Joshua William Gelb is a director and librettist who specializes in devised theater and experimental music-theatre. Most recently he completed his graduate studies at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Drama with his thesis production: a new translation/adaptation of Cocteau’s 1950 movie Les Enfants Terribles. Last summer, his adaptation of the last play O’Neill ever attempted to write, Blind Alley Guy: Notes for an Unfinished Play by Eugene O’Neill, appeared at the Incubator Arts Project, while his poly musical, Sometimes in Prague, appeared in the New Ohio’s Ice Factory Festival at 3LD. With frequent collaborator, composer Stephanie Johnstone, Gelb has also created and directed A Musical Fantasia on Piratical Themes and Tully (In No Particular Order), which was workshopped in 2006 at Theater for the New City and presented in 2007 as part of the New York Musical Theater Festival. With Room5001 Theater, Gelb conceived and directed the notoriously revisionist all-male Man of La Mancha (Duo Theatre) with musician Justin Levine. He also adapted and directed a re-envisioning of America’s supposed first musical, The Black Crook: An Original, Magical and Spectacular Drama in which is also played the Tragic History of Author Charles M. Barras, which subsequently received a workshop through Naked Angels at Playwrights Horizons’ Peter Jay Sharp Theater in 2009. Gelb received his BFA at NYU Tisch’s Playwrights Horizons Theater School. He is a member of the 2012 Lincoln Center Directors Lab.
TMT: Josh you’re the lead artist of Dukus by Alter Kacyzne, a profane retelling of an old legend about a Catholic Duke’s conversion to Judaism and his subsequent martyrdom at the stake. Besides my copy and paste summary what’s one thing you think the audience should know about Dukus before seeing it?
JWG: Well, Moe, the emphasis is on “profane.” Kacyzne (whose name continues to confound everyone involved in the production) was not the biggest fan of traditional theater. So instead of the psychological melodrama you might associate with a martyrdom story (Re: A Man for All Seasons), Dukus is something altogether different: an absurdist epic; an unwieldy portrait of the social abyss (Kacyzne’s own words) that divides Christians and Jews. This is perhaps best exemplified by the man-eating bear that appears in Act Two, which is certainly the play’s most profound metaphor, and one we have neglected to decode entirely.
TMT: I decided to throw a curve ball this time and curated questions from some of your fellow lab artists. One thing that came up frequently was that many of your plays feature miniature set pieces. Dukus features a miniature nativity scene, your adaptation of Les Enfants Terribles featured a doll house and there have been tales of you meticulously handcrafting miniature scenery out of pizza boxes. Please explain your fetish for small architectural representations of buildings.
JWG: I like small buildings. Is that a crime? I like how giant actors look when they act next to small buildings. I like that small buildings are cheaper than big ones… As far as Dukus is concerned, this is neither here nor there. The nativity scene is more of an easter-egg to indulge my insatiable fetish. By the way, have you ever been to Roadside America? It’s the world’s greatest indoor miniature village. Take exit 23 off I-78. Stick around for the night pageant. It’s incredible.
TMT: Made obvious by the big red presents in the corner of The Brick, Christmas is featured in Dukus. To what extent do you think Christmas and other Christian Holidays have influenced Jewish tradition and culture?
JWG: Well, actually, the first production of Dukus was criticized for being too “goyish” — I imagine because it focuses on the Catholic characters as much as it does on the Jewish ones. But this is a really big, theological, SAT-type question you bring up. So I’ll avoid trying to sound like an expert. Because I’m not. Dukus is set in a Jewish shtetl that sits on the property of a Catholic Duke, and since Christmas is, for me, one of the most iconic expressions of Christianity, that’s how we’ve decided to represent the Duke’s domain. Of course, the relationship between Christians and Jews runs a lot deeper than Christmas lights and who gets more presents. Maybe this is because Jesus was Jewish, and it’s weird that centuries of oppression stem from various interpretations of a Jew’s martyrdom. Chagall, we’ve found, is weirdly obsessed with this. So was Kacyzne. So am I, I guess.
TMT: From first read to rehearsal things come and they go. A great idea one day is in the trash the next. Tell us one discovery made between the first read to latest rehearsal of Dukus that opened the play up in a new way or set you off in a new direction. What’s one that did the opposite that’s better kept untold? Cough, cough nude bear. And please change names and protect the identity of the innocent as you see fit
JWG: What a naked bear does in the woods is none of your business, Moe. But really, I can’t begin to guess how many ideas have been bandied about and ultimately disposed during this awesomely slapdash process. The naked bear was just one of those things. As for ideas that have evolved through rehearsal… Dukus is filled with so many small characters that could easily have been dismissed or cut entirely, and only through the lunacy that is rehearsal have we discovered the brilliance of cameos like The Woodcutter or The Cripple. Watch out for them. They steal the show. I refuse to disclose any more than that. I definitely refuse to talk about the dildos I found in Target Margin prop storage.
TMT: Lastly, Josh can you please sum up the entirety of your theatrical experience in one sentence? Two comma max. And under no terms may you use a semi-colon.
JWG: That was really heartfelt, but can we try it again while running next to this miniature house?
Dukus runs at The Brick Oct 24 – 28th at 7:30pm.
Tickets available HERE