Considering the many Jewish characters who people his plays, it’s tempting to label Art Shulman a “Jewish playwright.” But the author of “God, Bring Me a Miracle,” and “The Rabbi and the Shiksa” maintains he never set out to write “Jewish plays.” He never really set out to write plays at all.
The Brooklyn native followed a job to Southern California in 1974 and stayed, he says, because “I missed my Dodgers.” Several years later, he founded his own research company and began working at home. “I always liked to write,” he says, as if what came next were inevitable.
What came next was inspiration in the form of Studs Terkel’s popular book “Working”; sparked by the idea of short pieces about unusual jobs, Shulman wrote more than 40 humorous takeoffs in that style. “A friend took a look at them and suggested I could turn them into a play,” says the author, who reworked the monologues into a 15-character play, “Joe Carbone’s Job,” centered around the dissatisfied owner of a chicken slaughter house. Though the well-received piece wasn’t a box-office success, the undeterred author promptly began a second play, this time using the events of his own life as fodder.
“God, Bring Me A Miracle” is inspired by a Shulman family crisis that took place some five years ago. At the time, the author’s father was suffering from Parkinson’s Disease, while his mother was struggling to care for him and a sister ill with a brain tumor. In the play, an adult son has to help make the difficult decision of whether to place his father in a nursing home. The writer’s daughter and the home-duty nurse he was dating at the time helped to inspire parts of the characters.
“Miracle,” produced after numerous workshops and readings with Lonny Chapman’s Group Repertory Theatre, “really hits home” with audiences, the writer notes. “I think a lot of people can identify with this situation, with having to make this decision and live with it.”
Much of Shulman’s success comes from writing about characters and crises people can identify with. “My process for writing plays is pretty simple,” he says. “I ask, ‘What two characters can I think of who can conflict?”
Shulman has no plans to stop writing — or to shy away from a little conflict. His next play? The working title is “Sex Is Good For You.”
“God, Bring Me a Miracle” continues Dec. 15, 16 and 17, then Jan. 5-20 at Lonny Chapman’s Group Repertory Theatre in North Hollywood, (818) 769-PLAY.
