Culinary coordinators…what do they do?

Posted by DCA Theater on February 19, 2009 in January-June 2009 Season, The Arab-Israeli Cookbook

By Judith Dunbar-Hines

Looking over your program for The Arab-Israeli Cookbook, you may notice mention of Culinary coordinators… so what do they do? Order pizza for the crew? Not exactly!

If you’ve ever cooked dinner while helping the kids do homework and ironing a clean shirt for tomorrow, you can empathize with actors in this play who have to cook somewhat complicated and unfamiliar foods while delivering their lines, hitting their marks—and while 100 people are watching.

Our job was to help them do that and make it look easy! As Director of Culinary Arts & Events for the Department of Cultural Affairs, I was asked to help with the production of the March offering at the Storefront Theater. My assistant, JoAnn, and I started weeks ahead. While the director was casting— and explaining to would-be actors that yes, they had to actually cook while on-stage—we were meeting with the director, reading the script, finding proper equipment, teaching the actors, suggesting ways to make the food come together seamlessly with the script, timing, set, and props.

We set up a kitchen and worked with the cast and crew on the recipes suggested by the play and provided by the playwright in a separate companion cookbook. We talked about how the character Nadia should appear to have rolled thousands of grape leaves around a filling in her lifetime, so the actress needed to be able to do it automatically. And then we helped her practice. On the other hand, in another scene, Daniel and Alon were eager if not proficient in entertaining their guest and they were intent on doing something “different” by making a Thai meal instead of Middle Eastern food. The actors would need to look a little bit awkward, even after doing this 20 times on stage. So we rehearsed the special timing as they cooked the dish in rehearsal.

Then we cooked together, enjoyed the food together, and eventually rejoiced in a successful play. 

Julian Martinez, JoAnn Relf, Stephen Loch, and Judith Dunbar-Hines

Later, we re-wrote the recipes to make them work within the confines and format of our hands-on cooking class at World Kitchen, where students will prepare several of the show’s recipes. That class, on April 4, will be taught by JoAnn and me, plus Didem Tapban, our friend from Turkey. For more information or to register, click here.

Food has always been the way to bring disparate people together. “Come to the Table” is not just a catch phrase, but the way in which this playwright got into the minds and homes of two cultures and got them to share their innermost hopes and fears. That’s been going on for centuries. 

Rarely is this so graphically shown on stage, however. In this play, real food, real kitchen equipment, real smells are the background for real people’s real thoughts. While you enjoy the play, we hope you don’t notice the hours of work that went into those things, but that they just are, just a part of the story. Then we’ve done our work.

Oh, and PS: If the play makes you hungry, be sure to check out the list of some Chicago restaurants offering Middle Eastern food. The city’s Culinary Concierges compiled a list and will be handing it out at the show— visit one or more of their suggestions after the show, or another day. Simply sharing a meal can bring more peace and harmony than any international and political movement. Try it!

The People Behind the Headlines

Posted by DCA Theater on February 3, 2009 in January-June 2009 Season, The Arab-Israeli Cookbook

Written by Rob Chambers, Artistic Director, Theatre Mir

Two weeks before we started rehearsal for “The Arab-Israeli Cookbook,” the conflict between Israel and Hamas exploded in Gaza.  News reports from throughout the world recorded the invasion of Israeli forces into Gaza and the repeated launching of Hamas missiles into Israel as the war and casualties mounted.  On the first day of rehearsal, our cast and production team somberly noted that the play we were embarking on could not be more timely.

In 2003, playwright/actor Robin Soans traveled to Israel and the West Bank with directors Tim Roseman and Rimi Brihi - the one Jewish and the other Arab - to interview everyday people to learn how they were going about their lives amid the ongoing conflict.  As an ice breaker, they asked everyone they met with to share their favorite recipe or food as means of starting the conversation.  The ingredients, dishes and rituals of eating had much in common between the diverse groups of Christians, Jews and Muslims of the region.  While the people showed great pride and enthusiasm in the foods they prepared and shared in their homes, restaurants, shops and cafes, the events outside inevitably became part of the discussion.  It was impossible for these people to discuss their recipes without also talking about how difficult it is to get the ingredients during a siege, or the daily challenges of negotiating through checkpoints, or the terror when an unattended bag is discovered at a falafel shop, or how an ordinary trip to the supermarket was anything but ordinary when a suicide bomber attacked it.

As a playwright, Robin Soans concentrates on verbatim and documentary theater, and he wrote “The Arab-Israeli Cookbook” as a way to explore the commonalities between the more than seventy people he met on his trip.  The play is a tapestry of monologues and scenes, with real cooking on stage, in which no one ethnic, cultural or political voice dominates.  It is the words of these ordinary people trying to lead their lives on a day-to-day basis. We chose to produce the play because it does not take sides about the who is right or wrong in the conflict, but rather it gives a voice to the everyday people who are usually neglected in the news accounts.  These are not statistics or poltical positions; they are real people with real desires for peace. 

So when we heard about the latest conflict, we wondered what was happening to Naji, the administrator of a Palestinian refugee camp who tries to find employment for the men in the camp, and Idan, a young Israeli soldier who wanted to be an actor when he was released from the army, and Rose and Abdullah, a retired couple cooped up in their small apartment because it’s too dangerous to go outside very much, and Nadia, a grandmother whose garden gate was shattered by eighteen bullet when a father and his daughter were mistakenly shot by the Israeli police because they were driving in a similar car as a group of wanted Hamas members, and the many more people from the play who are so real to us even though we have never met them.  And we noted that while we are performing the show at its first matinee on Sunday, March 8, a mother, Fattiyah, will be grieving the loss of her young son in a bombing seven years ago to the day.

We must remember that behind all the news stories and articles about this and other conflicts, there are people like each of us, with families like ours, trying to go about their lives as we do - but they do not take for granted the daily rituals and meals as we sometimes do.

“The Arab-Israeli Cookbook” is presented by Theatre Mir in association with the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, March 5 through April 5, at the Storefront Theater, 66 E. Randolph Street, Chicago.  Click here to purchase tickets.

THE ARAB-ISRAELI COOKBOOK: Post Your Review

Posted by DCA Theater on January 5, 2009 in January-June 2009 Season, The Arab-Israeli Cookbook

March 05, 2009 — April 05, 2009
Storefront Theater
Presented by Theatre Mir

Theatre Mir brings Arab and Israeli voices together in the stories of ordinary people living in a rich yet divided world in Israel and the West Bank.  Based on real-life interviews by playwright Robin Soans and directors Tim Roseman and Rima Brihi, this deeply human play weaves the stories and recipes of more than forty characters who reveal common culture and experiences amidst the daily conflict.  In restaurants, shops, cafes, and homes, everyone has a story to tell and a recipe to cook.