Let it be a good year
Livingston’s Howard Tilkin brings the Jewish theatrical community together
Howard Tilkin, 37, grew up in Livingston — “the little hub of our Jewish community,” as he described the town to me in a recent Zoom interview.
“I was really involved in theater growing up as a kid,” he continued. “There were really great theater programs at the JCC in West Orange,” just one town over. “So I spent a number of years there and sort of discovering that I loved theater. The JCC became a place of community.”
Those sentences encapsulate why I’m interviewing him. Yes, partly it’s because Mr. Tilkin went on to a successful theater career. But mostly it’s that in the process he never forgot that sense of community, nurtured in part at the JCC and also in part at Temple Beth Shalom in Livingston.
Mr. Tilkin started Broadway Seder, which offers Jewish theater folk an opportunity to gather and observe Passover together. More recently, he created “Shana Tova: Stories & Songs of Hope & Renewal,” a High Holiday-themed concert scheduled for September 14.
It’s sponsored by Jewish Artists Gathering, an organization that celebrates “the intersection of the theater and the Jewish communities,” and will feature performances by more than a dozen stars of the Broadway firmament.
Surprisingly, Mr. Tilkin’s first exposure to professional theater did not go well. “My mother took me and my cousin to see ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ and we still laugh about it,” he said. “There is a scene where the wolves and the beast come out. I was terrified.”
Fortunately, his career was saved — his next trip to Broadway was much better. “When I was a little older, we went to see ‘Phantom of the Opera,’” he said. “My mom still tells the story that after we left the theater I said, ‘Mom. Mom. I want to do that when I get older.”
“I was so enamored of the spectacle and how it all functions and the magic they made happen on stage.”
But Mr. Tilkin discovered that while he might want to be part of the team that makes the magic on the stage, he probably wasn’t going to do it from the stage. He appeared as one of the children in a Livingston Players production of ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ that, well — let him describe it:
“I was terrible,” he said.
“I would get distracted on stage and not pay attention. I remember there was one scene where all the kids are sitting in the corner and we’re supposed to leave after a song. I wasn’t paying attention and I ended up just sitting there.
“Motel and Tzeitel were having this big romantic scene and there’s Howie sitting in the back, just looking around at the light, thinking ‘What’s going on? Where is everyone?’
“And then I hear one of the parents in the wings stage whisper, ‘Howie, get off the stage.’”
Fortunately, there are many ways to participate in theater other than dawdling on the stage. Ultimately, Mr. Tilkin went to NYU to study theater and stage management.
I of course have seen the job title on countless Playbills, but still I had no idea what a stage manager managed.
“We’re sort of like the babysitters for the evening,” Mr. Tilkin explained. “If everybody is doing what they’re supposed to be doing, we have a pretty easy gig. We’re responsible for making sure that everybody is at their cue at the right moments.”
The stage manager sits in a booth following along with the script and barking orders like “light 72 go” or “automation 15 go.”
“I’ve been pretty fortunate, you know,” he continued. “Since college” — he graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2011 — “I’ve been able to work pretty consistently. I’ve worked on some pretty exciting projects over the years and bounced around from show to show.”
This includes productions such as “Chicago,” “Funny Girl,” and “Titanique,” where he’s working now. But working on Broadway does not allow for Jewish observance. “Those are conflicting passions,” he said.
“I work every night. I work Friday nights. Saturday I have to get ready for matinee. Jewish holidays are normal performance nights.
“On shows you have some flexibility. You can take a personal day for a holiday here and there, and a lot of people I worked with have been very good about that. But sometimes we have rehearsals on Rosh Hashanah.
“I wanted to develop a space where theater people could celebrate their Jewish heritage.”
And soon there was one.
It all started in Millburn. When “Funny Girl” closed “right before Labor Day in 2023, I didn’t really have anything lined up,” Mr. Tilkin said. “I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. There was a production of ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ at the Paper Mill Playhouse” — that popular theater is in Millburn — “and they needed somebody for the team. So I was able to jump in there.”
The production ran from December 6 to January 10. It was the first time that “Fiddler” was produced after the Hamas attacks in Israel on October 7. Given both the timing and the show’s theme, it was clearly an emotional, often difficult time for Jews. So Mr. Tilkin reached out to other Jewish members of the production. It was “our little mishpoche” — the family — “and during Chanukah we lit candles every night in the green room before the show and that created this sense of joy.”
It was a small act of community that had a large impact on many people.
“I was literally standing in the back crying, especially because of what was going on in the moment,” Mr. Tilkin said. “And so I said we have to recreate the experience.
“With Passover coming up in the spring, a group of us got together and invited a whole bunch of people from the industry and we had a seder. It was on a Monday night, which was not one of the first nights of the holiday.” But it is one of the nights when Broadway is dark and we there is no formal work for people on staff.
That seder was held at Sammy’s Roumanian Steak House on the Lower East Side. Last year, the event was held at the JCC on the Upper West Side and drew about 150 people. Earlier this year, the group got together at an Israeli restaurant in Brooklyn.
The idea for “Shana Tova” seemed a natural outgrowth of those meetings. “Now instead of doing an event just for people who work in the theater industry, we were looking to expand and open it up for the broader community,” Mr. Tilkin said.
The plan is to offer an evening of the work of Jewish musical theater composers. Many of them were Jewish — Sondheim, Bernstein, and Richard Rodgers, to name just a few. “What we’re doing is taking a lot of their songs and building around a theme of much needed hope in these dark times,” Mr. Tilkin said.
“Shana Tova: Stories of Hope and Renewal” is set for 7 p.m. on September 14 at Symphony Space on the Upper West Side. Tickets are $54 to $136; buy them at www.symphonyspace.org/events/vp-shana-tova-stories-songs-of-hope-renewal or just google Symphony Space and Shana Tova and follow the links.