Inside A.C.T.

By Elspeth Sweatman From the cost of a gallon of milk to the top radio hits, here are some facts and figures about the year that inspired the story of A Walk on the Moon —1969! A young girl reading the Washington Post , July 21, 1969. Photo by Jack Weir. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons. US President Richard M. Nixon Population San Francisco: 715,600 United States: 202,676,900 World: 3,609,000,000 Cost of Living Value of today’s dollar: $6.94 Average income: $8,550 per year Minimum wage: $1.60 per hour Average new car: $2,000 Gallon of gas: $0.35 Average house: $27,900 Gallon of milk: $1.10 Dozen eggs: $0.62 Pound of sugar: $0.12 Black-and-white television: $125 Color television: $800 Autographed posed publicity photo of Barbra Streisand for 1969 film Hello, Dolly!  Courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Top-Grossing Movies 1. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 2. Midnight Cowboy 3. Easy Rider 4. Hello, Dolly! 5. Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice...

By Taylor Steinbeck Actor and filmmaker Tony Goldwyn originally signed onto the 1999 film A Walk on the Moon as a producer, but once he started working on the script with screenwriter Pamela Gray, his priorities shifted. After two years of rewrites, there was still no director, so Goldwyn—eager to preserve the script's vision—stepped up to the plate. Nearly 20 years after Goldwyn’s directorial debut, with Moon now a successful musical on the Geary stage, we called up the star of ABC’s Scandal to find out why this story remains so close to his heart. Tony Goldwyn, director of the 1999 film  A Walk on the Moon,  joins Pamela Gray, screenwriter of Moon and book writer of the musical ,  at the Toronto Film Festival for the world premiere of their 2010 film Conviction . Courtesy Pamela Gray. What initially drew you to Pamela Gray’s script? The Catskill bungalow colonies was a part of the Jewish experience I was not raised in at all and it was so colorful and fabu...

By Simon Hodgson High above the Hudson River in upstate New York, the Catskill Mountains are among the most picturesque regions in the United States. For hundreds of thousands of Jewish households between 1910 and 1970, the Catskills became their summer destination. For non-Orthodox households, such as the Kantrowitz family and their friends in A Walk on the Moon , this region represented a rural retreat whose bungalows created a tight-knit community. The bungalow colonies were made up of modest, detached, two-bedroom cabins with their own bathroom and cooking facilities. By the 1940s and ’50s, kucheleins (private rooms with shared kitchens) and bungalow colonies (such as the fictional Dr. Fogler’s in Moon ) attracted more than 80 percent of the region’s Jewish vacationers every year. Marty (Jonah Platt) and Pearl (Katy Brayben) talk outside their bungalow in A.C.T. ’ s 2018 production of A Walk on the Moon . Courtesy @jonahplatt on Instagram. Days in the bungalow colonies w...

By Elspeth Sweatman Looking back, the summer of 1969 seems idyllic. A hamburger cost 10 cents, a gallon of gas, 35. But throughout those dog days, a sense of revolution was sweeping the nation. On the streets, beehive hairdos were giving way to tie-dye shirts and bell-bottom jeans. On the airwaves, girl groups were competing with rock ’n’ roll and protest anthems. On television, Bonanza was followed by footage of the Vietnam War. Like Pearl and Alison in A Walk on the Moon , many Americans felt they were on the cusp of radical change. Here’s a snapshot of America in that life-changing year. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin salutes the US flag. Photo by Neil Armstrong/NASA. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Burning Draft Cards On June 27, Life magazine published photos of the 241 American soldiers killed in Vietnam during a one-week period. The public response was immediate, visceral, and divided. By 1969, US armed forces had been in Vietnam for almost 15 years. Although most Americans ini...

By Taylor Steinbeck Later this month, 18-year-old Nina Kissinger will not only be crossing her high school stage to receive a diploma, but she will also be gracing the Geary stage for her professional theater debut in A.C.T.’s A Walk on the Moon . We sat down with this over-the-moon emerging actor to ask her about how she got cast and what the character of Myra means to her. Nina Kissinger (Myra) and Brigid O'Brien (Alison) at the first rehearsal of A.C.T.'s 2018 production of A Walk on the Moon . Photo by Taylor Steinbeck. Can you tell us about the audition process? I had heard that A.C.T. was auditioning for a brand-new musical, since I’m in the building a lot for the Young Conservatory's high school musical ensemble. I had auditions for college programs coming up, so I thought it would be good to get some audition practice. I went into the room withmy Carole King song, and casting immediately asked me to read for Myra. They then told me to stay familiar with th...

By Elspeth Sweatman From his early days growing up in a Jewish family in Glasgow, Scotland, composer and lyricist Paul Scott Goodman dreamed of combining his two passions: musical theater and rock ’n’ roll. After playing in punk bands in Glasgow and London, Goodman moved to New York City in 1984 to make his dream a reality. Drawing inspiration from pop pianist Elton John, punk rocker Johnny Rotten, and Broadway stalwarts Jerry Block ( Fiddler on the Roof ) and Stephen Sondheim ( West Side Story , A Little Night Music ), Goodman fused these genres to create a sound uniquely his own. Now, Goodman is melding his rock ’n’ roll, singer-songwriter sound with his Jewish roots for A.C.T.’s Walk on the Moon . We caught up with Goodman to get a behind-the-scenes look at a song’s journey from its first chords to the Geary stage. Composer and lyricist Paul Scott Goodman. Courtesy Paul Scott Goodman. Why did you want to get involved with this project? Sometimes you just hear of an...

By Taylor Steinbeck Every summer from age three to fifteen, Pamela Gray was whisked away from the hubbub of New York City to the Catskill Mountains. Paying $250 for the entire season, Gray’s family lived with other working-class Jewish families in bungalow colonies. “These Jewish housewives lived in this matriarchal world,” says Gray, “where they’d be visited by vendors: the blouse man, the dress man, the bathing-suit man.” Seeing the storytelling potential in these childhood memories, Gray wrote about ’60s Borscht Belt life in her first screenplay, The Blouse Man , which later became the movie A Walk on the Moon (1999). More than ten years later, producers approached her to adapt Moon into a musical; she leaped at the opportunity. Before rehearsals in San Francisco, Gray reminisced with us about the Catskills, Woodstock, and the process of creating a new musical. Book writer Pamela Gray at the first rehearsal of A.C.T.'s 2018 production of  A Walk on the Moon . Photo by...

By Taylor Steinbeck In just a few weeks, A.C.T.'s world-premiere musical, A Walk on the Moon , will land on the Geary stage, and with it comes fresh faces, original characters, and new songs for San Francisco audiences to enjoy for the very first time. We caught up with some of the actors in  Moon to get to know their characters. The cast of A.C.T.'s 2018 production of  A Walk on the Moon  at the first rehearsal. Photo by Taylor Steinbeck. Brigid O’Brien (Alison Kantrowitz): Alison is a fiery teenager. She's fun to portray because she has a lot of emotions—anger, excitement, passion—I feel like I can relate to her in that way. Also, she’s close to my age, which helps. Sometimes in stories with young people, writers try to dumb them down, but I think our book writer, Pamela Gray, has done an amazing job of creating honest human emotions for this character. Teenage angst is so real! Jonah Platt (Marty Kantrowitz):  Marty is the patriarch of the Kantrowi...

By Taylor Steinbeck For the first rehearsal of A.C.T.'s world-premiere musical  A Walk on the Moon , 30 Grant studios took a trip back in time to the summer of 1969. “This was a time when the world was moving,” said director Sheryl Kaller, addressing the room of  Moon  creatives and A.C.T. staff members. The musical tells the story of Jewish housewife Pearl Kantrowitz, who undergoes a personal transformation after meeting a free-spirited traveling salesman. With her newfound liberation, Pearl learns how to love freely, dance like no one’s watching, and defy society’s rigid gender roles. “Pearl was my mother. She has the look my mother had in her eyes,” said Kaller. Vocal arranger AnnMarie Milazzo and director Sheryl Kaller at the first rehearsal of A.C.T.'s 2018 production of A Walk on the Moon . Photo by Taylor Steinbeck. Fueling the revolutionary spirit of the era, music director Greg Kenna and Tony Award–nominated vocal arranger AnnMarie Milazzo i...