Anna Ziegler
Dov and Ali
A nytheatre voices cyber-interview
Anna Ziegler is a playwright and has also written prose and poetry. She has been a Dramatist's Guild Fellow. Her plays have been produced abroad, regionally, and in New York. Anna is a graduate of Yale and NYU's Tisch School.
Pictured: Anna Ziegler
Dov and Ali will be having its US premiere. Can you give us a quick synopsis and what you hope audiences will take with them when they leave the theatre?
Without giving too much away, I'd say the play follows the changing relationship between a Jewish high school teacher (Dov) and his Muslim student (Ali). And no—it's not what you think; this isn't a teacher-student romance. (Sorry, lovers of Notes on a Scandal'—and I am in your ranks, I assure you.) In this play, the two men help each other come to some important decisions regarding faith and love. The catalysts for these decisions are Dov's non-Jewish girlfriend, Sonya, whom he’s been hiding from his parents, and who all of a sudden wants to make their relationship more serious, and Ali's sister, Sameh, to whom something has happened that Ali can't discuss. Over the course of the play, these situations are blown wide open, forcing the men to reconsider everything they held dear.
I think my hope is that audiences will come away wanting to talk about religion's role in contemporary society, but also about what religion means to them, and whether they feel the characters made the right choices, or if "right choices" even exist.
This play premiered in Great Britain and now is having its US production. How did these events come about and who helped make them happen?
Both productions came about in somewhat roundabout ways. Last year, a woman named Rachael Stevens, whom I met at the Old Vic where I took part for a week in its New Voices program the year before, read Dov and Ali and thought it would be a good fit for a few London theaters. So she sent it out to friends she knew who worked at those places, and lo and behold, one of the theaters, Theatre503, decided to put it on. Performances began less than six months after Rachael sent the play out, which so rarely happens—at least in America. It was a fun whirlwind for me—I got to spend a month in London and to work with a British director and British actors on a play about a Jewish schoolteacher from Detroit. It was as fascinating and strange an experience as you would imagine it was.
As for the New York production…The play did well in London, but, funnily enough, that's not how Playwrights Realm came to know of it. If I remember right, Katherine Kovner, the director, knew a woman who worked at Primary Stages and that woman recommended that Katherine read some of my work. So Katherine emailed me and I sent her a play. It wasn't actually Dov and Ali; in fact, in a very short period of time Katherine read a ton of my work—I don't think my mother has read as many plays of mine as Katherine now has. In the end, John Dias (the other artistic director of The Realm) and Katherine decided Dov and Ali was a good fit for them.
So, it's funny—you never know how a production will come about.
You are a playwright, novelist, and poet. What makes you undertake a project in a specific form and what do you enjoy most about each?
To be honest, I haven't written prose or poetry in a while now—maybe in over a year. It used to be that I would get ideas for each form, but now I find that each idea I get wants to be a play.
Dov and Ali seems to be about two religious viewpoints, Jewish orthodoxy and strict Muslim teachings. What inspired you to write about this topic and how much firsthand knowledge went into creating these two people?
The play is about two religious viewpoints, but part of the idea behind the play is that these viewpoints are somewhat similar. I'm not equating Islam and Judaism, simply suggesting that any religion, if followed strictly, would limit one's choices in life. It's certainly not a radical idea, and I don't mean to criticize those who adhere closely to religion. I deeply respect those people I know who live their lives confident that there's a God and a hereafter and that what we're doing here really matters in some profound way. Part of me wishes I could live that way too. After all, there's always guilt associated with not sticking to tradition—for instance, why is it that I feel like I should fast on Yom Kippur even though I'm not even sure I believe in God? Why do I feel awful, despite myself, if I "cheat" and drink water, or break the fast a little early? There's something programmed into us—at least into me—to wonder if there might be something to religion, to God, to century upon century of belief and faith. So, maybe I was inspired to write about this topic as a way to justify my own choice not to be particularly religious. (If you see the play, you'll understand what I mean.)
As far as firsthand knowledge goes, some of my inspiration (and research) came from the two years when I worked at a Jewish day school outside of Washington DC. Many of the teachers and students there were Modern Orthodox (and many were of other Jewish persuasions) and my closest friend in the English department, my colleague, Sahar, was Muslim, and of Pakistani descent. I was fascinated to hear about her life, about the traditions her family upheld, and about where she agreed with them and where she differed. I was struck by the deep respect she had for her parents, and for Islam. In addition to reading a number of books (the Muslim experience being further from my own than the Jewish one), I was lucky to have Sahar as a flesh-and-blood source of what it was to be Muslim in America, or at least in Rockville, Maryland.
The young people, adolescent onto early adulthood, always seem so vivid and real in your plays. What is it about this age group that seems to fascinate you and how do you manage to relate so well to them?
Wow, thanks. The truest answer is that I probably relate well to teenagers because I'm still a bit of an adolescent myself, but let's not say that out loud. Let's go with this: every year for the past five years I've worked at a college or high school, so I've been surrounded by these amazing voices, these voices of people on the cusp of something, teetering between the past and the future. Just today, I was talking with a senior at St. Ann's, where I teach, and she was telling me how depressed she is that she's about graduate and leave the school after being there for so many years. "But I thought you'd been depressed all year that you were still in high school?" I said. "Yeah," she muttered, "but now I'm depressed that I spent all year being depressed." To me, it doesn't get better than that—the forthrightness, the conflicting truths that can exist at the same time and be equally valid.
What are you particularly excited about in the near future?
I'm excited about a number of things! Mostly about getting to sleep late once the school year is over, but I also have a busy summer ahead of me, filled with good stuff. A production of Dov and Ali is going up in the Berkshires in early July at the Chester Theatre and it'll be really interesting to get to see another version of the same play so soon after this first iteration closes. Another play called Life Science is going up at Brown/Trinity Playwrights Rep this summer, so I'll get to spend a little time in Providence, where I've never gotten to hang out (and where I can pretend I'm a Brown student as I've always sort of secretly wished I'd been). And another play of mine, Photograph 51, is having a workshop in July on Cape Cod at The Cape Cod Theatre Project, so I'll have a chance to do some work in a beautiful spot. And maybe see some whales?
June 1, 2009
