SuzAnne and Gabor Barabas are preparing to launch a multimillion-dollar fund-raising campaign to expand facilities of the New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch. Photo by Jill Huber
Sidebar
A historical threadMarch 04, 2008
When the New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch opened its doors in 1997, founders SuzAnne and Gabor Barabas were confident that the project would be a success.
Since then, the company has gained a following by developing and producing new plays for the American stage and playing a role in the redevelopment of Long Branch — not to mention its commitment to producing a number of plays with Jewish themes.
“As a Jewish woman, I’m naturally drawn to plays with a Jewish theme — I’m drawn to my landsmen,” SuzAnne Barabas said. “The Jewish community has always supported NJ Rep, and we’re committed to presenting plays that they will be drawn to.”
Barabas estimates that almost 50 percent of their audience has been Jewish.
“They support every production, whether or not the play has a Jewish theme,” she said. “The part of Jewish culture that loves theater continues to evolve through the generations.”
Now, 10 years, 60 performances, 300 script-in-hand readings, and countless table readings later, SuzAnne, the company’s artistic director, and Gabor, the executive producer, are preparing to launch a $10 million fund-raising campaign that will relocate and expand the company’s facilities.
The Long Branch couple, who have been married for 40 years and are the parents of two grown children, plan to hire a professional fund-raising firm to direct the campaign.
“This is a very early stage of the capital campaign,” Gabor said. “Right now, we’re looking for a person or a company that would like to have their name on the theater building in exchange for a substantial donation. And because we’ve been the recipients of so much generosity during the past decade, we believe this may happen.”
The company’s current home at 179 Broadway was donated to the group in 1997 by Margaret and David Lumia. In February 2007, Long Branch approved a memorandum of understanding between the city, Cornerstone Entertainment International of California, and Broadway Center.
The center, which is slated to be a mixed-use arts, entertainment, retail, and residential project on lower Broadway, includes a new building for NJ Rep several blocks east of its current location. The center is part of an ongoing revitalization effort in Long Branch; plans are to begin construction this year, with the opening scheduled for spring 2010.
The future home of NJ Rep will take the company to another level in play development and performance possibilities, Gabor said. The current theater building has a seating capacity of 62; the new four-story building will house a professional acting school, an art gallery, and two performance spaces with room for, respectively, 270 and 100 audience members, he said.
After the new theater is open, the 179 Broadway location will continue to serve as a performance venue, Gabor said.
Dream of Yiddish theater
The decade-long play list includes Find Me a Voice, which deals with the Holocaust; Immortal Interlude, which deals with anti-Semitism; Housewives of Mannheim, about four Jewish women who live in the same Brooklyn apartment building during World War II; Klonsky and Schwartz, about two Jewish men who became prominent poets during the 1950s; and Bookends, which focuses on the true story of two Jewish women in New York, friends since childhood, who became noted collectors of rare books.
NJ Rep’s Bookends (July 2007) was about Leona Rostenberg (Susan G. Bob), left, and Madeleine Stern (Kathleen Goldpaugh), two Jewish women in New York who were noted rare book collectors. It was one of the company’s many Jewish-themed shows.
SuzAnne said the theater always has been an integral part of her own Jewish heritage. During her childhood, she often accompanied her parents and grandparents to New York’s Yiddish theater.
And for the past five years, Gabor, whose parents were Holocaust survivors, has been exploring ways to bring Yiddish theater to Long Branch.
“This is part of my dream,” he said. “A strong motivating factor is that the Yiddish culture was virtually destroyed during World War II. A very vital language and cultural tradition were brought to the brink of extinction.”
After the company moves to its new facility, SuzAnne and Gabor Barabas will expand their efforts to find new productions that will appeal to Jewish, Latino, African-American, and other diverse audiences.
“Theater is a people-to-people experience,” Gabor Barabas said. “We feel that way about our productions and we see the capital campaign in much the same way. For the past 10 years, we’ve tried to find innovative works that reach out to our audience. With the help of the generous people who have always come to see what we do, we’ll look to future with an abundance of hope.”
Additional information about the New Jersey Repertory Company is available on-line or from the company office at 732-229-3166.
A historical thread
SUZANNE AND GABOR Barabas met during their early teens when both lived in Brooklyn. While she majored in theater at Brooklyn College, her future husband was earning degrees in English literature and premed at New York University. Gabor credits SuzAnne with taking him to see Baker Street, his first Broadway production.
The couple, who now live in Long Branch, were married in 1967. In 1970, they moved to Ohio, where Gabor attended medical school at the University of Cincinnati. The pair cofounded the Cincinnati Repertory Company in 1970. After he joined the medical residency program at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia five years later, they cofounded the American Repertory Theater of Philadelphia.
When they moved to New Jersey during the 1980s, Gabor created the division of child neurology at Rutgers Medical School, now known as Robert Wood Johnson Medical Center. He became a pediatric neurologist at Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch in 1984, and retired in 2005.
Along the way, SuzAnne and Gabor Barabas produced and directed stage productions and wrote music, poetry, and plays — and created NJ Rep. SuzAnne also was the founding director of Arts Access, an arts program for physically challenged children and adults at the Matheny Medical and Educational Center in Peapack.
“The theater’s role is to have an ongoing and responsible dialogue with the community,” SuzAnne said. “The dialogue is the play itself, and the play is the voice of the repertory company.”
The couple’s Jewish heritage is a source of pride tinged with sadness. Although SuzAnne’s Russian grandparents passed through Ellis Island and built a life in the United States, Gabor’s parents were Holocaust survivors. Most of his extended family perished in Auschwitz. In 1956, at age seven, he came to the United States from Hungary.
“Our repertory company is part of the soul of Long Branch,” he said. “We have become part of the historical thread that runs through this city.”
- Comment: comments@njjewishnews.com