♪♪ Man: Can we come a little bit stage right?

Man #2: Places, everyone.

[ Indistinct conversations ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Good evening, everyone.

My name is Lynne Marie Rosenberg.

It is my absolute honor to welcome you this evening for tonight's conversation, "Broadway Responds to Anti-Semitism."

We find ourselves in a moment of witnessing.

We are witnessing an alarming rise in anti-Semitism, both in this country and around the world, and a frightening normalization and mainstreaming of ancient anti-Jewish tropes and conspiracy theories to a degree we haven't seen in decades.

We are witnessing the consequence.

The Anti-Defamation League released a new report this year revealing anti-Semitic incidents increased 36% in 2022, the highest level recorded since 1979.

As "The New York Times" recently wrote, "it is a perilous time, and perilous times have never been great for Jews."

I would add, they are not great for any group which has been historically scapegoated.

Luckily, theater is in the business of witnessing.

And against this unsettling backdrop, it is meeting the moment.

Whether intentionally, coincidentally, or perhaps prophetically, stories about Jewish identity and anti-Semitism have taken center stage in recent and current productions that include "Parade," "Leopoldstadt," "Harmony," "Funny Girl," "Just For Us," "Prayer for the French Republic," and "Camp Siegfried," based on real-life events from the past, and these stories are disturbingly relevant and resonant today.

The panel we've gathered this evening will discuss Broadway's response to anti-Semitism from their perspective as artists broadly and also as Jewish artists specifically.

And with no further ado, it is my absolute pleasure to introduce our panel.

You might know Tovah Feldshuh... [ Applause ] ...as Rosie Brice in Broadway's current production of "Funny Girl," or my personal favorite, as Naomi Bunch on "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend," or her six Tony and Emmy nominations, four Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards.

You might know Alfred Uhry... [ Applause ] ...as the bookwriter of Broadway's "Parade," "Last Night of Ballyhoo," and "Driving Miss Daisy," and as the winner of the Pulitzer, the Oscar, and two Tonys.

And you might know Bruce Sussman... [ Applause ] ...as the book writer and lyricist of the musical "Harmony," for which he won the 2022 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical.

Friends, It is such an honor to be here with you all today.

And although we are here under the auspices of exploring hate, I would love to start our conversation off by exploring love.

And I would just love to know from each of you what you love about the theater, what you love about being theater artists and theater makers, and let that set the stage for what we continue to discuss for the rest of the evening.

So, Alfred, I'll start with you.

What do you love about the theater?

I think Laura Linney, who is a friend of mine, said it best recently.

Somebody asked her, what was her religion?

And she said, "Oh, I guess it's theater."

[ Laughter ] And I, as a child, was in Atlanta, Georgia, and I was a lousy athlete, and I didn't fit in anywhere.

And I went to college and I got in a theater group, and all of a sudden I was at home.

It just felt right.

I still -- theater people are the best.

They're the sexiest, they're the loudest, they're the funniest, and they're the dearest.

And I -- like, they're a little treacherous sometime, but [laughs] I -- theater is probably my religion, aside from being a Jew.

[ Laughter ] Thank you.

Tovah.

What I love about theater is the moment-to-moment, sometimes unpredictable connection between human beings and also between the human beings in the audience.

I did over 500 performances of "Golda's Balcony" as the Prime Minister.

How do you rebirth a performance?

Not repeat.

How do you rebirth the triggers?

I use one sentence.

"This is somebody's first Broadway show, and this is somebody's last Broadway show.

Bat it out of the park."

So I enjoy the community and the connection.

I'm not just my work.

I'm a person who reaches to be kind, to be kind, and an actor -- we become experts in empathy, experts because we become other human beings inside the tubing of our body.

We just change the tubing like it's made of soft, soft plastic or even bubbles, so that Golda has a different tubing than [New York accent] Rosie Brice, than [German accent] Ruth Westheimer, who's so optimistic that even the ends of her sentences go up.

[ Normal voice ] You know,, and the understanding that underneath what we mistake for personality, because certain things become effortless in our habits, there is a core to the human being that is luminescent.

There's a decency and a core.

I believe, like Anne Frank did, that everybody is good at heart, even people who are misguided, that you have to get to that core.

Sometimes it's very difficult.

And the rise of anti-Semitism, which we'll get to in a minute, is a psychological astonishment to me in that sense, 'cause people, when you finally excavate them, they usually can be pretty decent unless they're very, very ill. Yeah.

Thank you.

Bruce.

What I love is that it's live, that it's immediate, that you don't wait very long to find out how you're doing.

[ Laughter ] And as far as community is concerned, I agree with both of my colleagues.

I've met the most wonderful people, including my husband.

I met him in Edinburgh, Scotland.

He was selling ice creams to a show of mine that was in rehearsal on that stage.

-Oh, man.

-That's so cool.

He's here tonight, selling ice creams.

[ Laughter ] Bruce, I wonder if you could tell us a bit about the show?

Yeah, "Harmony" tells the true story of the most extraordinary and uniquely talented group of singers that you probably have never heard of.

And the reason why you've never heard of them is the story of "Harmony."

And they were the Comedian Harmonists.

There were six of them from very diverse backgrounds -- rich, poor, Jewish, not, a doctor, a Bulgarian singing waiter, a rabbi, a whorehouse pianist -- as diverse as can be, harmony in the purest sense of the word.

And they combined the physical humor of the Marx Brothers with sophisticated harmonies, like a contemporary group like Manhattan Transfer or Take 6.

And they performed in abandoned subways 'cause the acoustics were good.

They rehearsed there, rather.

Rose from the street.

They were discovered and became international sensations, sold millions of records at a time the record industry was in its infancy, made 13 movies, performed with the greats of their day -- Marlene Dietrich, Josephine Baker.

And 1933, Hitler comes to power.

Some of them are Jews.

Some of them are not.

What I just described to you is our first act.

How they maneuver through their collision course with history is our second act.

For anyone who doesn't know, musical theater takes a long time to happen... Oh, yeah.

...from the point of beginning to write, and, of course, with "Parade," as well, you had your first major productions of "Parade" in -- what did we say?

-- it was 1998?

Yeah, this has been 25 years in the making.

Right?

It's a long time.

There's a very long window of time that passes to get something to the Broadway stage.

And yet here we are with all of these shows at the same time in this moment where anti-Semitism is taking this very frightening rise.

And there was something you said, that there's audible responses being elicited in the audiences in "Harmony," which was just here at the -- with Folksbiene, and that people think you're writing to the headlines.

It was my fear.

I don't know if anybody thought that, but I was afraid they would think that.

And so I wonder if you all could talk a bit about just what that long path is to get somewhere and then what it means for these shows to be happening now, that they started in the '90s or they started in the 2000s, and that now we find ourselves in this moment that they are having their real large production history on Broadway.

It's been exhausting.

I bet.

It's -- and it's entirely cathartic and wonderful that it's happening now.

As far as the point that you raise, it's bittersweet.

You know, this is the very stage we were on, right after "Ruth," right, "Dr.

Ruth."

Right.

And I would -- I used to sit in the aisle in the back, and I could feel the audience respond to the show.

It was a writer's dream.

It was wonderful they were responding that way, but they were responding in part because it was resonating so much.

And that's terrible.

It was resonating because something awful was happening outside the walls of this theater.

So on one hand, it was a joy for me as a writer to experience that.

And then I had to kind of pull back and say, "Whoa.

This is awful that it -- that it's doing this to them at this time," which I guess is what the theater is about.

But it's a complicated and wonderful, a troubling and wonderful thing.

Mm.

That's well put.

Alfred, how have you found this sort of experience of doing the show in the '90s and then doing it now?

Well, I want to tell you about the first preview of "Parade" in February.

We were picketed, and there were these six neo-Nazis with sheets waving, and "Don't go into this theater."

And in our show, we have props of people holding up sheets with signs on them and... it was remarkable.

I mean, I grew up in Atlanta, and I had lived near where the Klan offices were, and things like that happened and I had it happen to me.

But seeing this happen both on stage and off stage, and in my heart, I thought of my dear friend Harold Prince, who really had the idea -- I had the idea of "Parade," but he made it a musical -- and how he would have loved being there that night... Mm.

...with all that going on.

I -- We were prepared for them.

They didn't ever come back.

Yeah.

But we got so much press because they were there.

So it was all just very ironic.

Should I be glad that this is going on?

I'm horrified that this is going on, and I'm glad this is going on.

And -- But 25 years ago, when "Parade" was first done at Lincoln Center, was the middle of the Clinton years.

And, of course, there was anti-Semitism.

There's always anti-Semitism in the world.

But it was relatively quiet then, and it was a rather dark production, and people felt like they were being lectured at.

And the producers disappeared the first week of the run.

So it didn't run very long.

And then 10 years later, it was done in London, of all places.

And I thought, "Boy, they're gonna not like this."

But they loved it.

And another 15 years went by, and here we are.

So, I don't know.

The theater gods are very fickle, and they're smiling on "Parade" right now.

One of the reasons that anti-Semitism was not under the rise -- on the rise was because Clinton as a president was affiliated from his guts with people of color.

-Mm.

-Yeah.

He moved his office to Harlem after he was president.

He was -- I remember they said it's like it's -- he was Black in his affiliation from his -- from below language and a very inclusive man, perhaps too inclusive for his own good, but very inclusive, very inclusive.

And then if the fish smells from the head, we had this other president who -- Trump, who is -- who sanctioned...

It's very simple.

He sanctioned Charlottesville, Virginia.

And the stuff that came up from that, the permission it gave this country, was terrible.

I was at an opening night for "Golda" when I played London, and we were at the Hambros Bank.

And I remember some anti-Semitic remarks at that party.

And an American said something, and I cornered that woman.

I said, "That you should shame me from our country, that you should dare air these views in our country, people probably feel it, but it is not sanctioned by law.

It is not sanctioned by the amendments of this constitution, our constitution."

And that's what used to distinguish America.

So, Alfred, when this revival of "Parade" was bubbling up, did anyone reference the times, anyone say, "Now's the time to do this show?"

Friends of mine, when they heard about it, said, "Boy, this is a really good time for the show."

Which, again, is saying something terrible, you know?

Rosenberg: Right, right.

We were all always aware of the dichotomy that was going on, like...

It's virtually the show that it always was with some -- we've had years to fix this and fix that and potchky like you do.

Oh, but Alfred, the production now is epic.

Oh.

You're crazy if you miss this thing.

It's absolutely epic and shattering.

And what it did for me, it got me in touch with -- forget the Jewish experience, it got me in touch with the Black experience.

I said, "My God, if this happened to the Franks, what did the Blacks of the South go through year after year, decade after decade?"

You know, and it was -- it was very -- We talked about that There's five members of -- five Black people in the cast.

And we talked about the fact that if you were Black in Georgia in 1913, and you were walking down the street, and white people were walking down the other way, you were expected to get off of the sidewalk and say, "Yas'm," and, "Mornin', sir."

And if you were at all a sensitive person, which I assume most people are, you had to swallow that.

Plus, the white people in Georgia had believed in a cause that was -- they were defeated, and Georgia was occupied territory.

The Yankees came down there and ran everything.

Well, your second act opens with a number that is, for anyone who has not seen the show, it is about if this were a young Black girl killed, there would have been a very different outcome.

There's a line that Jason Robert Brown wrote -- "There's a Black man swinging in every tree," which there was.

Leo Frank was the only white person, therefore, and the only Jew ever to have been lynched in the South.

But nobody knows how many Black people were lynched in the South.

I thought that number really resonated in this moment, especially where we have so many Black and brown young children who have been shot or killed.

And that number hits so hard right now in a very particularly 2023 sort of way.

Tovah, you play Rosie Brice.

And I believe you said that you wanted to show her in her many colors, or that you are always looking to show a character in their many beautiful colors.

And I wonder not only what are those colors for you, but then also just what carving you did of that role, sort of what you brought out in that role that, frankly, in other hands, I would worry about being a joke or being a stereotype.

You really found a human in that piece in such a remarkable way.

Well, I was lucky.

I lived around humans that were not fully dissimilar from that.

Yeah.

And though my grandmother was British, she came to this country in 1902.

It said "Ada Kaplan, Hebrew taylorist, London, England," on her Ellis Island.

And my Aunt Rose got pneumonia.

They lived at 17th and Second, never, never on the Lower East Side.

That's a big thing for the Kaplan clan.

They never lived below 14th Street.

Anyway, back to this.

The horse started to gallop in the direction of Jewish heroines early in my career.

Yeah.

They figured a Tovah Feldshuh could play a Yentl.

So when that was given to me, I -- believe me, I am from the conservative movement, but I was an assimilated American Jew who grew up on the east side of Manhattan and in Scarsdale, New York, and owned a horse.

I had a horse.

As my father would say, "How often can a little girl tell a big animal what to do?"

Anyway, I always put the picture of my grandparents' engagement picture from London with me.

I hold it in my iPhone, which is of course on silent, or they will take that iPhone away from you.

They're strict back there.

They are stri-i-i-ict back there at "Funny Girl."

And I would look at this and I say, "I dedicate this to the people who came across the waters to give us a better life."

And in terms of being a Jewish mother, my job is to distinguish a Jewish mother from an Italian mother, which I've also played, a Greek, a Serbian, whatever.

If I had to play a Swedish mother, guess what I'd do?

Go to Sweden.

So what makes Rosie Brice distinguished?

She is tethered to her daughter, who's considered a meiskeit, meaning not a pretty girl, in a time when to be a Ziegfeld girl like Alexis Smith -- whom, if you were born when we were born, I knew Alexis then -- you were a gorgeous, a gorgeous, statuesque person.

In all events, what makes Rosie Brice both the universal mother -- 'cause you want everybody from every ethnic group to relate to this mother -- and the Jewish mother?

And I decided to ferret out that stuff, to root for my child no matter what.

And you shall teach them l'dor v'dor.

And you shall teach them from generation to generation.

♪ Who taught her everything she knows?

♪ It's not just a little, you know, verbiage that's literal.

If an actor's any good, they're gonna get to the metaphor and they're gonna excavate till they get to that universal truth, that common river of human experience.

So I love that girl.

Yeah.

I love Lea Michele, and I love Julie Benko unconditionally.

It is the core of my job.

And what does that mean?

How am I tethered?

How is there tough love?

I have a mother, Lily, may she rest in peace.

She lived to over 103.

She used to pound me on my chest.

Be careful of my mic.

She used to pound me on my chest.

And she would go, "Remember who you are.

Remember who you are."

And I didn't fully understand it as a child, but she meant, stand up straight and be proud of who you are because you're gonna be accused of it anyway.

You might as well enjoy it.

And in terms of being religious, I worship my father, and my father loved who he was, and part of who he was was a Jew.

So why would I not love being a Jew?

who doesn't want to be part of a club that's 5,000 years old?

Are you kidding me?

With a common language, where you can go anywhere in the world, if you know tefillah, if you know Prayerbook Hebrew, with the conservative movement, it's like the Suzuki approach to Judaism.

So if you're in Denmark, you can't David in Danish.

But I could read the Hebrew Prayerbook.

All this was part of Rosie.

She probably didn't know Hebrew worth a darn.

Right.

But she did know Yiddish.

Yep.

And I love doing that show.

We haven't had any anti-Semitic pushback, because I think somehow of the legacy of just the -- of one of the great American musicals.

Sussman: So let's talk about the thing we disagreed about backstage.

-Yeah.

-Go.

Casting Jewish actors in Jewish roles.

Where we are with it now, this is a dialog that's happening in our community.

I don't think there's any consensus.

I don't even think we can agree on some of the terms -- you know, who is a Jew, all of that stuff.

But I'm just taken with what you were talking about, your family and how that -- how that shaped who Rose Brice is.

You know, I just reread Michael David Baddiel's fabulous book, "Jews Don't Count."

And he says something in there that, you know -- and again, my thinking about this has evolved, too, because five years ago I had an Irishman playing, believe it or not, a character nicknamed "Rabbi."

One of -- our vocal arranger at the time called him "McRabbi."

I mean, it was just -- it was not the real deal.

And my own thinking about it has really evolved on the issue.

But what Baddiel says is it comes down to respect, that... the only -- the deepest truth of an identity can only be portrayed by someone who lives that identity.

I don't believe that on the stage.

See, I -- Well, I know we disagree.

I think, though, that it's a case-by-case affair, that if the piece is about identity, if it's about Jewishness, if it's about your Jewishness resulting in something like the Holocaust, I feel that the most authentic experience happens when a Jewish actor plays a Jewish character, for me.

[ Applause ] I know we don't agree.

I would agree with you.

It depends -- A lot of it depends on the piece.

But for the most part, in my experience, a really good actor can be good.

Nobody has ever been better than Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond in playing "Parade."

And I've had some good people, and... You've had great people, but in that case, and in the case of Rosie Brice, there are certain things, as a good quarterback would say, that's in the pocket.

Rosie Brice for me is in the pocket.

What, are you kidding me?

My parents were Jews.

My grandparents were Jews.

I'm a Jew.

That's an effortless... Mm-hmm.

That's effortless.

When I had to do Irena Gut and be a fervent Catholic, I went to the country and also tried to find coincidence.

Well, I'm a fervent Jew.

I'm not observant, but I'm -- I have fervor about certain things.

So where can I have a traffic jam of coincidence, a seamless marriage between the actor and the part they're gonna play?

But for Jews only to play Jewish parts is -- Oh, no.

-Yes?

-No, I'm not saying that.

Well, there was an unfortunate production of "Fiddler on the Roof" a few years ago with no Jews in it.

Yeah, yeah.

And it was crazy.

It was crazy.

It was the white version of "Fiddler on the Roof."

It was crazy.

It was no Jews allowed.

Was that with Alfred?

Yeah.

I said to Alfred Molina, whom I love -- he was across the street, and I'm at the Helen Hayes with 685 seats, so I said, ♪ If they come to get us ♪ They're coming to get you first ♪ You're the big show.

I'm the little show.

So I agree.

You got to be great.

They figure Helen Mirren is gonna be great as Golda Meir.

Maureen Lipman disagrees with that.

She wanted to play the Prime Minister.

So would I, but it's not the way the ball is going.

Helen Mirren probably has the capacity to do a genius job.

Ryan Gosling played a Jew, a Jewish Nazi.

He was brilliant.

But this goes beyond technique.

This goes on -- This speaks to the world we're living in now... Yeah.

...and responding to what is going on out there.

That's exactly right.

Now.

This is happening now.

Completely agree with you.

25 years from now, it's probably not gonna happen.

I don't know.

Because, I mean, it was -- I look back, and it's unthinkable to me that I cast someone of Irish descent in that role as recently as 2015.

But then in 2017, it's "Jews will not replace us" in Charlottesville.

And in 2018, there's a massacre -- massacre at Tree of Life synagogue -- massacre at Tree of Life -- synagogue.

And, you know, I'm -- my thinking has evolved.

You know, it becomes -- I'm a child of the 60s.

This is political now.

It goes beyond who is, you know -- I wager five years from now, Helen Mirren is going to say it wasn't right for her to play that role.

[ Applause ] I wager she's gonna do that the same way that Tom Hanks says it was -- he would not accept "Philadelphia" today if it happened.

And I think Andrew Lloyd Webber recently said he would not write "Evita" today.

It's changing.

It is.

It is.

And then on the other hand, those of us who survive, whose bodies can still do eight a week, it's like a train coming toward you, the offers that come to me, one Jewish mother after another.

And as opposed to when I'm 30 saying, "I'm not going to be typecast and not another Jewish mother," you just have to differentiate the way -- the way these two men are different and you and I are different.

Just because somebody has a Jewish tradition or heritage, they're different people.

And if you can excavate it and it's a worthy part, whether it's Ruth Westheimer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- which is my latest obsession.

I played her in a two-hander and I would like to do a one-person piece on her -- or Golda Meir or Naomi Bunch, these are very different people.

But I have found that in the casting, the traffic is coming... toward your ethnic affiliation.

The bottom line is Ben and Micaela and you and the three Jewish leads of my show are all being played -- these are all Jewish actors.

Yes.

So, I mean, I don't think this was an accident.

Well, good, 'cause it's better than unemployment, I guess.

I know that there couldn't be better people playing the parts.

-Couldn't be.

-Yes, agree.

If the actor doesn't have you here, the audience -- It's Neiman Marcus, man.

The audience is always right.

If they're rustling their programs, something's not happening here.

Right.

Well, Bruce, I want to thank you so much for bringing us to real discussion, because, of course, as our Jewish history shows, that is what we are to do -- yeah, that we are to discuss ideas.

Now, Bruce, had you seen any backlash when you did the production here?

Not here.

Did we have any events out front?

Were there any...?

I don't think so.

Man: No.

No.

No, we didn't.

Rosenberg: You're the lucky one, Alfred.

Yeah.

[ Laughter ] Yeah, we did -- we did elsewhere, but not here.

Yeah, what happened elsewhere?

Just comments from people, you know.

The show played very well in Atlanta -- we were at the Alliance Theatre -- not as well in Los Angeles, and I think in part because the Ahmanson is 1,600 seats and is the size of a football field on the inside.

And it's very hard to get close to the piece.

And the Alliance is very intimate.

And, of course, this place, you're, like, performing in somebody's living room.

It was great.

You were in my lap.

I loved every minute of it.

So I think it suffered there.

But I remember people in the lobby, not knowing me, not knowing that I was the author, would say things like, "Well, maybe if you're Jewish, you would have a better time," something like that, and... Now, Alfred, you've said that the Leo Frank story was something that was sort of in the zeitgeist when you were growing up amongst Jews in Atlanta.

My mother's Uncle Sig owned the pencil factory where the murder took place.

My grandmother always said that Lucille always signed her name, "Mrs. Leo M.

Frank."

She never denied it.

She -- He's buried here in New York because when he died, they wanted to get his body out of the South as quick as they could.

He's buried in Queens.

She is buried in Atlanta between her parents.

It was an old German Jewish family.

We were -- My family was an old German Jewish family.

And they were only about 10 of those families that came to Georgia before the Civil War.

Why in the name of God they went there, I don't know, but they did.

And my grandmother always said that her Aunt Somebody, some name, was the first white child born in Atlanta after Atlanta was named Atlanta.

And I put that in my play "The Last Night of Ballyhoo" [laughs] 'cause it means absolutely nothing.

Who cares?

[ Laughter ] And my -- unlike Tovah and probably unlike Bruce, I was brought up with Christmas trees and Easter egg hunts.

Oh, no, I had them, too.

And I never went to a bar mitzvah.

Wow!

Poor kid.

I didn't know what the Shema was.

Poor kid.

And yet my family was involved in this horrific murder.

And I knew that Leo Frank was from New York.

That was another problem.

He was a Yankee.

He was born in Brooklyn, and he married into this Southern Jewish family.

And, fortunately for me, originally "Parade" -- the score was supposed to be written by Steve Sondheim, and he was involved for about two weeks.

And he just had this show called "Passion," And he said, "I can't do another one.

I just can't do that again."

So Hal said, "It's gonna be all right because my daughter, Daisy, is working with a young composer and he can do it."

And I thought, "Oh, yeah, that's great.

I'm gonna go from Steve Sondheim to Daisy's friend"... [ Laughter ] ...who was younger than my own children.

And, but so for six months, Jason was sort of on spec, and we would talk -- I would talk and he would listen and I would talk and he would listen.

And time went by, and I would talk about Georgia and what it meant and how every time I went home to Atlanta, I loved it when I landed at the airport because you see all that red clay all of a sudden.

And he listened.

And about six months later, he called me.

I remember it was snowing.

I went to his apartment.

He played me the first two songs of the show, "The Old Red Hills of Home" and the trolley song.

And I'm not a -- I'm not a person who cries.

I cried, and I called up Hal and I said this -- I cry now.

It was unbelievable, because he not only listened and got it, and I don't think Jason had ever been anywhere south -- like, he flew over the South going to Miami all the time.

But he -- But he brought to it this wonderful history of having a grandfather that was a rabbi and being well versed in Judaism and proud of Judaism.

And the combo was just magic, and...

I bless Steve Sondheim for bowing out.

It was the best collaboration I ever had.

Jason's an excavator.

So I'd like to shift us a little bit towards anti-Semitism.

And I do wonder -- so the majority of anti-Semitism, I have found, is being told my name has to change if I ever want to work in the industry.

-What?

-And a lot -- Oh, yeah.

Well, and I want to talk about your name situation as well... Sure.

...because it's sort of the opposite of what I experienced.

Yeah, you went the other way.

I was told, "You'll never work as a Rosenberg.

You've got to change it."

And I sort of doubled down and said, you know, "Nope, this is -- I'm sticking with this."

But you, of course, went the other direction.

I was so innocent.

I fell in love with Michael Fairchild, who is still alive -- Michael, hi, sweetheart.

And he was -- his family came in the 1600s from England, et cetera.

To make a long story short, I fell in love.

He said, "What kind of a name is Terri Sue for a girl like you?"

And he said, "What else were you called?"

And I said, "I was called Tovah in Sunday School," 'cause I was embarrassed to say Hebrew school.

But I had gone to Hebrew school eight hours a week, 4:00 to 6:00, 4:00 to 6:00 on Tuesdays and Thursdays and 9:00 to 1:00 to prepare for bat mitzvah.

And I was the only bat mitzvah from Quaker Ridge School in Scarsdale, the only one in my whole grade.

Wow.

And I was a pianist at the time.

So I learned to stand alone very early in my life.

And this boy that I loved said, "Tovah -- now, that's a name."

And as he chewed the vowels and consonants of that Hebrew, which was my Hebrew name, and I had been called that, you know, in Hebrew school since I was a kid.

I took on the name Tovah Feldshuh.

My last -- My last certificate as Terri Sue Feldshuh, or Terri Feldshuh, was my graduation from Sarah Lawrence.

And then, of course, my perceived value was changed 'cause I joined a huge and powerful Jewish community.

Did you ever experience any backlash?

It was considered such a badge of courage.

I was given medals.

The only anti-Semitism I got were from Jews who were afraid of being too Semitic.

Mm.

Oh, that's fascinating.

And there's a very famous playwright who is known for that, and I never was cast by him and should have been.

And the other place where I was given the bum's rush was -- I can say it now -- it was "Love Letters," which was these beautiful letters between two white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, which I could have done beautifully because I spoke mid-Atlantic speech.

Edith Warman Skinner was my tutor.

I knew what I was doing on the classical stage from Michael Langham.

But I was never cast as that.

There was a J.W.P., a Jew who passed, who was a British Jewish director, and he would not cast me.

And this happened also with this other playwright.

And then the playwright made movies that flopped when he miscast them as well with wonderful actors who could not -- you have to be credible.

So that playwright came to me eventually -- you ready for this one?

-- and asked me to play his mother.

I'm everybody's mother.

I've been Anne Hathaway, Oscar Isaac's, Rachel Bloom's, and Lea Michele's mother in the last 24 months.

They never call, they never write.

That's right!

[ Laughter ] But he did ask me to play his mother in a final play that unfortunately never saw the light of day.

I did it with Matthew Broderick and we just did readings of it.

Bruce, did you face much anti-Semitism growing up in your life?

Well, I was fortunate to -- except for East Rockaway, which was a Jewish minority town on Long Island -- everywhere we lived, I was in a Jewish majority.

Ironically, Jackson Heights, where I was born, was a restricted community.

A few years before I was born, there were no Jews or Blacks allowed in Jackson Heights until, I think, the Second World War.

And, but by the time I was born and by the time certainly I grew up and had friends, most of them were Jewish.

And all the towns -- my mother moved a lot.

I'm fond of saying instead of repainting, she moved.

And so we lived in several towns on Long Island.

When we got to East Rockaway, I faced anti-Semitism up, down, and sideways.

Really?

In what ways?

Yeah.

Kids just picked on me, had epithets for me that were -- had the word "bagel" in them.

And I was the odd man out.

I was the one who took off holidays when no one else did.

Right.

So it put a target on my back, you know, the high holidays in the autumn and all that and Passover.

So, but that was the only time.

Actually, the fear of death, the fear of being eliminated produces a lot of Nobels.

The hunger to live and the hunger to do your best and the hunger to leave a footprint that benefits mankind.

There's a line in "Leopoldstadt," which I just saw yesterday, where the matriarch of the family is teaching the non-Jewish members of the family about Passover, what Passover is.

And she talks about how important it is to tell and retell our stories.

And I feel like that's what sort of we keep coming back to, right, is the importance of telling stories.

The Seder was the first dinner theater.

That's right.

I mean, it's dinner theater, is what it is.

-That's a riot.

-Yeah.

I don't fully understand in my heart of hearts why it's on such a rise now, and what happened in 1979 that there were more incidents in 1979?

Forgive my ignorance.

I'm embarrassed.

No, forgive mine as well.

I don't have the historical context.

-I don't either.

-Yeah.

Well, '78 was the "Holocaust" miniseries on TV.

Yes, indeed.

Yes, indeed.

And that -- whatever people say about that series, it brought the word "Holocaust" into common usage.

Right.

I think maybe that -- because Holocaust became mainstream, there was a rise in anti-Semitism as a result, I would think.

And the German textbooks changed, and they taught Holocaust studies in Germany.

And the greatest news is they are teaching Holocaust studies in Saudi Arabia.

How about them apples?

Oh, really?

Yes.

Alfred, did you face anti-Semitism growing up?

You were in a rich Jewish community.

Yes, all the time.

-Yeah.

-Really?

-Oh, yeah.

-How so?

"Dirty Jew."

A lot.

I shuddered when you said you lived near the KKK headquarters.

Yeah.

It's unimaginable to me.

We were -- I would not say rich, but we were middle class, comfortable, and... Southern Baptists thought of Jews as people with horns.

I would no sooner have stayed home on the Jewish holidays than I would have angels fly out of my ears... Yeah.

...because, first of all, I didn't know what they were.

And second of all, I wanted to be a good Southern boy.

Right.

And look at me.

I don't look like a -- And, also, I was a crazy movie kid.

I loved movies, and all the Jews in the movies were the little schmucks with the glasses and carrying the books that never got the girl.

Or they were mama and papa in the city.

And there was nothing that could relate to me about being Jewish.

I didn't want to be Jewish.

I wanted to be Peter Lawford.

I wanted to be something that I never would and never would be, and... my whole career has been writing about Jews in the South that -- I mean, I think I was pretty much screwed.

I had none of the pride, none of it.

And I wanted it, and I couldn't give it to my own children 'cause I didn't have it.

And I'm just sitting here listening to you and just salivating because I am what I am.

And here I've got a show -- now that is really ironic, that I wrote a show that is now become the embodiment of waving the flag against anti-Semitism.

When I called my mother, when I was -- well, after Hal decided to make a musical of the Leo Frank story, I said, "Mother, you won't believe this.

I'm writing a musical with Hal Prince."

She said, "Oh, my God.

It's Leo Frank."

-Ah.

Wow, -Wow.

Wow.

'Cause she -- And but, luckily, she lived long enough to -- not this time, but see "Parade" become what it was, see me win a Tony for it, and... What was her reaction to it?

She said, "I think you did the right thing."

Mm.

-You did.

-You sure did, Alfred.

You sure did, Alfred.

When I lost the Tony for Golda, I was sitting with Mommy and my husband, and she said -- I'll never forget it -- "You lost that Tony because you're a Jew in a Jewish play."

I said, "Mom, 'Fiddler on the Roof' won a lot of Tonys."

[ Laughter ] So she tapped, I think it was, Kevin on the -- he was sitting in front of us.

He lost for "Falstaff."

He was, as always, brilliant.

And she said, "Where can I get a Tony?

I want to buy one for my baby."

[ Audience exclaims ] That was wild.

Come on.

The only anti-Semitic stuff I got was from Semites.

It's weird.

I got a lot of breaks from people not from the tribe.

Katharine Hepburn, you know... That you know about.

-Well, sure.

-That's right.

You're absolutely right.

No, you're right.

You know, the other thing is, with a name like Tovah Feldshuh, they see me coming.

You know, I don't get -- Katharine Hepburn said something anti-Semitic to you?

[ As Katharine Hepburn] No.

I played Katharine Hepburn and I was cast as Katharine Hepburn opposite Tommy Lee Jones in the great -- [normal voice] in the Howard Hughes story, a three-hour movie of the week.

And I remember Roger Gimbel cast me, and he didn't cast his wife 'cause I was the best one for the part.

And my parents taught me that that's what would work.

They didn't mention stuff about relationships, connection.

So my -- like, you write the play that's epic.

My whole life has been devoted to connecting and community.

It's one of the reasons I'm here tonight on my one night off.

[ Laughter and applause ] There's a -- There's a show that is coming to Broadway, Alex Edelman's "Just for Us.

And "Exploring Hate," who is one of our co-producers this evening, did a wonderful feature on it.

And Alex talks about -- which I was really struck by -- how bad he feels for anti-Semites, because it has to be so painful to live in that space.

Or any sort of bigot, I think -- you know, how excruciating that is.

And I wonder if that's something any of you think about, of, you know...

It's an incredibly high-minded approach to thinking about people hating you.

But I wonder if -- you know, and actually, Alfred, in "Parade," you know, the Confederate flag is waving and you see these people very passionately feeling something that is.

I used to cry over the Confederate flag when I was a little boy.

Yeah.

How complex that is.

As far as...

I think that the most of the white South, at least in the Leo Frank days, was manipulated.

They were poor people.

They had lost what they believe in.

It's easy to stir up things against somebody who they think killed Jesus, and maybe did.

And since I -- when I became an adult, I felt such horror and such guilt at what I -- as what I felt as a child.

And I really think, even in my naive stupidity of being fascinated by the Leo Frank story, I wanted to sort of expiate myself and do something for that poor guy.

The other night, just last -- on Tuesday, Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond performed two numbers from "Parade" at the White House, and all I could think was, "My God, what would the real Leo Frank and Lucille have thought of that?"

And my daughter said, "They would have been so embarrassed."

Well, no.

I mean, Golda Meir's children came up to me and they said, [Israeli accent] "You're doing a one-woman show about my mother?

It's ridiculous because my mother would never speak so much."

[ Laughter ] Well, so, Tovah, you are hilarious.

And I did want to talk a bit tonight about humor, because I think there's a great history for all of us.

I come from both an Irish and a Jewish diaspora, and both -- humor is very important to both.

And even "Parade," you know, which is a very heavy show, has some real lovely moments of levity.

And I wonder, also with "Harmony," you know, how is humor used?

I have a meditation teacher who once said, "Laughter is the quivering of the body to receive new information."

-[ Normal voice ] Wow.

-Isn't that beautiful?

So, you know, how does -- does laughter function in all of your artistic practices to receive new information, to take new information?

-It's vital in "Harmony."

-Yeah.

They were the Comedian Harmonists.

Right.

And I think one of the reasons why I was attracted to the story, one of many reasons, was there was humor.

And the more -- our conceit of the show has always been the first act is the Golden Age musical that would have been written about them had the events of the second act not occurred.

Yeah.

And it was a wonderful device that kept us focused on what we were doing.

So the funnier and the more witty and the more elegant the first act could be, the more heartbreaking and tragic the second act becomes.

You know, when you construct a nightclub act, you usually put your comedy very close to the front, 'cause you want to get the solar plexus of the audience moving in your own.

That's right.

And if you can land this movement, this movement, which they also teach you in yoga with the breathing, you know, [huffing] all that stuff, which I love, I love -- if you can land that movement, if you can loosen up their solar plexus, they'll come with you for the 11:00 number when you tear their heart out.

We have to wrap up this evening, but I -- Tovah, something you said, "We are following kindness."

And I just want to thank you all for such love and kindness and discussion this evening.

And thank you all so much for joining us.

Let's hear it for our amazing panel tonight.

[ Cheers and applause ] And you at home, thank you so much for joining us.

It's been an absolute pleasure.

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