Martin Sherman on "Rose"

Playwright Martin Sherman

Writer Don Shewey has an immense and wonderful library of his articles on his web site, including an interview from The New York Times with playwright Martin Sherman. Sherman is perhaps best known as the author of the play Bent, which portrays the persecution of homosexuals in Hitler's Germany. But he is also the author of Rose, which portrays "the restless journey of a 20th century Jewish life." That life is Rose's, the only character in the play, an 80 year-old woman who never rises from her park bench throughout, but rivets as she recounts her remarkable life (Olympia Dukakis is performing Rose for the Celebrity Series January 16-21). Here is an excerpt of Martin Sherman: Dramatizing a Century of Jewish Memories:

"'Rose' arose from a burst of millennial fever on the playwright’s part. 'I wanted to tell the full story of this woman’s life,' said Mr. Sherman over Portobello mushrooms at a kosher French bistro in Times Square. 'I wanted to present the experience of what it was like being a European Jew in this century. How else are you going to do it? Write a play that begins when she’s 20 and ends when she’s 80? You’d need three different actresses, and a cast of 400, and some kind of spectacle. It would be too overwhelming."


Olympia Dukakis as Rose

The selection of Olympia Dukakis to play Rose was based on a longstanding familiarity with her work:

"'I had seen her onstage a great deal because when I was a freshman at Boston University, she was a graduate student,' said Sherman. 'I was the chorus to her Clytemnestra in ‘Agamemnon.’ So I’ve been seeing her since I was 17.' The performance that stands out most for him, though, is Ms. Dukakis’ turn as Mrs. Madrigal in the PBS series based on Armistead Maupin’s 'Tales of the City,' which he calls 'one of the most beautiful and nuanced I’ve ever seen anywhere.'"

Read all of Martin Sherman: Dramatizing a Century of Jewish Memories