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The road to Jerusalem >> The Arab-Israeli conflict takes centre stage at the Saidye by AMY BARRATT
Actually, author Aaron Bihari first conceived the project over three years ago, brought it to producer Joe Maalouf two years ago, and both say it is opening now simply because it is ready to go. It's likely that, whenever it opened, Jerusalem would seem topical, since Israel and Palestine have rarely been out of the headlines over the last 50 years. Oh, that's another thing: the opening of the show just happens to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel. Author Bihari grew up in New York City, where he was exposed to experimental, movement-oriented theatre by his mother and to Broadway musicals by his father. At the time, he felt more of an affinity for the experimental stuff and when, in his early 20s, he began to write for the stage, his work was so movement-oriented that many perceived it to be dance. After staging a one-man show in Halifax (where he moved as a teenager), Bihari received two commissions to do choreography, even though he had never thought of himself as a choreographer. It was then he decided to apply to dance programs. He was accepted at Concordia and that is what brought him to Montreal. So why, with that background, would he suddenly decide to write a musical? "That's what the story demanded," Bihari answers simply, adding that he hopes his effort will avoid what he calls the "vacuousness" of many Broadway musicals. "We're trying to be really true to life, which is not a tradition in musicals. I don't think it's common (in Broadway musicals) that one of the main characters is a homeless mystic." So how do you do a story like Jerusalem without resorting to a sappy, why-can't-we-all-just-get-along message? "Actually, at one point, there wasn't enough of that in the script," says Bihari. "I was so much trying to avoid that that I actually avoided saying that. There is one point in the show now where someone asks the question: why are things this way? But I'm definitely trying to avoid easy answers. "It's a balancing act. I don't want a tragedy, although there are tragic elements. It can't be happy and it can't be devastating. It has to leave the audience open, and they have to have exactly the right questions in their minds. There had to be some hope for the future, and a strong statement, without actually pointing a finger and saying, 'This is the way to do it.' And at the same time seriously avoiding Disney!" Although Bihari's ethnicity is Jewish, his religious upbringing was Tibetan Buddhism. His interest in the Middle East developed only in adulthood, when he started thinking about his roots. A visit to the Holy City in 1996 was an eye-opener. "I was wondering before I got there," Bihari says, "would I put my foot in my mouth or get into hot water because of asking too many questions? Then I got there and saw them living on top of each other--Hasidic Yeshiva students walking right through the Arab suq in the Old City. My first thought was, 'How do they do it? I'm surprised there's not 50 times more violence.' But then I realized that if you asked the wrong question, the question didn't exist. That's how they do it. They ignore each other, to the point where they know nothing about each other." The issue of a romance between an Israeli boy and a Palestinian girl, such as the one in Jerusalem, is one of those topics that "doesn't exist" for people there. The few who would even discuss the possibility told Bihari in a matter-of-fact way that, "the girl would be killed." Because Muslim identity is passed down through the male line and Jewishness through the female, Bihari explains, if the couple in his story were to marry and have children, they would be neither Jews nor Muslims. Was he discouraged by this? "No," says Bihari, "I just said, 'I think I got the right story!'" Jerusalem: The Musical opens Wednesday, Feb. 25, at the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts, $25-45, 739-7944
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Let's see: the Mid-East peace process is breaking down again, the U.S. is getting ready to bomb Iraq, again, and people in Israel are cracking out the gas masks... again. Sounds like the producers of the new musical Jerusalem--being billed as a Middle Eastern Romeo and Juliet--have timed their opening rather well.