The Chosen
adapted by Aaron Posner & Chaim Potok
from the novel by Chaim Potok

March 21 - April 12, 2008

Directed by Brenda Williams

What begins as a bitter rivalry between Reuven and Danny, on the baseball field transforms into a unique and challenging friendship in THE CHOSEN, a play based on the celebrated novel of the same name.

In 1967, Chaim Potok burst upon the literary scene with his first novel "The Chosen," sometimes referred to as the "Jewish Catcher in the Rye." A best-seller, it was also nominated for the National Book Award, and through the years has become a must-read both in and out of the classroom.

The book was republished in 1992 in celebration of its 25th anniversary as a young reader’s classic. A film starring Rod Steiger, based on the novel, was released in 1981, and a short-lived Off-Broadway musical debuted in 1988. Before his death in 2002, Chaim Potok collaborated with theater director Aaron Posner on the stage version, which debuted in 1999. Set against the backdrop of World War II, the Holocaust and the struggle of Zionism, the plot is surprisingly not so religious or political, but very human.

The play unfolds as a memory of Reuven Malter, now grown and a rabbi. His memory reveals two teen-age boys and their fathers in 1944 in a bustling Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. Young Reuven is a modern Orthodox Jewish teen who lives with his widowed father, a respected scholar. Reuven is a math whiz and the star pitcher of his high school baseball team. "Five blocks and a world away" lives Danny Saunders, the son of a strict Hasidic tzaddik, the spiritual leader of an ultra conservative Jewish sect. Danny is a brilliant young man, the expected heir to his father's congregation and the star batter on his yeshiva's baseball team. The two teens meet on the baseball diamond as bitter rivals, and when Danny purposefully hits the ball straight at Reuven, Reuven ends up in the hospital with a concussion and a severe eye injury. When Danny chooses to visit his rival in the hospital, the two strike up an unlikely friendship.

"The Talmud says that a person should do two things for himself. One is to acquire a teacher. Do you know the other? Choose a friend," David Malter explains to his son Reuven one day. As fate would have it, when the boys befriend each other, they also acquire a teacher in the other’s father. As time passes, Danny devours novels recommended by Mr. Malter, and explores the work of Sigmund Freud, all secular literature that is strictly forbidden by his father. Through his exploration, he realizes he wants to become a psychologist. On the other hand, Reuven dives into religious debates with Danny's father, Reb Saunders, and comes to realize that he wants to be a rabbi, despite his own father's belief that he'd make a good professor. Over the course of four years, the young men, in effect, trade places and slowly reach a better understanding of their fathers, their faith and themselves.