CAROLINE, or CHANGEA N A U D I E N C E G U I D E

Caroline, or Change: A Synopsis

The Creation of Caroline, or Change

The origins of Caroline, or Change

in Lake Charles, Louisiana

Caroline, or Change & the Civil Rights

Movement

“The South’s Defenders”

Caroline, or Change & Jewish Culture

in the South

Notes on “The Chanukah Party”

The Value of Change

Caroline & “Lot’s Wife”

Post-Show Discussion

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Text by Rob Hartmann, Design by David BuscherCreated for The Human Race Theatre Company in collaboration

with The Muse Machine Theatre in Context, 2011.

CAROLINE, OR CHANGEBOOK BY Tony KushnerLYRICS BY Tony KushnerMUSIC BY Jeanine Tesori

CAROLINE, OR CHANGE: A SYNOPSIS

The play begins in late November 1963, as Caroline Thibodeaux does the laundry in the basement of the Gellman family home in Lake Charles, Louisiana, where she is employed as a maid. The voices of the wash-ing machine, radio, and dryer sing to her as she works.

Eight-year-old Noah watches Caroline as she works.

Caroline our maid!Caroline! Caroline! Carolinethe President of the United States!Caroline who’s always mad,

Caroline who runs everything.Caroline who’s stronger than my dad.

Rose, Noah’s new stepmother, uneasy around Caroline, offers her some

stuffed cabbage to take home to her four children. Caroline curtly

refuses and departs to wait for her bus home.

Rose makes a long-distance call to her father in New York; we learn that she has only recently married Noah’s father, Stuart, and is having some difficulty adjusting to her new life in the South. She is trying to break

Noah of his bad habit of leaving pocket change in his clothes.

Loose change. Quarters. Those add up.

The Negro maid, she’s making bupkes.How does that look, leaving change in his

pockets?

While waiting for the bus, Caroline encounters her friend Dotty, another maid. The bus arrives, sing-

ing, bearing the news that President Kennedy has been assassinated.

Rose confronts Noah with the loose change that has accu-mulated in the bleach cup (where Caroline places it after

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finding it in the laundry). Rose makes a new rule: from now on, any change that Caroline finds, she can keep.At home, Caroline listens to the radio for news about the assassination, while her teenage daughter Emmie wants to listen to music, uninterested in President Kennedy.

Say he do stuff for usget our vote, he just ignore us . . . I ain’t got no tears to shedfor no dead white guy.

Rose tells Caroline that she can keep any change she finds in the laundry. Caroline refuses – “I don’t wanna take pen-nies from a baby.”

Noah’s father, Stuart, is still in a haze of grief from his wife’s death. He forgets how old Noah is and what grade he’s in.

Isn’t that weird. It’s like a whole year, just . . .I don’t know, just disappeared.I have to get back to the clarinet.

Stuart gives Noah a raise in his allowance; Noah begins leaving quarters in his pockets deliberately for Caroline. She steadfastly refuses to take the money, but as it builds up in the bleach cup, she is tempted. Finally, she takes seventy-five cents home to her children for them to spend.

While Caroline does the ironing, Rose points out where Caroline has ironed over a quarter Stuart left in his shirt pocket. Rose says that Caroline can keep Stuart’s loose change, too. Caroline explodes. “I ain’t some ragpick. Ain’t some jackdaw.” Rose retreats, knowing she has of-fended Caroline and unsure what to do. She tells Caroline that her father is coming to visit and asks if Caroline will get Dotty and Emmie to help cater a Chanukah party.

At the party, Grandma and Grandpa Gellman, along with Rose’s father, sing about Chanukah traditions. Mr. Stopnick and Emmie get into a heated discussion about the Civil Rights movement: Mr. Stopnick criticizes Martin Luther King, Jr.’s code of nonviolent protest as too passive, while Emmie rebuts:

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I’d like to know how you come to feelyou know so much about what is real,sitting safe and high and pretty,way up North in New York City!

Caroline pulls Emmie into the kitchen and chastises her for speaking out. When Emmie argues, Caroline slaps her and departs.

Mr. Stopnick gives Noah his Chanukah present: a twenty-dollar bill. The next day, Noah daydreams about the money, only to realize that he has left it in his pants pocket. He races home to discover that Caroline has already found it. When Caroline says she’ll keep it, Noah becomes hys-terical. They explode at one another; Caroline leaves.

Caroline stays away from the Gellmans, not answering Rose’s telephone calls. Dotty stops by to find out what hap-pened, but Caroline rebuffs her questions. Caroline gives voice to her emotions, wondering what has happened to her:

That money reach in and spin me aboutmy hate rise up, rip my insides out.

Caroline returns to the Gellman’s basement, where she and Noah reach a truce. In the epilogue, Emmie sings:

I’m the daughter of a maid.in her uniform, crisp and clean!Nothing can ever make me afraid!. . . I’m the daughter of a maid.She stands alone where the harsh winds blow:Salting the earth so nothing growtoo close; but still her strong blood flow . . . Underground through hidden veins,down from storm clouds when it rains,down the plains, down the high plateau,down to the Gulf of Mexico.Down to Larry and Emmie and Jackie and Joe.The children of Caroline Thibodeaux.

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THE CREATION OF CAROLINE,

OR CHANGE

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[On writing a musical libretto] “I assume that in some sense it’s not very different from writing a play. But perhaps a better analogy is writing a screenplay, in that it’s written for another artist and then passed through a medium I don’t have any mas-tery of.” – Tony Kushner

“This story could have been Medea, but it’s not. It’s about a woman who understands that there’s nowhere to deposit her talent and intellect. She kills them off so she can advocate for the going-forward of her children.

“The idea of moving beyond the generation before you produced a lot of rancor and misplaced aggression in immigrant house-holds. I understand that legacy.” – Jeanine Tesori

Caroline, or Change first began to take shape when Tony Kushner, the Pulitzer-prize winning play-wright best known for his epic drama Angels in America, was

commissioned by the San Francisco Opera to write an opera along with composer Bobby

McFerrin. Originally, they began work on a piece based on the 19th-century short story “St. Cecilia, or the Power of Music,” by German author Heinrich von Kleist. Kushner then moved to the story of his Louisiana childhood; McFerrin ultimately decided he did not want to compose an opera and dropped out of the project.

Kushner and director George C. Wolfe then began to search for a new composer. Their first thought was Jeanine Tesori, a composer, arranger and conductor who had achieved

recognition for her off-Broadway musi-cal Violet and her score for the Lincoln

Center production of Twelfth Night.

Kushner writes in the introduction to

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(continued) the published libretto of Caroline, or Change:

“Jeanine turned us down, for a variety of reasons. She felt the script was too complete, assuming I wouldn’t do rewrites – this was before we’d met.

“George and I, disappointed, spent another year looking for a composer, not agreeing on or even finding any other suitable can-didates. Then Jeanine and I were asked to collaborate on a score for a musical based on a film. . . . We wrote a couple of songs together, she realized that I like rewriting, we realized we liked each other, we realized we didn’t care much for the adaptation we were supposed to be doing, at which point I proposed that she take another look at Caroline.”

The project began a long process of development at the Public Theater in New York. Musicals often begin as read-ings, where the actors perform the play at music stands. The next stage is a workshop, in which a musical will be staged by a director with minimal production elements (no costumes or set pieces).

Caroline, or Change began with a first reading of the libretto (without music) in the spring of 1999. In August of 2000, another reading followed, where actress Tonya Pinkins took on the role of Caroline Thibodeaux for the first time.

In 2001, the first act of the musical was composed and was given a workshop presentation; a year later, another work-shop was held when the music to both acts was complete.

In the spring of 2003, a final workshop was presented, fol-lowed by the off-Broadway premiere in November. Even then, the authors were still revising their work.

As John Lahr wrote in The New Yorker article, “After Angels”:

Taking issue with Kushner is not easy. “It’s like standing in front of a Mack truck,” Tesori says. A few days before the show was to open on Broadway, she and Kushner still hadn’t fine-tuned the epilogue. [Director George C.] Wolfe insisted that he needed the scene the following night. Sitting at a table in her studio, Tesori said to Kushner, “It’s too long.”

“No, it’s not,” he replied. “Sometimes you need length. ‘Angels’ is

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(continued) full of places that shouldn’t work but do, and they’re long.”

“I don’t care what worked in that,” Tesori said. “That’s not this. It’s too long.”

“Well, we’re just gonna have to agree to disagree.”

“Well, we’re just gonna have to stare at each other till one of us does something,” Tesori said.

For ten minutes or so, Kushner and Tesori stared at each other in silence.

Finally, he conceded, “Well, maybe we can move the first line?”

Tesori recalls. “I said, ‘Maybe we could.’ Then he started shifting.”

In May of 2004, the production opened on Broadway. It was nominated for six Tony awards, including Best Musical, Best Book, Best Score, Best Director, and Best Actress for Tonya Pinkins’ performance as Caroline. Anika Noni Rose, in the role of Caroline’s daughter Emmie, won a Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.

THE ORIGINS OF CAROLINE,

OR CHANGE IN LAKE

CHARLES, LOUSIANA

“Caroline, or Change tells a story I’ve been thinking about for many years. It’s partly based on an incident from my childhood, grounded in memories from my early life. I wanted to write about race relations, the Civil Rights movement, and African-Americans and southern Jews in the early 1960s, a time of protean change sweeping the country – and to write about these things from the perspective of a small, somewhat isolated south-ern town. I grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana during this pe-riod. Change was taking place in Lake Charles, of course, but in a more subterranean fashion, and at a different pace, than elsewhere in America.” – Tony Kushner, from The inTroduC-Tion To The published sCripT of Caroline, or Change.

The city of Lake Charles lies in southwestern Louisiana, about two hundred miles west of New Orleans. In 1963, when Caroline, or Change takes place, Lake Charles was home to approximately 63,000 people, with another 82,000 in the surrounding area (Calcasieu Parish). The population at the time was

roughly 75% white and 25% African-American; today, it’s almost evenly split between white and black citizens.

Tony Kushner based the Gellman family in Caroline, or Change on his own fam-ily: eight-year-old Noah is a combination of Tony Kushner and his younger brother, Eric; Tony Kush-ner’s father, William, is a clarinetist, and his mother, Sylvia, played the bassoon.

William Kushner and Sylvia Deutscher met while play-ing with the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra. In the orchestral seating ar-

rangement, the first clarinetist sits next to the first bas-soonist. After marrying in 1948, they pursued their musi-cal careers in New York, playing in the orchestra of the New York City Opera. Their daughter Lesley was born in

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(continued) 1954, followed by Tony in 1956. Two years later, the family

moved to Lake Charles, where William’s parents owned a lumber business. Sylvia taught bassoon, while William eventually became the conductor of the local symphony. Their son Eric was born in 1961. Tony Kushner has said of his mother’s bassoon playing, “That nasal but open-throated, deep wooden vibrato sound echoed through my childhood.”

The Kushners lived near the lake, just around the corner from the fictional address of the Gellman home in Caro-line, or Change, 913 St. Anthony Street (St. Anthony Street exists – but number 913 does not). In 1960, Mrs. Kushner hired a maid, Maudie Lee Davis, who would work for the Kushner family for the next 45 years, and who would even-tually become the inspiration for the character of Caroline Thibodeaux.

Tony Kushner is adamant that the story of Caroline, or Change is not completely autobiographical:

“This is not a story that actually happened. My mother didn’t die when I was eight years old, thank God. But she did get very sick with cancer when I was twelve, [which] provoked a lot of difficulties in our lives.

“My mother was a progressive woman. I think she was uncom-fortable having an African-American woman doing her laundry in the middle of the Civil Rights movement. She grew up in great poverty in the Bronx. She believed that every nickel we left in our clothes was a treasure.”

Ms. Davis, the mother of six, took the bus to the Kushner home five days a week, where she cleaned, cooked, and did the laundry. (Just as in the play, the Kushner home had a basement, which was rare for Louisiana.)

Tony Kushner recalls, “I was impressed with her reserve, her incredible strength and dignity, and I guess a certain sense of courage.” Sylvia Kushner’s cancer eventually returned, and she passed away in 1990. Ms. Davis continued to work for Wil-liam Kushner once a week in Lake Charles. In 2004, when Caroline, or Change opened on Broadway, Ms. Davis and her

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daughter Carolyn attended opening night. After the per-formance, Tony Kushner approached her for her reaction:

“I asked her, ‘Do you think that character is anything like you? ‘She said that she loved ‘Caroline.’ It made her cry. And she told me that she liked Caroline, the character.. But no, she said: They weren’t the same.

“But her daughter was standing right behind her, making faces at me! I understood.

“She thought that I had gotten her mother just right.”

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CAROLINE, OR CHANGE & THE CIVIL

RIGHTS MOVEMENT

“One of my most vivid memories from childhood is from the day of Martin Luther King’s funeral. I watched it on TV with Maudie Lee Davis, the woman who worked as my family’s maid. Maudie cried throughout the broadcast, and I was both fright-ened and impressed. I felt her powerful grief connected us, her and me and my quiet hometown, with the struggle I knew was being waged in the world, in history. It was an instant in which one feels that one is being changed as the world is changed, and I believe I was.” – Tony Kushner

mr. sTopniCK:Yes I know it worked just dandyfor that Indian Mr. Gandhibut with respect for Martin Luther King –

emmie:I think it’s a Negro thing,

a southern thing,a Christian thing.Mister, you don’t under-

standhow Dr. King has got things planned.

In Caroline, or Change, Emmie (Caroline’s daughter) and Mr. Stopnick (Rose’s father, visiting from New York) get into a heated discussion about the tactics of nonviolent resistance advocated by Dr. Mar-tin Luther King, Jr. in the quest for equal rights for Afri-can-Americans.

Dr. King was deeply influenced by the work of Mohandas K. Gandhi, who led nonviolent revolt against British colo-nial rule in India. After hearing about Mr. Gandhi’s life in a speech, he investigated further. Dr. King wrote,

“ . . . I became deeply fascinated by his campaigns of non-violent resistance. As I delved deeper into the philosophy of Gandhi, my skepticism concerning the power of love gradu-

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ally diminished, and I came to see for the first time its potency in the area of social reform.

“I believed the ‘turn-the-other-cheek’ philosophy and the ‘love-your-enemies’ philosophy were only valid when individuals were in conflict with other individuals; when racial groups and nations were in conflict, a more realistic approach seemed neces-sary. But after reading Gandhi, I saw how utterly mistaken I was.”

Dr. King first came to national prominence during the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott in 1955. After Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat on the bus to a white passenger, Dr. King (pastor of the Dex-ter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery), along with other African-American leaders, organized a boycott of the bus company which lasted over a year. The boycott ended only when the Supreme Court declared Alabama’s segrega-tion laws unconstitutional.

Dr. King became a national leader in the struggle for civil rights. In 1963, the year that Caroline, or Change takes place, Dr. King lead nonviolent sit-ins in Birmingham, Alabama, which spurred the Birmingham police to attack the pro-testors with fire hoses and police dogs. The images of the Birmingham police’s brutality (led by the chief of police Eugene “Bull” Connor) against the peaceful marchers turned public sentiment further against segregation.

grandpa and grandma gellman:Let’s wish our Negro neighbors well

mr. sTopniCK:And may Bull Connor roast in hell!

Arrested during the protests, Dr. King wrote his well-known “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”:

“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed. . . . For years now I have heard the word ‘wait!’ It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This

‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’ We must come to see,

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with one of our distinguished jurists, that ‘justice too long de-layed is justice denied.’”

In August of 1963, he lead the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where, on the steps of the Lincoln Me-morial, he delivered his speech, “I Have A Dream.”

“Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

“And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomor-row, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

“I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

“I have a dream today!”

In 1964, Dr. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; he continued to work tirelessly for the political and social equality of African-Americans. On April 4, 1968, he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. His funeral was held on April 9th, 1968. It was watched by millions on television – including, in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Maudie Lee Davis and twelve-year-old Tony Kushner.

The bus:I am the Orphan Ship of State!Drifting! Driverless!

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Moving slowneath my awful freight of woe.The earth,the earth has bled.The presidentOh blight November winter nightthe president is dead.

Caroline and doTTy:That can’t be.

The bus:Some man kill him.Dead in Dallas.

Caroline, or Change begins on Novem-ber 22, 1963, the day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

Kennedy had come to Texas in preparation for campaign-ing for re-election in 1964: winning Texas and Florida would be crucial. On Friday morning, November 22nd, President Kennedy gave a speech in Fort Worth, Texas and then made the short flight to Dallas, where he and Mrs. Kennedy were met by Texas Governor John Connally and his wife.

The Kennedys and the Connallys were driven in an open convertible on a route through downtown Dallas toward the Trade Mart, where President Kennedy was expected to make a speech. As the motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza at 12:30 p.m., President Kennedy was struck by gun-shots to the head and neck. Governor Connally was shot in the chest. The President was rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 1:00 pm. Vice President Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as President at 2:48 p.m. aboard Air Force One.

The lament sung by the bus in Caroline, or Change recalls Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1850 epic poem, “The Building of the Ship”:

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!

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Sail on, o union, strong and great!Humanity with all its fears,With all the hopes of future years,Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

In Caroline, or Change, the “ship of state” is reimagined as a bus – where the Civil Rights movement had begun with the Montgomery bus boycott.

grandma and grandpa gellman:JfK, JfK

beat the Russians, saved the day,stopped the Jew-haters and their bomb,stopped their nuclear pogrom.Dedicated to undoAmerican anti-Semites too!Friend to the colored, friend to the Jew.

“Ask not what your countrycan do for you!”

In his inaugural address, President Kennedy said,

“In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maxi-mum danger. I do not shank from this responsibility — I wel-come it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavour will light our country and all who serve it — and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

“And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.

“My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”

In his first year in office, President Kennedy clashed with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. At the Vienna Summit, Kennedy intended to reach an agreement on a nuclear test ban with Khrushchev but was met with steadfast, stubborn refusal to negotiate.

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In 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union found themselves in conflict over the ussr’s installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba. After a tense faceoff, during which time it seemed that nuclear war was inevitable, Kennedy man-aged to avert disaster. The ussr removed the weapons in exchange for assurances that the United States would not try to invade Cuba.

doTTy:JfK, JfK

swore to help black folk some daySure he was a little slow,getting round to doing so,but he swore it and I knowhe was set to help our cause,meant to pass some proper laws.

Kennedy reached a narrow electoral victory by appealing to a broad spectrum of minority voters. He was seen as a supporter of equal rights for black Americans and received over seventy percent of the African-American vote.

Once elected, his progress toward enacting civil rights leg-islation was slow. Hindered by a slim congressional major-ity, he was unable to make headway for two years.

In June of 1963, he addressed the nation on television, after the Alabama National Guard was required to enforce the admittance of two students at the University of Ala-bama.

He said, in part:

“It ought to be possible, in short, for every American to enjoy the privileges of being American without regard to his race or his color. In short, every American ought to have the right to be treated as he would wish to be treated, as one would wish his children to be treated. But this is not the case.

. . .

“I am, therefore, asking the Congress to enact legislation giving all Americans the right to be served in facilities which are open

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to the public--hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, and similar establishments.

“This seems to me to be an elementary right. Its denial is an arbi-trary indignity that no American in 1963 should have to endure, but many do.”

After President Kennedy’s assassination, President John-son advocated for the passage of the legislation, saying to Congress, “No memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy’s memory than the earliest possible passage of the Civil Rights bill for which he fought so long.”

President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on July 2, 1964. The Act barred most forms of racial discrimi-nation, including unequal requirements for voter regis-tration, segregation of schools and public facilities, and discriminatory employment and housing practices.

doTTy and grandma and grandpa gellman:Toleration for all men!We shall not see his like again.He is gone now, JfK …

THE SOUTH’S DEFENDERS

doTTy:What did I tell you?That courthouse statue,Confederate soldier?You see the TV news last night?Found the headless bodyin Choo Choo Bayouwrapt in a flag, in the muddy Stars and Bars…Can’t find the head. They’s agitated,

“Johnny Reb’s decapitated!”…Ugly thing. Ugly thing!The South’s Defender.Hey! Cracker Joe,lee surrendered!

In Caroline, or Change, the characters discuss a statue of a Confederate soldier that is toppled from its place on the courthouse lawn.

It is found in a bayou – without its head. In Lake Charles, Louisiana, there is indeed a statue at the courthouse called “The South’s Defenders,” nick-

named “Johnny Reb.”

The six-foot, 200-pound copper statue of a Confeder-ate soldier, perched on a high marble column, was com-missioned by the local chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy and unveiled June 3, 1915. Unlike similar Confederate memorials, this soldier holds a flag instead of a rifle. The base carries the dates of the Civil War, 1861 – 1985, and the words “Our Heroes.”

As of 2011, the statue still stands at the corner of Ryan and Kirby Streets in front of Calcasieu Parish Courthouse in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Although it was never decapitated, it did survive once being thrown from its column. A hur-ricane in 1918 blew the statue off its base: it’s

said that the statue flipped in mid-air and land-ed on its feet on the lawn of the courthouse. It has survived other hurricanes throughout the

years with minimal damage. In the early 1990s, the statue was repaired, and rededicated in 1995.

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& JEWISH CULTURE IN THE SOUTH

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“. . . let me tell you about the kind of Jew I am. Having spent more than half my life in psychotherapy and half in theater, I am incapable of beginning anything without first confessing to a feeling of fraudulence, and tonight that feeling is pronounced, so let me start by telling you what a half-baked, half-formed, reformed, dummermann kind of Jew I am.

“. . . Hebrew- and Yiddish-illiterate, I barely know how to pray; riddled with ambivalence, child of Marx, Freud, Mahler, Benja-min, Kafka, Goldman, Luxemburg, Trotsky, Anski, Schoenberg, mongrel product of Judaism’s and of Jewish exteriority, of its ghetto-hungry curiosity, of its assimilationist genius, I now ap-proach Judaism as Jews once approached the splendid strange-ness of the Goyishe Velt: I am shall we say deeply confused, but not complacent. And this I think of course is profoundly Jewish.” – Tony Kushner, from his noTes on The KlezmaTiCs’ Cd, “pos-sessed.”

The first recorded Jewish settler reached the small village of Lake Charles (population 500) in 1879. He was Leopold Kaufman, originally from Alsace-Lorraine, France. Eventually he would become one of the leading citizens of the town, helping to organize the build-

ing of Temple Sinai in 1904 (where, many years later, the Kushner family would be members of the congregation).

The American South is not usually thought of as a haven of Jewish culture. Although today only a

small fraction of southerners are Jewish (ap-proximately one percent), this was not always

the case. Some of America’s earliest Jewish settlements were in Savannah, New Orleans, and Charleston, South Carolina. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Charleston’s Jewish com-munity was the largest in the country.

Many Jewish settlers in the southern U.S. made their liv-ing in the mercantile trade, beginning by traveling from town to town, and eventual-ly choosing a community in which to open a business.

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(continued) Many southern small towns had what was known as the

“Jew store,” a dry-goods store run by the local Jewish fam-ily. A number of these businesses would eventually grow into major department stores.

Although anti-Semitism was certainly present at times, most southern Jews assimilated fairly easily into their com-munities, becoming leaders in business and civic organiza-tions.

One of the greatest difficulties that Jews living in the South faced was the challenge of maintaining religious and cultural traditions in small, isolated Jewish communities. Excluding Florida, which has a growing Jewish popula-tion because of its popularity as a retirement destination, the number of Jews across the South has been slowly and steadily declining.

The Jewish population of the entire state of Louisiana was estimated in 1960 to be 16,500. This number has remained almost unchanged, while the overall population of the state has grown considerably: from approximately 3,250,000 in 1960 to almost 4,500,000 in 2000. In Lake Charles, the Jewish population is estimated to be one-tenth of one percent of the current population of 69,000: ap-proximately 69 people.

Temple Sinai, where Tony Kushner had his bar mitzvah in 1970, still stands in Lake Charles. The Temple recently produced its first rabbinical student in its hundred-year history, Rebekah Goldman.

NOTES ON “THE CHANUKAH

PARTY”

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The gellmans and mr. sTopniCK:Chanukah oh Chanukah,oh Dreidel and Menorah!We celebrate it even thoughit isn’t in the Torah!

. . .

rose:You may think it’s December,but Noah, dear, remember,tonight is Kislev Twenty-Five

Chanukah (often spelled Hanukkah) is the eight-day Festival of Lights, celebrated beginning on Kislev

Twenty-Five (the 25th day of the third month of the Hebrew calendar, which falls in November or De-cember).

The festival commemo-rates the “Chanukah Miracle”: in the second century bce, the Macca-bees in Jerusalem revolted against the forces of King Antiochus. After the bat-tle, they discovered they had only enough oil to keep the menorah (cande-labrum) burning for one day. Amazingly, the flame lasted for eight days.

In Caroline, or Change, the Gellman family celebrates Chanukah with a number of traditional practices:

• Lighting the menorah, the nine-branched candleabrum.

The menorah holds one can-

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dle for each night of Chanukah, plus an additional candle, the shamash, which is used to light the others.

• Noah says the traditional blessing as he lights the first candle:

Boruch ata adonai eloheinumelech ha’olam asherkidshanu b’mitzvotavvitzivanoo l’hadlich nershel Chanukah

which means:

“Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of the universe, Who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to kindle the Hanukkah light.”

• The elder Gellmans mention the dreidel. A dreidel is a four-sided top; each face of the top is inscribed with a He-brew letter. These four letters – Nun, Gimel, Hey, Shin – are an acronym for the Hebrew phrase Nes Gadol Haya Sham, which means “A great miracle happened there.”

• Caroline prepares latkes for the Gellman family. The potato pancakes, a traditional Chanukah food, are fried in chicken fat and served with applesauce.

• Noah receives Chanukah gelt (in Yiddish, gelt means mon-ey). Gelt can come in the form of chocolate “coins,” or can be a gift of actual currency, from coins to larger amounts. Noah is given a twenty-dollar bill, which becomes pivotal in the story of Caroline, or Change.

NOAH: Know why they’re fried in chicken fat?EMMIE: To crisp ‘em up.NOAH: To symbolize the temple oil.EMMIE: How about the goose? Does that mean something?NOAH: That’s just food.

A bisl Yiddish (A little Yiddish)Yiddish, which means Jewish, is a language originating in Eastern Europe, combining elements of German, Hebrew,

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and other languages. Here are some of the Yiddish terms used by the Gellman family:

oy vontzeleh, oy pishkeleh: A vontz is a bedbug; used in the diminutive form, vontzeleh, it’s a term of endearment from grandparents to grandchild – like calling someone “cute as a bug.” Pishkeleh is something like calling someone fondly

“little squirt.” (Interestingly, a pishka is a little jar where one would keep loose coins.)

such a shonde, such a tsimmes: Shonde = a shame. Tsimmes = a fuss

“Down with the filthy capitalist chazzerim”: Chazzerim = pigs, greedy persons. A chazzer is a person who eats greedily, like an animal.

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THE VALUE OF CHANGE

Caroline:There’s almost a dollarsome weeks in the bleach cup.My kids could go down to the dime store and getthe shiny junk they make tocatch a kid’s eye.And what they sees andwhat they wantsthey could buy.Stuff I can’t buy em now,always in the lurch.Some weeks I could eventithe at church.

As the loose change from Noah’s pockets gradually accumulates in Caroline’s bleach cup, both Caroline and Noah imagine what could be bought with the dimes, nickels, and quarters.

In 1963, a dollar had greater buying power than it does today. Fifteen cents in 1963 would buy about what a dol-lar does in 2011. The dollar

that Noah leaves in his pants pocket would be equivalent to

roughly seven dollars today. And the worth of Noah’s Chanukah gift of twenty

dollars? Almost $150.

Some advertisements in the November 22, 1963 issue of the local paper in Lake

Charles list the following prices:

• four men’s white dress shirts for $12.50

• a pair of wool blend dress pants for $10.98

• adult movie ticket, 90 cents; child’s movie ticket, 25 cents

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• new houses ranging from $9.500 to $20,000

Interestingly, the prices for a high-end television were higher than what they would be today: a 23” color televi-sion mounted in a cabinet with radio and speakers was offered for $399 – about $2,800 in modern dollars. (As technology has advanced, the price for electronics has dropped over the years.)

Caroline:And I am mean and I am toughbut thirty dollars ain’t enough.

Caroline’s thirty-dollar-a-week salary translates into about $215 today – around $5.40 an hour for a forty-hour week.

The classified ads in a 1963 Lake Charles newspaper are a reminder of how employment law has changed: jobs were separated into “Male Help Wanted” and “Female Help Wanted.” Some of the “Male Help Wanted Ads” offered to pay $95 a week for “manager trainees” or $1.95 an hour ($78 a week) for a traveling sales position. Under “Female Help Wanted,” some ads specified things like “Middle-aged white lady to live in and do housekeeping”; “Colored girl wanted to live in, do housework and babysitting”; “House-keeper, white or colored, live on premises, care for two small children.”

The long-distance call that Rose has with her father would have been somewhat expensive: approximately one dollar (in 1963 dollars) for the first three minutes!

CAROLINE & “LOT’S WIFE”

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Caroline:Pocket change change me, pocket change change me,can’t afford loose change, can’t afford change,changin’s a danger for a woman like me,trapped tween the Devil and the muddy brown sea.. . . Take Caroline away cause I can’t be her,take her away I can’t afford her.Tear out my heartstrangle my soulturn me to salt a pillar of salt

cAroline’s climActic moment in Caro-line, or Change is entitled “Lot’s Wife.” The biblical char-acter of Lot’s Wife appears in Genesis, Chapter 19:

“And when the morning arose, then the angels hastened Lot, saying, Arise, take thy wife, and thy two daughters, which are here; lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city.. . . “And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind

thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the moun-tain, lest thou be consumed.

. . . “Then the lord rained upon Sodom and upon

Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the lord out of heaven;

“And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the

ground.

“But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.”

James Fisher, in his book Understand-ing Tony Kushner, writes:

“. . . Kushner stresses that ‘Caroline is a

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CARO

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WIFE

” (continued) woman who loses her mobility. She can’t stop grieving over loss-

es . . . her face is turned to the past. She wants to go back, but the terrible lesson of history is that she can’t.’ She cannot move forward, either; things are changing, the stasis she has been mired in (and clings to) is shifting, but she cannot see a place for herself in the new order. To survive her grief, Caroline closes off her emotions; she goes on but in a detached state in which she can function in the muteness of slavery, a slavery not ended for black women even a hundred years after the Civil War.”

POST-SHOW DISCUSSION

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• Caroline, or Change has been described as a “pocket op-era.” Why do you think the authors made the decision to set all the dialogue to music? Can you imagine Caro-line, or Change as a play without music? How might it be different?

• Caroline, or Change has several inanimate objects which sing: the radio, the washer, the dryer, the bus, the moon. Why do you think these characters were included? Did they add to the story for you? Why, or why not?

• Is there a particular character you identified with? Why?

• Compare the parent-child relationship between Caro-line and her daughter Emmie, and between Stuart and his son Noah. Are there similarities?

• Veanne Cox, the actress who played Rose Stopnick Gell-man in the original production of Caroline, or Change, has said that the role was difficult to play at times be-cause of the audience’s reaction to the character:

“. . . it was very difficult to go back to 1963 and play to an audience that exists in 2004 and do the things that I’m asked to do, which is to offer [Caroline] literally pennies. And it’s embarrassing. One of my greatest achievements in the role is just getting over my own reaction to the pettiness of the gesture in today’s ideals. . . . I felt like I apologized a lot just for my existence.”

What was your own reaction to Rose and her interac-tions with Noah and Caroline? Could she have done anything differently?

• Authors Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori have said they wanted to play against audience expectations in Caroline, or Change. Was there anything about the story which surprised you? Were you expecting the story to turn out differently than it did?

• How do Caroline and Noah change one another?

• Why do you think the authors chose to end the play with Emmie, rather than with Caroline (or Noah)?