A Jew Grows In Brooklyn - Interview with Jake Ehrenreich

Interview By: Carey Purcell
CareyPurcell@TheCinemaSource.com

It was either a joke gone bad or one of the funniest moments in Jake Ehrenreich’s acting career. Someone’s cell phone had rung in the middle of his show, A Jew Grows in Brooklyn, and, instead of ignoring it, or and asking the person to turn it off, Ehrenreich answered the phone himself.

“Hi, how are you?” he asked, speaking into the phone from the stage.

“Who is this?” the person on the other end asked.

“You’re calling in the middle of the show.” Ehrenreich said.

“What show?”

“Altar Boyz,” he deadpanned as the audience laughed.

Before A Jew Grows in Brooklyn begins, an announcement is played for the audience. Instead of reminding them to silence their phones, a common procedure in most theatres, it encourages them to keep them on, and take calls in the middle of the show. According to Ehrenreich, a few audience members don’t realize that it is a joke. However, it is not considered a problem either.

“In my show, it’s the kind of show where you can do that and get away with it,” Ehrenreich said. “People love it, and it’s normal.”

A Jew Grows in Brooklyn is an autobiographical one-man show that tells the stories of Ehrenreich’s family’s past and his understanding of his own cultural identity. The son of two survivors of the Holocaust, Ehrenreich grew up in Brooklyn, embarrassed by his heritage and wishing to be considered an average American.

“This was the sort of place that I seemed to avoid most of my life,” he said of his Jewish background. “And about two years ago, I decided to do it.”

The show is a multi-media one, in which Ehrenreich sings, dances, plays instruments and tells jokes, as well as including photographs from his past and family events. He wanted to tell his individual story using as much humor as possible. While he felt the need to share the story of his parents, he did not want the audience to leave the show feeling saddened.

Mixing light-hearted stories as well as serious ones, Ehrenreich attempts to balance the elements of comedy and tragedy throughout his performance. But while he does talk about the Holocaust and what his family survived, Ehrenreich does not consider his show to be a sad one. He does acknowledge the Holocaust during the show but he does not consider that he focus of his performance. He struggled with transitioning to and from the Holocaust while writing the script, deciding on focusing on the Holocaust near the end of the first act, but abruptly switching to jokes before the intermission begins. The jokes is short, but it jars people out of the somber mood so they can go into intermission without being saddened.

“I want to bring people there, but I don’t want to leave them there,” he said of the Holocaust. “Going between these emotions is a balancing act. But that’s what this is. There’s no ...