Part-time playwright Cary Gitter is full-time busy
‘How My Grandparents Fell in Love’ by Leonia writer on stage at NJ Rep
The last time I spoke to Cary Gitter, he was on the precipice, justthisfaraway from becoming a full-time playwright.
So, naturally, I started our conversation asking Mr. Gitter, who grew up in Leonia, if he’d made progress. Yes, he said, he’s closer, but not there yet. Which of course is hard to believe, considering all that’s going on in his life at the moment.
His play “Gene and Gilda” is getting another off-Broadway run from July 23 through September 7 at the 59E59 Theaters.
His first novel, “Cammy Sitting Shiva,” is about an aimless, almost-30-year-old who must return to her North Jersey childhood home and deal with the death of her father and childhood issues.
And his new musical, “How My Grandparents Fell in Love,” just began a run at the NJ Rep — to be formal, that’s the New Jersey Repertory Company — in Long Branch through August 10.
“How” is based on a short play he wrote in 2017, and it’s not the first time he’s added music to a play. Mr. Gitter is playwright in residence at the Penguin Theater in Stony Point. Joe Brancato, the company’s artistic director and something of a mentor to him, directed a successful production of “The Sabbath Girl” and then suggested it might make a good musical. He paired Mr. Gitter with composer Neil Berg, and the two transformed “The Sabbath Girl” to “The Sabbath Girl: The Musical,” which had successful runs at Penguin and 59 East.
The genesis of “How My Grandparents Fell in Love” is similar. It was initially performed at the NJ Rep in 2017, as part of a short play festival on the theme of immigration. At some point, NJ Rep artistic director Suzann Barabas suggested that, like “The Sabbath Girl,” the story of Mr. Gitter’s grandparents could be better told with music.
Mr. Gitter is a Jersey- and Jewish-centric writer. Many of his plays (and now his book) are centered in northern New Jersey, where he grew up. His family was largely secular, but his Italian-American mother, Virginia, converted to Judaism when he was about 7 and became active in Congregation Adas Emuno in Leonia. Eventually she became the synagogue’s president. Last year, Mr. Gitter told me she would attend Friday night services “while my father was home watching the Yankees.”
“How My Grandparents Fell in Love” is, as they say, based on a true story, and it’s both Jewish and Jersey. Paternal grandfather Charles Gitter and his family emigrated from Poland to the United States in the 1920s. In 1933, Charles received word from an acquaintance in the old country claiming he had the perfect bride for him.
The friend was wrong. “By the way, it could be apocryphal, but the story I heard was that he [Charles Gitter] was kind of a mild-mannered guy who didn’t like confrontation. So when he didn’t get along with this woman and her family, he kind of slipped out of the house without saying goodbye.”
Supposedly, he walked past a hat shop in town, spotted Chava Gibber working behind the counter, and was instantly smitten. Was that how it happened?
“I don’t know the details, but that’s how I imagined it.”
Charles began to woo Chava, and over the next several days the two apparently fell in love. He wanted to bring her back to the States and get married, but she resisted. Theirs was a rom-com courtship. Though she knew the odds were long because she was Jewish, Chava was scholarly and hoped to get into university. And, yes, there was antisemitism in the town of Rovno, but Jews made up half the population, and many thought nothing serious would happen.
I mention that this was a surprisingly prevalent sentiment among European Jews, who often missed opportunities to get out before it was too late.
“I learned that the reason the rest of them stayed is this was their home, and they couldn’t fathom — I mean, yes, there was antisemitism — but they couldn’t fathom the scope of what was to come.”
That changed for Chava when her younger brother was beaten by a group of fascists, and rocks were thrown through her hat shop window and those of other Jewish-owned stores.
As noted in the play, Charles brought Chava back to Hoboken. She was the only member of her family to survive the war.
I wanted to hear more. Charles, who ran a leather goods shop, prospered, Mr. Gitter continued. The store was successful, and he even bought real estate. “They never became wealthy, but they had a nice middle-class existence.
“She never ended up pursuing higher education but was very involved in teaching Yiddish and Hebrew classes. I think she taught at a synagogue in Hoboken and was involved with YIVO, the Yiddish Institute in New York.”
His grandfather died before Mr. Gitter was born, but he has many fond memories of Chava, called Eva in the States. She lived not far from his family, and he was frequently deposited there. He remembers reading to her in Hebrew from issues of Mishpacha magazine.
“My grandmother rarely talked about [Europe and] that part of her life,” he said. “When she talked about relatives who were murdered, all she would say was ‘Hitler got them.’ Those three words were all she would say: ‘Hitler got them.’”
There is some irony to the fact that some of the scenes and emotions described in the play set almost a century ago are very contemporary. “I know,” Mr. Gitter said. “It’s interesting because when I first wrote the short play, it was in the spring of 2017, right after Trump’s first inauguration. The play had a lot of contemporary relevance eight years ago, and now for many reasons in terms of immigration and antisemitism it has a lot of relevance again.
“To be honest — and this is unfortunate — the issues of persecution, immigration, and marginalization seem to always be timely.”
Tickets are at njrep.org.
comments