Martha Graham Cracker tackles American Jewish History

How do you make a museum interesting when the bulk of its collection is on permanent display? Ask a one-of-a-kind Philly star to create a cabaret inspired by the exhibits. Have her narrate a guided tour that lets visitors see the museum through her eyes. That’s what the National Museum of American Jewish History (NMAJH) has decided to do.

Most museums bring in special exhibits — consider Paul Strand at PMA and William Glackens at the Barnes — create educational programs, or charge nothing. NMAJH has another approach: Let contemporary artists loose in the museum and see what happens. Last year, under a program called OPEN for Interpretation, two Philadelphia-based visual artists, Keir Johnston and Ernel Martinez, developed a textile installation as part of their "Hemmed Up" project.

This year’s expanded program invites Martha Graham Cracker, Philadelphia-based hairy drag queen and song stylist, along with musician and musical director Andrew Nelson, to see what the museum evokes.

“Our goal was to invite creative thinkers into the museum to produce creative work,” says Emily August, Director of Public Programs. “The content is inherently Jewish, although the artists may not be.”

Martha Graham Cracker meets Leonard Bernstein

Not surprisingly, Martha is particularly drawn to the many Jewish composers who dominated Broadway Musicals — Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II, and, particularly, Leonard Bernstein. Martha’s alter-ego, Dito van Reigersberg, also an actor and cofounder and co-artistic director of Pig Iron Theatre Company, sees Bernstein as “gifted, yet tortured by his inability to assert his sexuality.” He imagines a relationship between Martha and Bernstein that ignores gender and historical realities, and yet allows for a connection between them.

His plan for the cabaret is to let Martha, whom he describes as “a passionate singer and storyteller,” explore her relationships with all those Jewish composers and to sing their songs “in a way you’ve never heard them before.”

Although raised a Catholic, van Reigersberg’s mother, Stephanie Rositzky, was Jewish. In preparing this cabaret, he interviewed his mother about her own experiences of being Jewish and learned about her own struggles with assimilation. Martha, who shares a body with Dito but not their exact life histories, also had a Jewish mother — Isadora Duncan Hines, according to her NMAJH blog post. Under the law of matrilineal descent, this would make both of them Jewish.

Van Reigersberg is especially fascinated by the connection between modern Jewish and gay experiences. Both groups first tried assimilation, he says. Now they are trying to reassert their identity more clearly. It is the tension of the group versus the American emphasis on the individual.

The cabaret itself is still being developed, but however it turns out, it will be Martha and Andrew’s romp through Jewish history, with their own particular styling of familiar songs done in new ways.

It’s High Time I Said Something: Martha Graham Cracker’s Intervention at the Museum, an original cabaret, runs December 3-6, at the National Museum of American Jewish History, on the corner of 5th and Market Streets, Philadelphia. For more information, call 215-923-3811 or visit www.nmajh.org.