Jerry Slaff is a member of the Dramatists Guild and has been widely produced across the United States. His first play was produced at the Cleveland Playhouse and won the grand prize in the 2019 Writer’s Digest Writing Competition. A reading of his provocative play Wise is being presented this season by the BPF. Jerry responded to a series of questions posed by BPF Board Advisor Larry Lambert to discuss his literary career, his motivation and creative direction.
L – What made you choose this subject for your play Wise?
J – As I’ve gotten older, I’ve wanted to write about moral and ethical questions. The trick, of course, is to make it entertaining for an audience.
I was talking to a few friends last year about the horrible state the world was (and is) in, especially in the Jewish community even before October 7, and the question came up of whether it was a good deed to punch a Nazi. And we all agreed that yes, it was – as long as someone else did it. And if you notice in the play, none of the three major characters, Meyer Lansky, Judge Perlman, or Rabbi Wise, actually commit any violence. They get other people to do it for them.
Once October 7th happened, I didn’t know how I felt about the retaliation, especially after a few months. I figure things like this out by writing about them. I still have a lot of unanswered questions, and the play just poses them to the audience, but doesn’t answer them. The play’s focus broadened after the attacks.
L – Lansky is more well-known for his involvement with organized crime than his activities to break up rallies held by the pro-Nazi German-American Bund. Wise is based on actual events. How much did you know about Meyer Lansky before researching Wise?
J – I had heard vague stories about his involvement in this circumstance, and I knew of Lansky and Murder Incorporated from movies and TV, and from the stories my father told me of hearing running gun battles in the streets of the Brooklyn neighborhood of Brownsville in the 1930s where he grew up. But the more research I did on this specific time, the more intriguing he became. Again, the moral ambiguity of a respected judge and above-reproach rabbi getting a mobster to solve their problems – for free! – made me want to delve into this more.
One great help in my research was a fantastic book by the crime reporter, Michael Benson, called Gangsters vs. Nazis. Another was a PBS documentary about another side of this, called Nazi Town USA. I also spoke to biographers of Rabbi Wise, who had no idea of this chapter in history.
L – What made you choose this period in American history?
J – I prefer to write in allegory, rather than putting modern-day real-life characters on stage. Anything you write about current events, be it the current administration or other news, can be out of date by the time it’s produced. But history from the 1930s is pretty much locked down!
L – How long did it take you from initial conception to the finished product?
J – No play is ever “finished,” but I’d say I’ve been working on it for at least two years. The first draft took about six months, and then came rewrites and getting feedback from a few trusted readers. I’ve just joined a new play development group in DC, and I’ll be working on it with them.
L – You have been produced by a large number of theaters, starting with the Cleveland Playhouse production of your initial play. Has it gotten any easier to submit a play and get it produced?
J – I’m going to sound like the old fogey that I am, but submitting a play today, compared to when I started out in the late 1970s, is too easy. You edit on screen, save as a PDF, and press a button to send it to a theater. Back then, I had a Royal manual typewriter, a big old boat anchor that weighed about 50 pounds, and I pounded out five or six drafts, typing every change, going through pots of Wite-Out, until I was happy with one single paper copy. I had forearms like Popeye! Then I carefully took my precious 80 pages to a copy shop and made 10 copies on three-hole punch paper and put them in report covers. Then I’d scour the latest issue of the Dramatists Guild Quarterly for which theaters had put out calls for scripts, wrote individual cover letters, stuck the whole thing into a 9×12 envelope – with a large self-addressed stamped envelope for its return, since each copy was so expensive to produce – and went down to the post office and mailed it all out.
Now, of course, this whole system favored writers who could afford all that, which no doubt skewed what was produced. The new way of doing things is much more democratic, but it also leads to theaters being inundated by new plays. A theater that used to receive maybe 20 or 30 plays in the 1980s now receives 200 to 300, if not more. One way to handle it is to do what BPF does, which is to accept the first 50 plays from a distinct area.
As for getting produced, it’s never easy, and I’ve found out to some extent it has little to do with how “good” a play is, but what the theater needs to build out its season. If they’ve committed to another play about, say, a small town in Pennsylvania, and you send them one that’s really good, they’ll pass, since they’ve got that covered.
L – You have had multiple plays produced in the greater Baltimore market. How much do you follow local theater and what is your opinion of the quality of productions in this market today?
J – Since I live in Montgomery County, I’m not in Baltimore as much as I should be, but from what I’ve seen, local theater is becoming stronger, with more diverse stories and audiences.
L – Do you have any themes that you tend to gravitate to when writing your plays?
J – I’ve always felt a writer is like a radio, but only tuned to certain frequencies. Some days the radio is constantly picking up stations, and then you can go for months of silence. The moral ambiguity in Wise felt like it was broadcasting right to me, and it was worth spending a good chunk of the coming year developing. The same applies to another play of mine BPF did in 2020 right before Covid, Lies.
Also, I’m from Brooklyn, and these characters felt very close to me. As I’ve written more, I know instinctively which subjects and emotions I can write well and which I can’t.
L – What do you want the audience to come away with after watching Wise?
J – I want to write plays that continue once the lights come up, that the audience thinks about it on the way home and for days after.
L – Do you have any new plays in development?
J – I’m taking a break to work on a novel, and boy, is that like working a different set of muscles! But I’ve got one play that’s one draft from being done, and I’m toying with two others. So I’m busy.
L – Where do you see your creative journey taking you?
J – Like any other writer, I want my work to be produced and published in greater and greater venues. But I know now that’s as much a product of luck as it is of talent or skill. So as long as my wife, son, and cat still love me, and I can continue to produce work that is somewhat relevant, I’ll keep on writing.