaking a religious food law.

Later, I read about it online. It seems some kitchen worker, on a busy night, had "sneaked in" some sirloins from Safeway during a dinner rush, and the kosher officer, on duty that night, had seen it and reported it to the Board of Rabbis, and now the word was that it might be shut down forever.

My initial Gentile/Baptist instinct was to pronounce the whole thing "stupid," of course. Luckily, I didn't say it out loud. What hubris! To stand in judgment of the religious authorities and their traditions.

It wasn't my place to judge them. After all, this is not my place and not my community. I'm an outsider. Right?

Am I?

Was that really the point of the Holocaust Museum and the DC Jewish Community Center? To create "outsiders?" Or is my outsider status all in my head? Funny, but seeing these things had opposite effect on me. These things pulled me in.

As the run of "Zero Hour" progressed, I attended almost every public talk-back and "town hall meeting" run by Ari Roth, the artistic director of Theater J. And, yeah, since I'm not Jewish, I didn't always relate to specifics, but what I did hear were lively discussions over "identity," and what it means to be Jewish, and to be human.

What startled me was the breadth and scope of the community. A devoutly religious Jew next to a committed atheist, but still finding common ground. But in what? Humor? Theater? Not politics.

Finally, Ari asked, "What is Jewish humor? What is Jewish thought? What are Jewish values?"

Growing up in the bubble of conservative Christianity, I can tell you that my knowledge of what was "Jewish" and what wasn't, was at zero. When someone said, on a TV show that they were Jewish, it made no more of an impression to me than if they said they were left-handed. My dad's left handed.

But, sitting in that theater, listening to the town hall meeting, I felt completely included.

Ari, again asking questions, "Do you have to be Jewish to understand and appreciate Jewish values?"

After the town hall, food was served in the hallway. And that's when everyone really came alive. Another "ping" moment. Back in Texas, it was "dinner on the ground." The great equalizer is the Buffet Run, to make sure you get the best fried chicken and not get stuck with the jello with the stuff in it!

I was sitting again at the piano, after seeing Monty's tears, and began playing again. A song about a mom who's just sent her son back to Iraq.

I looked back over at the profane cafe and thought, "Here we are at the most sacred moment of the year for Jewish people, and those tables are not filled with families breaking bread." The golden nameplates across the lobby were now catching the sun but there would be no happy faces reflected in them.

Immediately, I flashed back to the day before, to a room in the Holocaust museum. It had been my first time to see it, so the sorrowful ache of the experience still lingered in my bones. A room full of names. No, photographs.

They stretched from the floor to the ceiling. Hundreds of photographs of a town that was massacred. These pictures and names were all that were left.

But in this room, the names were put there in support. Perhaps, even in defiance. "Yes, I am a Jew! Yes! This is my community center! Yes, this is for my people! This is who I am!"

I felt sad and the whole thing felt unjust.

Rules or no rules, the idea that we could be in the middle of Rosh Hashannah and the tables stand silent. And the newspaper had said it might be permanent!

And it all just seemed so sad. Is it really a principle of Judaism that there can be no redemption? Not even for a set of inanimate objects?

I am not, at this stage of my life, much of an iconoclast, though I was when I was younger. In fact, I feel it's mandatory to be skeptical of institutions when you are young. Everything that becomes self-important is much more tolerable when you know you can throw a spit ball at it.

But, and this is going to be the most ridiculous part, I actually felt insulted. For my music. I felt nothing but sacred beauty in here, and now someone was telling me that I was wrong. I should have been hearing, what? Shame and disgust?

Did my songs became profane when they entered the airspace of the unkosher cafe? The profane cafe?

I went back to the piano and played out loud. I sang out loud.

I wondered if whatever was wrong here could be made right again and whether music...

Without hesitation, I began the opening, tender piano intro of "Rescue." I sang it as a love song to the DC Jewish Community Center and to Theater J.

When I rescued you
You rescued me
You are the gift I never thought I would see
And though it seems backwards
That's the way it should be
When I rescued you
You rescued me

The song washed through the room, quietly and gushed over the profane cafe. The piano, the voice -- filled the air, the floor, the ceiling, immersing everything in vibrations of healing and peace.

As I sang the last few words, pulling back into the carport, I can safely report that the space was restored to its full and proper sacred state.

Music can do this, you know. I swear. It's one of the rules of the universe.

Now, I realize the board of governing rabbis must make it official, but surely that's just a formality.

So, there. An entreaty and a small gift of redemptive music from an outsider who loves you.

Your cafe is not unclean. I promise. Not here. And not now.

And since this is DC, I can see the headline now:

Wayward Baptist refugee inadvertently consecrates the Jewish Community Center in Washington DC.

Now, there's a musical waiting to happen.

Besides, it's a mitzvah! L'Shana Tovah.

One Last DC Show.

I can't believe it's almost over.

Has it really been a month?

In this short month, it feels like we've done and seen everything, and yet we've barely scratched the surface. But we couldn't be full time tourists. After all, the main point of our being here was to put "Zero Hour" onto the stage in one of the most sophisticated cities (with one of the most sophisticated audiences) in the world, and to see what would happen.

It's one thing to do it in Florida for what would be mostly retirees (who, not so amazingly were also sophisticated and discerning), but this is, after all, Washington, DC. The city has a thriving theatre community and features some of the most progressive and stimulating art (and art critics) in the world. If we came to DC and failed, then New York would be almost an impossibility.

What we couldn't expected or dreamed was that not only would every critic in every paper give him rave reviews, but, Jewish holidays notwithstanding, we would end the run with sold-out houses and people hanging from the rafters.

Last night, for instance, every seat possible was filled, including two deep in the one-seat ring of balcony chairs, with people standing in the back for the whole show. At intermission, I saw several people giving him a standing ovation, and the show wasn't even over yet. Afterward, I heard more than a few people, upon exiting, saying, "See? I told you it was a fabulous show. That's why I had to bring you."

Which, of course, means they were coming back two and three times.

Jim got a letter last night, in his dressing room, "I saw 'Fiddler On The Roof' back when my parents brought me, but Zero was out for the performance. Thank you bringing his presence to me 43 years later. This was what I was waiting for."

For me, personally, it's been fun being his caretaker. Doing a show like this is like singing an opera every single night -- and it's not just the physicality of the performance "where becomes a rampaging bellowing animal every night," as one actor used to say about Zero's stage performances. It's a psychological and emotional drain, too. Zero lived with pain. The physical pain of his leg, which had been hit by a bus and almost amputated, but the pain of losing his parents when he married a Catholic girl, the pain of being blacklisted and hounded and hunted and shunned for 10 years, the loss the film of "Fiddler," etc. Jim relives these things and the explosions of anger and pain and loss permeate his performance, as every critic noted.

And then, there's the new stress of knowing we're headed into the harshest and most critical theatre town in the world, New York City, where Jim (and Zero) was born and raised.

All these things weigh heavily upon him in each and every performance. This piece, "Zero Hour," as he puts it, is his baby. It's his life. It's the culmination of a lifetime of theatrical work.

But, first, one last show, and then rest.

Home for a month, where he'll take one last look at the play and include the little tweaks he discovered while performing the show here.

But as happy as we are to be going home for rest and to see the cat, and for me to get back to Kulak's and singing again (and editing more video shot here), we feel a melancholy that it's all so suddenly over. We will miss the creative team here, particularly Seth, Daniel and Josh who have toiled in the (freezing) booth every night, calling the cues, hitting the lights and sound.

Theatre is weird in that you become intimately friendly with people, joking around and laughing and loving each other, and then the fierce and vicious clock dings a little bell, and, suddenly the little family is torn apart, instantaneously. It's just not fair. But it's reality.

So, the end of a successful run, particularly one in which all the final shows are sold out, brings with it the joy of accomplishment and the sadness that it all has to end.

More Photos from DC.

Inside the Library of Congress. I never knew it was so beautiful.











The Capitol building:



Jim with our congressman, Howard Berman.



Me delivering my State of the Union address in the Smithsonian Museum of American History.



The beautiful DC Jewish Community Center, home of Theater J.



Jimmy and Piper Laurie acting silly.



Jim with Aviva Kempner, who made the wonderful film, "Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg."



Backstage with Theodore Bikel with NY producer Ed Gaynes looking on.



In the Newseum with sections of the Berlin Wall.



Jim hiding behind a G-man.



Me being taken into custody, but ever defiant.



A piece of the World Trade Center.



Face to face with J. Edgar Hoover.



The Navy Memorial, built to look like the top of the ship.



And so much more to come!

Touring, Touring.

I have so many pictures to share and videos that I've shot -- and no time to sit and process them all, so after Jim's last show on Sunday, after we get home, I'll sort through them and start telling stories.

But we had a special "backstage" tour of the Supreme Court building, a tour of the Scottish Rite Temple, which is the opening scene in "The Lost Symbol," and, on Thursday, a special tour of the Folger Shakespeare Library. Then, over to the Capitol for the House, Senate and a short visit with our Congressman (we just walked right into his office).

First, from the Smithsonian Museum of American History, an iconic statue (from Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol" of George Washington depicted as an Olympic god.)



Union Station:



The Presidential Yacht, used frequently by FDR but sold off by Jimmy Carter:



Speaking of FDR, Jimmy with Eleanor Roosevelt at the FDR memorial:



The Vietnam memorial:



A diorama of the Supreme Court. This is actually a little model, but we got to sit in the "honored guest" chairs and stand at the lecturn. No photos inside, unfortunately. But we did find out that in the friezes above, there is a religious historical figure depicted that they never talk about. It was meant as a tribute, but the followers of this religion don't like it when people make images of him.



The Capital from the steps of the Supreme Court.



We also toured the Supreme Court library, but all of that is on video, which I'll edit after we get home. It was exciting to get to go where nobody else gets to go.

Once again, if you're reading "The Lost Symbol," this is the iconic Scottish Rite Temple depicted in a couple of key scenes. They let you go inside and take all the photos you want. Their "secrets" involve only their rituals and meetings. In fact, they're a very open society and allow tours. Begun centuries ago, the Masons played a pivotal role in helping to establish freedom of thought and religion in this country, existing alongside the Catholic Church during the Dark Ages, promoting science and thought, which the church did not like. They were constantly persecuted for it. But, in fact, Washington, Franklin, Jefferson and a number of founding fathers were Masons, and Franklin used those connections to get France and Germany on our side during the revolutionary war.



Two sphinxes sit out front. (I'll have video of our tour, also).



This is the big meeting room with the stone altar. During meetings, they will lay out all the holy books representing the beliefs of whoever might be in attendance. They were probably the first organization to promote freedom of religion.





And, of course, we had to sit in the big throne.





To be continued...

Last Night's Curtain Call.

Why Dan Brown is the Number One Author in the World.

"For Blythe."

I had this dream last night. I was on a ship. I was explaining to the workers around me why I was running this particular division.

"It's because," I said, "I volunteered at the bottom and just made myself useful."

The dream was very detailed as I showed them how, by following orders and being creative, trying to stay out invisible and small, and out of the way of the Captain and the powers that be, I eventually just figured out how to make it all work, by effortlessly utilizing and empowering volunteers.

When I woke up, I had this big smile on my face because the last "scene" in my dream was that I was being secretly slipped down into the kitchen, by other workers on the bottom of the totem pole, to eat some freshly caught fish. And I knew exactly where this dream came from.

It reminded me of a saying from Stephen Mitchell's translation of Lao Tsu:

The supreme good is like water,
which nourishes all things without trying to.
It is content with the low places that people disdain.

Jim was still asleep, so I went over to the couch and began quietly pecking on my keyboard. Holding it up on my lap was Dan Brown's newest book, "The Lost Symbol." I remembered back to the first day I arrived at the now-defunct National Academy of Songwriters. My big goal, at the time, was to learn about the music business. But, for the day, it was just show up and be useful as a volunteer, much like I'm doing at Kulak's Woodshed, helping out on camera 3.

I said to them, that day, in a city swirling with movie moguls and people reaching, desperately, for more and more power, "Might as well give me something to do because I've got nowhere else to go." So, they put me on the front desk answering the 800 line.

A year later, NAS was deeply in debt. Everyone on salary got pink-slipped and they gave me the responsibility to keep the services going, which led to a mad scramble on my part to bring in more volunteers, which led to my giving a desk and a totally made-up title and division, Director of Artistic Development (since we couldn't afford to pay her) to a woman named Blythe who, like me, walked in looking for a way to be useful.

One day, a sweet, shy fellow named Dan Brown walked through her door wanting to learn about the music business, not realizing that that volunteer would one day become his wife.

I've told this story before, and reporters keep contacting me, asking me about "the secrets" to Dan Brown success. But, really, it's not a complicated story. He did it with hard work and with the assistance of a woman who loves him. My part was small.

New York. September 1996. We were doing a staged reading of "The Last Session." I was barely back from the grave. Dan and Blythe, now married and living out east where Dan was teaching at Phillips Exeter Academy, came to listen because Dan loved the song "Going It Alone," and Jim had published his (Jim's) book, "Lucy In The Afternoon," about his days playing backgammon with Lucille Ball (a relationship that began when Jim slipped a script into her mailbox).

Dan approached Jim and said how much he'd love to be a writer, so Jim told him to get up every morning and just write. Dedicate yourself to it and don't stop.

A short time later, out of the blue, we received a book in the mail called "Digital Fortress." In the front, it was signed from Dan, saying how much he was inspired by what we had done.

It was sweet. Little Dan had a book!

We were so happy for the two of them, and they worked their butts off, going from book store to book store, trying to promote it. Sadly, the book didn't sell all that much, but he kept at it. One book after another. They still didn't do all that well, so he changed his agent or his publisher or something and...

One day -- and I remember this day vividly because I was sitting in my doctor's office waiting on some test results -- I picked up the New York Times there on the table in the waiting room, and opened it to a full page ad for a new book called, "The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown," complete with a fantastic review by Janet Maslin. I called Blythe, immediately, and she said, with a giggle and a whisper, "Can you keep a secret? Don't tell anyone, but Dan's next book is going to debut at number one on the NY Times best-seller list."

And the next thing you know, slowly but surely, no matter where we went, there would be someone holding that book. It was on every plane, in every bookstore window. Everywhere. Soon, all his other books were on the shelves next to "The Da Vinci Code" and it just kept going on and on and on.

As we sit here in Washington DC, (another town filled with people fighting for power and position, and, ironically, the setting for "The Lost Symbol," our hotel situated two blocks from the grand Masonic Lodge depicted in the opening sequence, on the same street, 16th street, two blocks from where "Zero Hour" is playing at Theater J), I can't help but marvel at how life can move in such unexpected ways.

On the inside of "The Lost Symbol," there's a single dedication: For Blythe.

Only two words.

But, for me, an entire history which all began the day I showed up in Hollywood with the simple intention of making myself useful, the lowest guy on the lowest totem pole in Hollywood. And who became my "assistant?" Blythe.

And that's how Dan Brown became the number one selling author in the world.

For The New Year.

The other night, Jim and I were sitting in a very nice home with two former ambassadors and their wives and family members. They were dissecting the world, picking apart the Tea Partiers, the liberal left, the loony right, Obama, the vacuous media, the lack of civility, the tastiness of bacon,finally arriving at Afghanistan. And Pakistan. Then Israel. Iran. Disputed territories, Saudi Arabia and cities considered to be sacred.

And then the discussion turned to what it means when an object, city or land is declared to the "holy."

Up to that point, I was mostly listening and eating cheese and crackers, trying to get the cat to pay attention to me, but at the mention of "sacred," I blurted out, "Hey, I wrote a song about that once."

"Really?" said Tex Harris, a giant of a man, 6'7", with a great big American Texan voice, and who is a kind of hero to some people in the world for his work with the poor when he was ambassador to Argentina.

He bellowed, "Sing it for us."

A million things went through my brain at that moment. I'm in a fancy DC home, surrounded by some of the most literate and experienced people in the world. And one of them has just announced to the room that I should sing.

There was no piano. We were all seated, eating crackers and cheese.

But, without hesitation (and without a piano), I opened my mouth and started singing:

THE MARTYR WORE A JACKET BOMB
TO KILL THE INFIDELS AROUND
HE SAID THE PEOPLE IN THIS PLACE
DO NOT BELONG ON HOLY GROUND

THE ROCKET CAME FROM NOWHERE
CUZ THEY SAID THE MARTYR FORCED THEIR HAND
CHILDREN ARE COLLATERAL WHEN FIGHTING
OVER SACRED SAND

Then I told him my theory about how to test a religion, which is in the video below, recited by Piper Laurie.



Upon finishing the song, he began animatedly shouting, "SEND ME A LINK! I WANT THAT SONG! I have to send that to everyone on my list!"

And then you have to ask why I call this "living in the bonus round"?

BTW, I got Dan Brown's new book, The Last Symbol, as an early birthday present for myself. It's just too much of a coincidence that his book is set in Washington DC, and that we're only two blocks from the big Masonic Hall with the Egyptian statues out front and that my grandfather was a Shriner down in Louisiana.

Sounds like the start of new story, a new book.

Happy new year.

Oh, and if you haven't seen it, this is me singing "Holy Dirt" at my concert in Olympia for PFLAG:



L'Shana Tova.

Cathy Renna is Cool.

Talking about Cathy Renna, who Jim and I had lunch with, yesterday, after way too many years, is difficult because she's a professional in this business, but she's also a friend. I was a guest in her home long ago, in Boston back when I was the "just back from the dead" songwriter doing AIDS education concerts, at colleges and universities, following the success of The Last Session in New York.

I think I was still very fragile back then. (I'm still fragile, but who isn't?)

She had a deaf cat. Its ears never moved. And we all bonded.

Over the years, as Jim and I did our thing out in California in theatre, Cathy became involved with GLAAD as their PR person, and our lives intersected again when both TLS and Big Voice in New York and L.A. became nominees (winning once).

On her own now, with Renna Communications Cathy knows everybody and, better yet, everyone knows Cathy, or who she is. She's based here in Washington, but has been out of town until now for personal reasons. This was our first chance to catch up. I was almost unable to speak. All I wanted to do was hug. (Maggie, who we also saw this week puts it, totally deadpan, "Oh, right. You're a hugger.")

After we got caught up on our personal lives -- she and her partner's daughter is a "girly girl" who loves princess parties, Jim's here with Zero Hour and headed for New York -- and after playing, as Jim put it, La Ronde, with our menu selections -- "I've decided to have what he wanted"-- we began discussing a Depression-era type experimental theatre project she's involved with: A sequel to The Laramie Project, where the cast has gone back to the town and come back with another play, once again transforming, but this time into the thing Laramie has now become, ten years down the road.

The two killers were interviewed. It should be hair-raising.

Only instead of one production, they're allowing 130 simultaneous productions -- of either this one or the original -- to be performed on different stages all on one night, October 6. Would this be, in effect, a virtual movie or tv show?

I thought, how ingenious of the writers back then. It was being "broadcast," but everyone's channel had a different cast.

It's retro, and yet it's cutting edge because with all our electronics, there is no substitute for the live human voice. Almost everything that humans have ever been invented to make a sound are doing so in order to copy or catch something the human voice does. Or to reach beyond it while still being a "voice."

A movie or tv show is one step removed from real life, pale imitations of the real thing you feel when live theatre is at its best. It's visceral.

Last night, one of our close friends, the wife of an ambassador, came up to me after the show and said, excitedly, "You know, I didn't see Jim tonight! I thought I was going to see Jim, the actor, but I didn't. It really felt like I was with Zero Mostel."

But enough rambling. Cathy Renna is cool.

From her website:

Bruce Shenitz | THE ADVOCATE | October 2009

Eleven years after Matthew Shepard’s murder, the creators of The Laramie Project take a look at everything that’s happened in the town since in a new play that will premiere in more than a hundred theaters worldwide on the same night.

Kaufman has said that by opening a play at different theaters on the same night, he is following in the footsteps of the Federal Theater Project, the New Deal–era program designed to employ out-of-work artists, writers, and directors and through which Sinclair Lewis’s play It Can’t Happen Here was produced simultaneously in 22 cities in 1936.

ON A PERSONAL NOTE:
In many ways, it's similar to the experimental theatrical project I have done with several student groups, including Northeastern University, where they cast and rehearse a staged concert version of The Last Session -- with me as Gideon, playing the score. They learn the music. I come in and stage it in a few days. Boom. We have a show, and everyone leaves, after laughing and crying for two hours.

I felt energized after talking to Cathy. She reminded me how much I love grass roots, community-based projects and programs, like I created and ran at NAS. The volunteer phone operator on the front desk who became the managing director almost overnight because we were broke and I was the last one left standing. Me and Danny Kirkpatrick and Paul Zollo. (To poor Paul, I was like, "Who the hell is he again?" To Danny, I was the one guy he could rely on to do make something happen so that we could stay open another month. I was inventing programs right and left. And one day, I created an artist development division, found a volunteer to staff it and and one day this nice, intelligent guy walked in the door and now he's Dan Brown, the biggest author in the world.

And I'm going to get his book today.

And I'm going to remember the power of being the volunteer front desk operator who comes in with an intention to just be useful.

Jim & Piper Get Podcasted at DC Theatre Scene

Piper Laurie and Jim Brochu get quizzed by the inimitable Joel Markowitz at DC Theatre Scene on a two-part podcast. Part one is up now, and part two is on its way. I was there for the taping, so I have this little preview for you where Piper talks about the ridiculous things they used to do to get her publicity in her early acting career.

And what was the silliness? Well, some publicist put out, onto the wires, that they had a starlet who "only ate flowers." Piper, being the dutiful employee, played along. But it would haunt her for years to come as reporter after reporter asked her about her geranium gestation.

The Jewish Press Discusses Zero Hour and Jim Brochu.

From the Jewish Press (the largest nationwide Jewish paper):

"There is something very special about Brochu's Mostel. Not only is the script brilliantly written and hilarious - and it is both - but it is also personal...

"A comedic force of nature that knocks people out is a description that could apply to Brochu's acting as well. But when he says he was knocked out by Mostel, he means it literally. Brochu the sophomore had been invited to the play by his mentor David Burns, and searching for Burns backstage he ran into Mostel. Noting Brochu's uniform (he was in military school), Mostel told him, "You must be General Nuisance. What do you want?" When Brochu said he was looking for Burns, Mostel complained that Brochu never came to visit him and stormed off.

Jim Brochu as Zero Mostel in Zero Hour at Theater J. Photo by Stan Barouh

Brochu took the hint and visited Mostel backstage on several more occasions. Over time the two became friends. When he first asked Mostel for an autograph, Brochu was told he was unworthy - Mostel's "behavior was as outrageous offstage as it was on," he says - but after Mostel saw Brochu's off-Broadway performance in "Unfair to Goliath", he left an envelope with a signed photograph in Brochu's dressing room.

Zero Hour is Brochu's attempt to return the favor, "a tribute to the life of a man who overcame both physical and social obstacles to become one of most enduring giants in the history of the American Theatre."

The essay/review leads, though, with the politics of the piece, which all come from Zero's point of view. Neither Jim nor I are political persons. We are both news junkies, and we lend our talents to benefits, just as Zero did, but we're performers. We love the attention, but don't come to us for answers. We're the clowns.

A Day At The Newseum.

Theodore Bikel Talks About "Edelweiss."

This is a session of theatre story-sharing between Jim Brochu and Theodore Bikel, who was in the original production of "The Sound of Music." He talks about the writing of the song "Edelweiss" -- and a funny story about the cast and some nuns.

Part 3 of Zero Hour Discussion with Piper Laurie & Jim Brochu

Part 2 of Zero Hour Discussion with Piper Laurie & Jim Brochu

Review: DC Express Night Out

DC Express Night Out:

ZERO MOSTEL WAS hailed as the greatest performer on
the American stage, but his star has receded since his 1977 death. Fortunately, Jim Brochu is putting Mostel's name in lights again, playing him with ferocious anger as well as with great joy.

Even many who have heard of Mostel may not know he was a painter first. Brochu's Mostel does touch on the star's triumphs — in "Fiddler on the Roof," "The Producers" and "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" — during a rude, hilarious and touching autobiographical interview, but the interview takes place in a painting studio.

Brochu, looking like an insane Santa Claus, is wildly intense, expressive, manic and comic. He announces he's made 25 Broadway shows, 50 movies and 10,000 paintings. He insists on painting a visiting (unseen) newspaperman and asks whether his guest purchased his coat during a total eclipse. "Art is life," he offers. "Of course you can quote me."

"Zero Hour" is an assault of punch lines, many of which are wonderfully subtle or rely on Brucho's dead-on, over-the-top animation. But the story has emotional heft as well, and is particularly focused on the Hollywood Blacklist and the subsequent suicide of Mostel's friend, fellow blacklist victim Philip Loeb.

"Everyone who's excluded is angry," explains the volcanic Mostel near the play's end. "And then the door opens and I don't really want to go in."

The play, written by Brochu and directed by actress Piper Laurie, premiered three years ago in Los Angeles; it goes to New York after its run at Theater J.

» Theater J, 1529 16th St. NW; through Sept. 27, $42; 202-777-3210. (Dupont Circle)

Written by Express contributor Tim Follos
Photo courtesy Stan Barouh

Piper Laurie & Jim Brochu Discuss "Zero Hour," Pt. 1.

In this "talkback" after Wednesday night's performance, Academy Award winning actress, Piper Laurie (director of "Zero Hour") and writer/star Jim Brochu discuss the play and their friendships with Zero Mostel, with artistic director Theater J, Ari Roth.

Posting "Zero" Reviews.

I've been posting the reviews as fast as they come in. It feels like a miraculous week, as rave after rave pile in, one on top of the other. So, the reader will have to forgive me for the flurry. But, I just don't want any of them lost in the mist of time. Links can break, magazines can fall out, but these reviews -- I'm so proud of them, and so proud of Jim, I wanted to make sure they all resided someplace.

Also, Piper Laurie came into town and did a talkback after the show last night. I taped it from my seat, so I'll be editing that and posting it to Youtube soon.

Stay tuned!

Review: Washington Jewish Week

Modern-day morality play

by Lisa Traiger

Arts Correspondent

The clown prince of Broadway was an angry man. Funny man Zero Mostel, it seems, had a bitter streak that adds heft and intrigue to actor, creator, writer Jim Brochu's one-man bio-drama, Zero Hour, which explores the life of the rubbery-faced actor.

Brooklyn, N.Y.-born Brochu has the oversize dimensions, literally the weight and heft, to carry off a more-than-believable Mostel impersonation. But Brochu offers more than an off-the-shelf impersonation of the character comedian with his bulgy eyes, grimaces, grins and groaners. At the end of 90 minutes, Brochu has become a reincarnation of the late, great Mostel, a one-of-a-kind stage presence -- famed for his Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof and Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

Onstage at the Washington DC Jewish Community Center's Goldman Theater through Sept. 27, Zero Hour introduces us to a man who lived life with a vengeance. In the guise of a newspaper interview with an unseen New York Times reporter, Mostel's story unfolds over two acts.

This is Mostel late in life and he terms himself a painter who only took acting and comedy gigs to pay for his paints and canvases. Throughout the evening, Brochu sketches and paints. He notes in passing that he was just back from London where he filmed an appearance with Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy for a Muppet Show episode. That places Zero Hour in 1977, the year the larger-than-life actor died.

But Zero Hour goes beyond a dry study of the rise of a successful actor, lauded from Broadway to Hollywood. Brochu captures the intense fear and uncertainty of living through McCarthyism, for Mostel was one of many performing artists -- Jewish and otherwise -- brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee between 1947 and 1956.

Mostel, like many who appeared before HUAC -- in 1955 -- was asked to "name names." He understood the repercussions of such actions and the lives and careers that could be shattered if Communist Party affiliations were publically revealed. In fact, among the most touching moments is one when Mostel describes the devastating outcome being named a communist had on his close friend, actor Phil Loeb.

Mostel also recounts the origins of his well-known animosity toward director and choreographer Jerome Robbins, one of a few who unrepentantly named names. Mostel famously refused to shake hands or speak with Robbins, who said he named names for fear of being outed as a homosexual in the repressive 1950s.

But, when Robbins was brought in to work on Forum, Mostel acquiesced -- Robbins was, he allowed, a genius as a show doctor -- and they worked together there and on Fiddler: "I don't blacklist," Mostel declared.

The kernel of Zero Hour rests in Mostel's account of the McCarthy witch hunt, which he characterizes as an inquisition against Jewish artists. He contended that it was the Jews, outsiders in the then WASP-dominated United States, whom McCarthy and his supporters were after.

For a man of Mostel's generation, son of immigrants, being questioned just a decade after the Holocaust decimated European Jewry, it becomes a believable, even incendiary proposition, especially so in Brochu's hands as a Mostel alter-ego.

The sting still resonates a half century after McCarthy. Most American Jews, indeed, as a community and individuals, feel completely at home in their multicultural 21st century country. But witch hunts of other sorts abound these days, whether from the conservative right or the liberal left -- just open up a newspaper to confront the political and cultural divisions that have bisected America just in the past few months.

Brochu has wrought, aside from an uncanny impersonation of a larger-than-life man with googley eyes, great girth, a graying beard and slicked-down comb-over, a modern-day morality play that compels viewers to re-examine our own era for 21st-century witch hunts.

After he leaves Washington, Brochu brings his play Zero Hour to New York for an off-Broadway run; so don't miss a chance to see a star performance on the rise.