Family Ties
By Daily Bruin Staff
Jan. 31, 2001 9:00 p.m.
 Wadsworth Theatre Adam Rose (left) and
Hal Linden star in "The Gathering," an original
drama by Arje Shaw.
By Jacqueline Maar
Daily Bruin Contributor
Generation gaps often cause tension between rebellious young
people and their more traditional elders over what they consider
outdated customs.
Exploring the strained bonds that exist within a Jewish family,
the theatrical production “The Gathering” opens this
Saturday at the Wadsworth Theatre. The play tells the story of
three generations of men and the issues each of them confronts as
they become divided over an event that nearly tears their family
apart.
“The play is essentially a story of fathers and sons and
deals with issues of healing and forgiveness,” said Arje
Shaw, playwright of “The Gathering.”
Tony Award-winner Hal Linden, plays Gabe, a Holocaust survivor
living in New York City. Traditional Jewish culture is brought to
light as he helps his grandson Michael prepare for his upcoming bat
mitzvah.
 Illustration by ERICA PINTO/Daily Bruin
“Gabe’s a Holocaust survivor, who has many of the
scars that he has learned to live with, but obviously not really
resolved,” Linden said. “And if they don’t get
resolved they get stirred up a little in this play.”
Meanwhile, Stuart, Gabe’s son, is a career-driven
journalist who’s far removed from his feelings and his
father. Tension grows between Stuart and Gabe as it becomes
apparent that Stuart’s career is more important to him than
Jewish tradition.
During the production, conflict arises within the nation as well
as Gabe’s family, when President Ronald Reagan makes his
controversial 1985 visit to Bitburg cemetery, the burial site for
Nazi soldiers, in Germany. Further exacerbating tensions within the
family, Stuart, a recently appointed speechwriter for Reagan, is
selected to write a “forgive and forget speech” for the
event. This leads to internal conflicts within the Jewish
family.
“We’ve got two generations more or less fighting for
the soul of the third, trying to bring him around to their way of
thinking,” Linden said. “But, then they’re placed
in a position where they have to identify with what they feel and
believe.
“It’s kind of a light family play that takes on a
very heavy significance because of Bitburg,” he
continued.
Linden, best known for his role as the title character on the
television series “Barney Miller” has also starred in
numerous Broadway plays and musicals, earning a Tony award for his
performance in “The Rothschilds.”
Linden first learned about the role of Gabe after a friend sent
the play to him.
“The whole subject matter attracted me, the way (Gabe) was
treated,” Linden said. “I think I’m still
emotionally tied to that, and it was treated in a good way of
bringing it up without making it into a polemic.”
The Holocaust was a very personal subject for Shaw, whose
father, was a Holocaust survivor that escaped from Poland after the
invasion of the Nazis. Gabe is named after Shaw’s father.
“To a certain extent it’s based on my father’s
experience,” Shaw said of the similarities between the
production and his father’s life.
“It’s not totally autobiographical, but he had lost
his mother and his sister while living in Poland in 1939 when the
Nazis occupied his town, and he had to escape to Russia,” he
continued.
Shaw began writing in his mid-’40s, as he began to reflect
upon his own personal experiences ““ like most of the
characters in the production. As an 8-year-old child, he came to
America from Germany, where he was torn away from his roots and had
to integrate himself into a new culture.
“I didn’t know the language, didn’t know the
ways and was so busy trying to assimilate, that I kind of cut
myself out from my history, and somehow in my 40s I started
thinking about what shaped my life,” Shaw said.
“”˜Why am I the way I am?’ And I started thinking
about my father a lot, how his life was cut out from under
him.”
From this introspection, Shaw began to write “The
Gathering” in 1990 to explore the bonds that exist between
families, in addition to his own family roots.
“I wrote it to honor the strength of the people who had to
pick up the pieces and also to make sure that those who perished
didn’t die in vain,” Shaw said.
Although the play deals with issues such as the Holocaust and
Bitburg, Shaw wanted “The Gathering” to focus more on
the issues within the family and the effects of these events on
them.
“(The Holocaust) was the defining moment of the 20th
century, but I wasn’t writing a history, I was just writing a
story of a family that’s going along and rebuilding their
lives and putting love and such into their grandson,” Shaw
said. “Then all of a sudden the whole thing comes undone: how
do you live through that?
“It’s a story of hope and reconciliation,”
Shaw continued.
Before coming to Los Angeles, “The Gathering” first
opened off-Broadway in December of 1999. Originally given only a
couple of weeks to run, the play had such favorable response from
New York audiences that the play went on to run for five
months.
“It has such an amazingly powerful connection to many
people that need opportunities to heal with their own children and
with their own families,” Shaw said. “It’s been
an unbelievable experience watching the play make such an
impact.
“It’s not entertainment; it’s
education,” he continued. “This has been a really
wonderful vehicle for teaching and also for adults to come to peace
and to terms with themselves and their families.”
THEATER: “The Gathering” opens at
the Wadsworth Theatre, 11301 Wilshire Blvd., this Saturday, and
runs through Feb. 28. Performances are Wednesday through Saturday
and ticket prices range from $25 to $50. For show times and
information call (800) 233-3122.
