Stacie Chaiken’s solo play Looking for Louie is the story of a young woman’s search for the Russian great-grandfather who did something way-back-when that was “unforgivable.” The shame of Louie’s untold crime, festering in the silence of family secrets, reverberates down through the generations.
The play chronicles a reach for forgiveness in one family, but it’s a universal story, presenting a paradigm for all families. Forgiveness, because we want it badly enough. Forgiveness, because there’s someone willing to do absolutely anything to make it happen. Forgiveness, because it needs to be, independent of ideology, justice, or who did what to whom, when.
Audience response to a performance of the play at Tel Aviv University in January 2004 during Stacie’s first visit to Israel-supported by the Center for Jewish Culture & Creativity and the Fulbright Foundation-made it clear that this story of possibility, couched in humor, and set comfortably in the context of a far-away American family, lands profoundly for an Israeli audience. It’s not only about their own shattered families: It’s about their shattered world.
The Center invited Stacie to spend three months in Israel as a Cultural Ambassador, beginning May 2004, during which time she worked with Israeli string bassist Eli Magen to create a new interactive live bass score for the play, trying the new work out in before diverse audiences in community centers in Arad and Beer Sheva, and major theatres like Arab-Hebrew in Jaffa, and the Cameri in Tel Aviv. Their work was honored with an invitation to perform at Habima’s TeatroNetto Festival of Solo Plays in 2005. The international arm of the festival was, unfortunately postponed, due to lack of funding.
PROJECT SUPPORTERS
This project received substantial support from the Center for Jewish Culture & Creativity (Los Angeles/Tel Aviv), which made arrangements for the residency at Mishkan Omanim, from the California Arts Council, and from the Durfee Foundation, Los Angeles, which awarded Chaiken an Artist Completion grant to support the collaboration with Magen. The American Embassy in Tel Aviv provided funding for English supertitles. Countless friends and family members attended readings of Looking for Louie at Los Angeles home parties hosted by Naomi Heller, and made contributions to the project.
Other supporters include Marilyn Fox and Pacific Resident Theatre, where Louie received it's world premiere in the summer of 2000; Arye Gross and Stages Theatre Center, Richard Fancy, Jan Lewis and the Jewish Women's Theatre Project, and the many many others who have contributed their time and ideas to the creation of Looking for Louie over the past six years. Rabbi Mark Borovitz of Beit Tshuvah in Los Angeles served as an invaluable consultant to the story, helping to make sense of it all.
THE FUTURE: A NEW PLAY
The mission of the Center for Jewish Culture & Creativity is the fostering of collaboration between American and Israeli artists. During her residency in Israel, Stacie was introduced to local artists and scholars who have agreed to act as consultants on the creation of a new solo play, The Dig: Death, Genesis & the Double Helix , set in Israel and Los Angeles, in ancient times and now. The play is scheduled for a Los Angeles workshop production in the fall of 2007.
