arts & culture
Between a Rock and a Flooding Place:
Area Playwright Details Upcoming Show
I SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
t makes perfect sense, if you don’t
think too hard about it, that the son
of a part-time clown would go on to
write a play about a magic rock.

For Philadelphia-born Jewish play-
wright Dan Kitrosser, growing up play-
ing Monsier Dumb Bobo — the assistant
to his father Juggles the Clown and
brother Noodles in the family “Bagel
and Cream Cheese Circus” — laid the
groundwork for the need to pretend.

Playing make-believe in his Mt. Airy
home eventually evolved into Kitrosser,
38, becoming a full-time playwright, mak-
ing a career in New York and Portland,
Oregon, and returning to Philadelphia
with his husband this past spring.

Kitrosser’s newest play and Philadelphia
homecoming, “Hannah + Th e Healing
Stone,” showing Aug. 18-28 at Th e Drake,
aims to capture the whimsy of his child-
hood theatrical roots while grappling with
what it means to be human in relationship
with others today. Th e play is presented by
the terraNOVA Collective.

Set in a fi ctionalized Jenkintown,
“Hannah + Th e Healing Stone” begins
with a Martin’s Aquarium employee who
is asked to deliver a goldfi sh to an old “put-
tering” shut-in. Th e man stumbles across a
stone with magical properties: If you hold
onto it, think hard about what upsets you
and let the stone go, you will be healed.

Only the man, holding onto grief, pain
and toxic masculinity, refuses to let go of
the stone.

Meanwhile, the old putterer turns into
a goldfi sh with the ability to grant wishes;
a fi lm crew comes to Jenkintown to shoot
a fi lm; and the town begins to fl ood, with
resident Hannah, “the girl who always
wanted to leave town but couldn’t,” the
only person able to set things right.

Th e play, overfl owing with absurdity,
has unconventional origins, but it is ulti-
mately rooted in today’s zeitgeist.

In 2019, Kitrosser’s husband Jordan
Siegel (who also plays the neurotic fi lm
director in the show), rattled off fi ve ran-
dom objects to Kitrosser, who needed an
idea for the opening scene of a play.

“Th at’s kind of why the play kind of
lives in a Jungian, dreamlike state because
I was just sort of doing some automatic
24 writing,” Kitrosser said. “So it was almost
like an exercise that turned into a play.”
For most of the play’s early existence,
it did not have a proper ending, drop-
ping off at the end with an unsatisfying
conclusion. Aft er the pandemic began, Kitrosser
changed the ending. Th e real-life story
about the importance of community in
sustaining one another, even in times of
grief and uncertainty, suddenly meshed
with the fi ctional story about the reluc-
tance to let go of pain and grief for fear of
a similar uncertainty.

“Without the pandemic, I would not
have had the space and the understand-
ing of what this play was teaching me,”
Kitrosser said.

It’s befi tting that “Hannah + Th e Healing
Stone” is making an extended appearance
— having debuted in Portland last year —
in Kitrosser’s hometown, with heavy cre-
ative input from his husband and longtime
collaborator and director Kyle Metzger.

Creating strong emotional themes in
the show was only one challenge of the
show; creating a dynamic set in which
the characters live was another. Metzger,
Dan Kitrosser (left) at a rehearsal of
“Hannah + The Healing Stone”
who met Kitrosser during their early
careers in New York, was tasked with
representing a fl ooding town and bring-
ing a goldfi sh to life. “Hannah + Th e
Healing Stone” incorporates puppetry,
dioramic sets, screens and a rich sound-
scape to immerse the audience into a
waterlogged and magical Jenkintown.

Th e show’s visual eff ects also have the
pandemic to thank, with Zoom theater
creating innovative ways to incorporate
technology into productions.

AUGUST 4, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
“Th e live video component and the
projection is very much an eff ort to bring
in some of the tools and the toys that
we created during the pandemic era
from digital theater back onto the stage,”
Metzger said.

But “Hannah + Th e Healing Stone”
hits close to Kitrosser’s self-proclaimed
“very gay and very Jewish” roots.

Kitrosser attended Solomon Schechter
Day School and Akiba Hebrew Academy
and grew up indoctrinated into Jewish
comedy by his father, who put on old
recordings of Borscht Belt comedians.

Th ough many of the characters in
the show are queer, Kitrosser adds his
Judaism into the show more judiciously.

“Hannah + Th e Healing Stone” cap-
tures the same frenetic, anxious energy
common in Jewish life and common in
the traits of Kitrosser’s own family. It’s his
own experiences, upbringing and personal
touch that breathes life into the show.

“Th e great thing about Jewish comedy
is that it lives right on the edge of danger,
right on the edge of, ‘If we don’t do this,
it will all fall apart,’” Kitrosser said. “Even
though [the play] is not about yeshiva, it’s
Jewish.” JE
srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com