INTERVIEW: Exploring the uniqueness, universality of Genesis
Photo: One of the Genesis Plays is The Sarah Play, now playing at The Theater at the 14th Street Y. Photo courtesy of Maria Baranova Photography / Provided by Kampfire PR with permission.
Theater artist Jon Adam Ross has been on a years-long journey into the far reaches of the Book of Genesis from the Bible. He has used his theatrical talents to explore the unique and universal themes of these foundational stories, and his exploration has resulted in a series of evening-length works called The Genesis Plays.
Ross’ output, with the help of director Chantal Pavageaux, is currently being offered at The Theater at the 14th Street Y in New York City. Under the banner of The In(heir)tance Project, with support from The Covenant Foundation, Ross has been on a memorable journey.
He has traveled around the United States to create and perform plays in a variety of communities. Each Genesis offering is inspired by the story of a matriarch or patriarch from the biblical book, and the cities that Ross visited also played a part in the development stage.
“I had been touring theater for a few years after school, and I had found that my relationship as an artist with the audience was unsatisfactory,” Ross said in a recent phone interview. “I would come to a city, and perform, and maybe do a talkback, and then leave and go to another city. There wasn’t much of a relationship. It was transactional at best — fleeting. … I was very interested in making ‘devised theater’ that involved the audience throughout the process.”
At the same time Ross was considering a collaborative theatrical project, The Covenant Foundation, which focuses on Jewish education in North America, came knocking on the door, and a joint opportunity was quickly developed.
“They expressed an interest in supporting a project that would engage the Jewish community around the country,” he said. “They were really expansive both in their generosity and also their vision in letting me come up with ideas that they could support, and an idea that I brought to them that they bought — literally — was an idea that I would go around the country and spend a significant period of time in different communities around the country putting the lived experiences of those communities in conversation with stories from the Book of Genesis, using devised theater methodologies to engage as many people in the community as possible in making the art.”
Ross called the Book of Genesis the “instigating text,” and then the community he was working in took the reins. The resulting plays are varied and diverse. One covers Wall Street, and another involves wrestling, proving that the Book of Genesis served as inspiration, a roadmap. These are not strict adaptations.
“For the Jewish community, the stories of Genesis are very unique and fundamental to the identity of the religion,” Ross said. “At the same time, while I was very interested in making art with the Jewish community, I was not interested in making art exclusively for the Jewish community, and so by picking the Book of Genesis, I was not so surreptitiously opening ourselves up to the opportunity to work with the other faith communities for whom that text is also fundamental. … I don’t think it was a part of the original, philosophical planning work that we were doing when we were conceiving of this project, but over the past few years, one thing that I have realized is that in a time when the Bible is being wielded as a weapon of judgment and division, we plucky artists have been going around the country attempting to utilize the Bible as a bridge for conversation, for art making, for learning and listening.”
Ross said his actions throughout the formative years of The Genesis Plays, which continue in New York City for two more weeks, were based on the principles of curiosity and generosity. Along those lines, he chose communities that were diverse and represented different facets of American spiritual life. The team started in Minneapolis and then moved to Charleston, South Carolina; Austin, Texas; Seattle; and Kansas City, Missouri.
“We knew we wanted to do something on the East Coast,” he said. “And we wanted something in the South, and Charleston kind of fit both of those categories. … Then things changed. The massacre at Mother Emanuel happened in the early summer of 2015. We had already begun laying the groundwork for the process in Charleston, which was going to be our second city, … and I reached out to the Charleston Jewish Federation and said that we didn’t think that it was appropriate for us to come anymore. We didn’t want to be outsiders coming in to explore or exploit the tragedy.”
However, Ross remembers local leaders wanting The Genesis Plays to continue as scheduled, so he needed to gather some advice on how to proceed. He reached out to friends and had productive conversations.
“We ended up making a piece, and we were invited by the city of Charleston to premiere the piece in the week leading up to the first anniversary of the massacre as part of the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, which is a very powerful thing to be a part of,” Ross said. “And we were able to do that open devising process that I was telling you about in the Jewish community, in the black community, working with Jewish artists, working with black artists over the course of our time there.”
The journey — inspired by ancient texts and impacting modern-day communities – continues for Ross and his team with the current New York premiere.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Genesis Plays is currently playing The Theater at the 14th Street Y. Click here for more information and tickets.
