OyChicago articles

Two Lights, getting ready to take the stage with their first production at the Neo-Futurarium this weekend

“I believe that theatre is an art unlike any other because it asks for a type of bravery that is scarce in this world,” says Dan Dvorkin, one of the founders of Two Lights Theatre Company.

Named for Five for Fighting’s “Two Lights,” a song that speaks of this type of courage and bravery, Dan and his co-founder, Becky Leifman, are themselves the Two Lights, or two bright ideas, behind the new company.

Buffalo Grove natives, Dan and Becky, met through their high school theatre program, where they made plans to start their own company once they graduated college. But this summer, while on break from school—Becky a junior at Syracuse University in New York and Dan a sophomore at DePaul University in Chicago— the pair decided now was as good a time as ever to get started.

“We wrote letters to our friends and family who donated money to our company, and once we had enough to put on a show we knew things would really start to pick up,” says Becky. They also received a scholarship from the Larry Berkowitz Foundation at the Buffalo Grove Park District. Then they held auditions, casting an ensemble of 11 actors ages 18 to 24, five of which they knew from high school. “We also used our resources and friends in other theatre programs to come and help us collaborate on this project with the directing, stage managing and technical directing.”

Their first original production, “Where We Go,” premiers this Friday and plays again Saturday at the Neo-Futurariam, 5133 N. Ashland--home to Chicago’s much-loved, long-running show Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. “Where We Go” was inspired by interviews with Chicagoans about their dreams. Becky and Dan used those dreams to develop characters and story lines.

“This play explores what happens when people lose their inhibitions and allow their minds to wander without any boundaries,” says Dan. “It follows the lives of three families who are distant and lost within their reality”

Becky hopes their production will be ‘meaningful theatre,’ and that the audience will learn something after watching the show.

“Most of the shows we hope to do are going to be ensemble-based, meaning that everyone shares an equal role in the creativity and process of the productions we make,” says Dan. “Our projects will ask much of our artists in mental, physical and emotional ways, in the end creating work that speaks a message.”

While they are still in school, the pair says they hope to continue working together in the summers and on school breaks.

“We are planning some pretty exciting things for next summer,” Becky says, “however nothing is set in stone so I won’t reveal too much.” Her ultimate goal is to eventually be able to turn Two Lights into a full-time career.

But for now, both Becky and Dan will be thrilled to fill the Neo-Futurariam’s 145 seats two nights in a row with eager theatre goers and supporters.

Tickets for “Where We Go” are still available. Email  Two2lights@gmail.com for reservations or for more information.

Lucy will sing her way into your heart 

Lucy Kaplansky was barely out of high school when she started singing in Chicago bars. She soon took off for New York, where she became part of a burgeoning singer-songwriter scene, notably in a duo with Shawn Colvin. Then she switched gears, earning a doctorate in psychology and opening a private practice to work with chronically mentally ill adults.

Eventually, her friends, as Al Pacino says, “pulled her back in” to the music business. Shawn Colvin produced Lucy’s 1994 debut album, “The Tide.” She went on to win best pop album from the Association For Independent Music for the third and fourth releases. Today, Lucy continues to record solo albums, backup other artists and sing as a member of the cover trio Cry Cry Cry with Dar Williams and Richard Shindell.

So whether you like folk music, enjoy delis or like political reads, Lucy Kaplansky is a Jew You Should Know!

1. What did you want to be when you grew up?
I pretty much always wanted to be a singer.

2. What do you love about what you do today?
I love connecting with audiences, when it works it's really, really fun.  I love when people come up to me after shows and tell me they were moved by this or that song. And I love to sing, it just makes me feel very alive.  It's a great job.

3. What are you reading?
Imperial Life in the Emerald City , all about our absolutely disastrous, incompetent occupation of Iraq.

4. What's your favorite place to eat in Chicago?
Giordano's Pizza

5. If money and logistical reality played no part, what would you invent?
A recording studio that was so tiny it could fit in my bedroom without taking up any space.

6. Would you rather have the ability to fly or the ability to be invisible?
I'd love to be able to fly, especially after a show far away from home, if I could fly home that would be great.

7. If I scrolled through your iPod, what guilty pleasure song would I find?
Faith Hill's "Cry."  I love the writing of that song.

8. What's your favorite Jewish thing to do in Chicago-in other words, how do you Jew?
I like to drive by my old synagogue in Hyde Park. I've got a lot of memories there, including learning a lot about music from the young woman who used to play guitar and sing to us. I thought she was really cool--she was a bit of a hippie.

Dana holding up the chuppah during her windy wedding ceremony

It is windy but ass-melting hot the day Benny and I tie the knot under a Kemper Lakes weeping willow. Cantor Jeff sweats buckets as he sings Yhiyeh Tov. Rabbi Eleanor dashes to rescue the ketubah as it blows toward the water. And the chuppah corners fly off the poles nine times during our short ceremony. It’s a metaphor for marriage and for life, the rabbi improvises. There is always a corner flying loose. Benny breaks the glass, I reluctantly dance the horah, and then we take a break.

It is a long break. For four years, we don’t step foot in a synagogue. We don’t fast on Yom Kippur. We barely say bless you after someone sneezes. My Reform Judaism and his secular Israeli Judaism merge and the sum total during the early years of our marriage is a long and lazy Jewish hibernation.  It takes two little girls – along with their music, expectations and tissue paper art – to wake us up.

When the Jewish calendar is your country’s calendar, when Hebrew is your native language and the Homeland is your home, you don’t need to go out of your way to express yourself Jewishly. Au contraire. Benny’s family grills pork chops on Shabbat and drives to neighboring Nazareth in the green, green Galilee to pick up fresh pita during Passover. While the people next door chant Kol Nidre, my in-laws bang their pots and pans, they picnic in the park.

Growing up a card-carrying Reform Jew in the Midwest, my taste buds are also exposed to a pork chop or two. It’s a Jewish smorgasbord – I give up bubble gum for Passover at age six and am careful not to swallow my toothpaste on Yom Kippur at 16. I love Hebrew school. I learn to kiss at Jewish overnight camp. And I spend so much time at our JCC and synagogue, I can lead you to the boiler rooms with a blindfold on.

Judaism isn’t my nationality, but it is my life – so what if the halachic side of things is a bit murky. Off I go at 23 on my first visit to Israel, naively expecting to find natives dancing the horah in green fields. Instead I find dogs pissing in the post office while natives push ahead of me in line. The one I marry doesn’t push.

And then we have kids. Amen.

Together we push Emma Sigal into this world on September 28, 2002. Even though we are in the habit of blowing off all things Jewish at that point, the fact that it is Simchat Torah and Shabbat does not escape us. Nineteen months later, out pops Noa Ariel during Shavuot, on Shabbat, in an elevator (we’ll save that story for another time).

Thank God they are both girls. The prospect of hosting any major event eight days after giving birth holds zero appeal. Suffice it to say, the love is deep, their eyelashes are endless, and they both powerpoop up to their necks whenever we are walking out the door.

While we are spared the whole mohel thing at day eight, twelve weeks later we drop off baby Emma at JCC day care, marking the beginning of the end of our Jewish hiatus.

At 18 months, Emma starts singing Passover songs before the snow has melted. That year, we have a seder – one punctuated by her random, ruthless dayeinus which are sweet enough to kill me. At two, Emma’s tekiahs mark the new year. Benny, who hasn’t been to services in 24 years, suggests we go for the High Holidays. Whether Emma is leading him by the hand or the heart, I do not know.

Next comes the endless stream of Jewish art projects, all of which deserve to be put to good use. Plastic kiddush cups with jewels and tissue paper squares lovingly glued on, seder plates, rowdy gregors, menorahs with nine nuts in a row, shoebox Shabbat boxes, cinnamon spice boxes and glitter-covered tzedakah boxes.

Our priceless collection of pre-school Judaica

It’s the tzedakah thing which really hooks me. For years, my daughters call all coins “tzedakah.” They have no other vocabulary for money – not penny or nickel or dime.  They watch us record their good deeds on a leaf for the mitzvah trees on their classroom walls. When the girls start reciting the lyrics of every theme song on the Disney Channel, we unplug the TV on Shabbat and start doing family mitzvah projects instead. When it is time to say good-bye to pacifier, we make a special pacifier tzedakah box which my daughter proudly “donates” to the infant/toddler room. (Okay, so all hell breaks loose that night, but it was nice in theory.)

Next come the tough questions. Some from the girls and some of my own. Does God have a birthday? We’ll have to ask the rabbi, sweetheart. Is the rabbi God? No. Is the bathtub connected to the floor? Yes, sweetheart. Is that the way God made it?

How do we answer that? As a preschooler in the cornfields of Iowa, I thought Santa Claus was God. And it progressed from there. God is a cloud painter in the sky. He wears a mint green beret.  A She, not a He. God to G-d to god to a word I won’t say at all. In English. Unless it is followed by dammit. Except on highly turbulent flights.

Benny believes in God. My little girls believe in everything. I believe in a big, fat question mark on my good days. Am I a complete hypocrite? Is it okay to do Judaism as it suits us?

We ask questions and help each other find answers. They have expectations. We try not to crush them. Emma plants parsley with Grandpa for Tu B’shvat. Noa insists her Princess Barbie goblets are Kiddush cups – no ifs, ands or buts. When they are clever enough to notice, we expand our Passover observance to include bread and cereal. We finally join a synagogue.

I realize Judaism is our rhythm, a way to mark the seasons, a shared history and culture, a starting point for forming values, a community to celebrate with and a support system on days we don’t want to be alone. Shabbat is family time – a value we embrace. We light the candles. We eat pork kabobs. And we dance.

Aaron puts the Ju-wish in Judo

For the Cohen family of Buffalo Grove, athletic ability of Olympic proportions runs in the family.

Aaron Cohen, first alternate on this year’s Olympic Judo team set to compete in Beijing this month, follows in the footsteps of his father, Irwin Cohen, who competed in Judo in the 1972 Olympics, and his uncle, Steve Cohen who competed in the 1988 Games.

“I always wanted to be an Olympian because of my father,” says Cohen, who found himself as an alternate for the third time after losing in the finals of the Olympic trials due to what he describes as a controversial call. “It’s heartbreaking to come so close.”

Despite the close call, Cohen has had much success in his Judo career, and currently stands as the 2008 USA Judo Senior National Champion. When he is not traveling and competing, Cohen teaches at the Cohen's Judo Club with his dad, uncle and brother R.J., and is also the assistant wrestling coach at Deerfield High School.



Aaron, getting ready to toss you over his shoulder

“It’s not just the competing,” Cohen says of his love for his sport. “It’s a lot of dedication and hard work. I love that I get to travel the world and see a lot of stuff. The coolest thing is that I meet friends from all over the world.”

In fact, he will soon be traveling to Israel for the wedding of Arik Zeevi, a close friend and Judo expert, who Cohen says is a “superstar” in Israel.

“Judo is the second-most practiced sport in the world. It’s small in the U.S., but it’s a world power in other countries like Israel, Japan and Lithuania,” he says. Athletes like Zeevi, he says, are like celebrities in their respective countries.

Since visiting Israel himself last year, Cohen says his Jewish identity and connection to the homeland is much stronger, but Judaism and Judo, though they share a common syllable, are separate passions in his life.

“I love being Jewish and I love being an athlete—though I’m not sure how they relate,” he says.

But whenever he travels for competitions, Cohen is certain to bring his good-luck charm—a mezuzah. “It was good luck when I brought it on my first trip so now I bring it everywhere I go,” he says.

Though he is the first alternate, Cohen says unless one of the eight-team members gets injured before the Olympics, there is not much chance he’ll travel to China, because there is only one day of competition in Beijing.

But we haven’t seen the last of Cohen.

“I will try again for the 2012 Games in London,” he says. “And if the Olympics are in Chicago, I might stick around for those too.”