Cynthia Levin is in her 32nd season with the Unicorn Theatre. As producing artistic director, she has served as a director, actor, designer or producer for more than 200 productions. Yet when “Two Jews Walk Into a War …” opens Saturday, March 5 (previews are March 2, 3 and 4), it will be the first time she has actually directed a play that is so Jewish. (See below for complete schedule.)
Levin said the play was inspired by a true story and is about two Jews named Ishaq and Zeblyan.
“There were a couple of plays written in the last five years based on them. This one is fictionalized. It is an incredibly interesting story since there were thousands of Jews that lived in Afghanistan until the Taliban came in and wrecked all the synagogues and beat people up because they didn’t want any Jews. But these two guys stayed,” Levin explained.
Ishaq and Zeblyan are the last two surviving Jews in a dilapidated old synagogue in Kabul during the Taliban regime’s final days. The only thing that binds them together is that they hate each other’s guts. The play, written by Jewish playwright Seth Rozin, premiered in Florida and then in New Jersey. Partial support for this production is being provided by the Herb and Bonnie Buchbinder Donor Advisory Fund of the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Kansas City.
“Seth has created a comedy about these two men because they hated each other. They never got along. Both of their families came from the camps. They talked each other into moving to Afghanistan instead of America or Israel, so they blame each other for their plight,” Levin said.
Levin said that the play opens when the learned man, the scholar who was there to keep the peace and keep the religion alive, passes away.
“These two men are left with each other. How are they going to work together to keep this synagogue and try to keep a Jewish presence there when they don’t even want to talk to each other?” said Levin, who is the 2006 recipient of the Pinnacle Award for Excellence in the Arts from the Johnson County Library Foundation and the 2007 recipient of the Human Rights Campaign Equality Award. This season she will also direct “Distracted” at the Unicorn.
“It’s very funny. It’s got incredible humor but it’s also got incredible poignancy attached because they begin to talk to each other about religion, philosophy and spirituality,” she said. “The discussions are funny but at the same time they get you thinking. It’s really a thought-provoking and highly entertaining play.”
Levin and playwright Rozin have been colleagues for about a dozen years but have never worked together on a play. (The play’s scenic designer Evan Hill is Jewish also.) Levin and Rozin are founding members of The National New Play Network (NNPN), which is the country’s alliance of non-profit professional theaters that are similar in size and programing to the Unicorn. The organization champions the development, production and continued life of new plays.
Though the play has been done before, the director said they have made a lot of revisions on the version that will be performed at the Unicorn. Levin, who grew up as a Conservative Jew, has enjoyed working on the play and said it is something she can relate to.
“How many plays are about a Jewish story that isn’t about the Holocaust? I look for these plays in contemporary literature all the time,” she said.
She said she knows a lot of the stories that come to light in this particular play.
“The play talks about the Torah and certain biblical passages and keeping kosher and all the things that they struggled to do. These are a lot of things that I relate to in my background,” she said.
It’s been “extremely fun” for Levin to have the opportunity to each those involved with the production about Judaism.
“It will also be fun to bring this to the audience,” she said. “How many people really know very much about the Jewish religion beyond bagels and lox and that some guys wear yarmulkes on their heads? They know very little here in the Midwest, unless they live in certain neighborhoods and have certain friends. So I am excited about educating our audience a little bit about the culture.”
She thinks the Jewish audience will definitely enjoy the play.
“It’s extremely personal on a lot of levels for me and I think that Jews are going to love it. They are going to get some jokes that no one else is going to get. Then our gentile audience is going to love it because our actors are learning something every day,” Levin said.
Ticket information
“Two Jews Walk into a War” will be performed on the Unicorn’s Jerome Stage located at 3828 Main Street, Kansas City, MO 64111. Previews are March 2, 3 and 4. The play runs March 5-20. Performances Tuesday through Thursday are at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 3 p.m. Talk back performances, where patrons are encouraged to stay after the show and discuss the play with the actors and director, are scheduled for March 8, 13 and 15. To purchase tickets, call (816) 531-7529, ext. 10, online at www.UnicornTheatre.org or in person at the box office.