When Erica Lann-Clark was a child growing up in 1940s Brooklyn, the only way she knew most of her family was through stories.
In several flights through Europe, Lann-Clark’s parents had evaded Hitler’s advancing forces. Many of her relatives weren’t so lucky.
“Two-thirds of my family died at Auschwitz — all I had of my grandparents were stories about them,” said the former off-Broadway actress and playwright. Speaking by telephone from her home in Soquel, near Santa Cruz, she speculated that “those stories became a powerful tool for resurrecting the people I’d lost.”
Recently, Lann-Clark resurrected family lore along with a host of other Jewish tales to create “Tribal Tales and Wails.” The show, which weaves together folk tales from Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Mizrahi Jewish sources, takes audiences on a dynamic tour through Jewish history and culture.
Singer Mark Levy provides musical accompaniment, ranging from Yiddish work songs to romantic ballads in Ladino, the language of Spain’s Jews before their expulsion in the 15th century.
The two performed the show last month at Santa Cruz’s Kuumbwa Jazz Center and hope to bring it to other venues around the Bay Area.
“Our aim was to convey the breadth and depth and universality of Jewish culture,” said Lann-Clark, who recently won a grant from the Cultural Council of Santa Cruz County. “All too often, the Holocaust is seen as the identifying Jewish story, and yet the culture has been around for 5,000 years — there are lots of wonderful stories.”
Despite such convictions, Lann-Clark’s own story is tied to the Holocaust. She was a 1-year-old when her parents fled Vienna; she was 5 when they landed in New York. In between, the family stayed one step ahead of Hitler’s forces as they ran first to Czechoslovakia and then to Paris.
There, said Lann-Clark, “We discovered that you could get to Cuba without a visa, all they wanted was $1,000 per family.” But her uncle, aunt and cousin were in Paris, and their visitor visas were about to expire. “Between us, we had enough for one family, so my aunt’s family left,” she said.
Fortunately, another relative in Paris met a Cuban official who divulged a route that would get the family to Cuba for free. “Peasants on one side of the island were letting people in — we got there and just walked off the boat,” Lann-Clark said. Supported by the United Jewish Appeal, the family stayed on the island for four years and then booked passage to New York.
As she grew up, Lann-Clark said, “I was drawn to theater because my life was lonely, and imagination was an escape.” She became a performer and writer, but her entry into storytelling didn’t occur until 10 years ago, when a friend suggested that she take a storytelling class.
“She said, ‘You turn your whole life into a story any way,'” Lann-Clark said with a laugh. But the glove fit, and she began telling stories professionally. “All my life I’d been writing and performing, and they were separate. This was a perfect way of combining them.”
Lann-Clark believes passionately that storytelling can “break down barriers between people, and give you a 3-D view of someone.” Her motivation to create “Tribal Tales and Wails” was the question, increasingly significant as her parents’ generation died, of “who’s going to pass our stories on to the young people?”
Levy, whose grandparents sang Yiddish songs to him during his Brooklyn childhood, is similarly motivated. The singer, who also lives in the Santa Cruz area, recently recorded a CD of Yiddish work songs and was able to find perfect musical accompaniments for Lann-Clark’s tales.
“She might have a story that talks about a coachman, and I have a song that describes the work of a coachman in Yiddish,” he said, adding that audiences respond well to the combination. “We provide translations for people, so they know what’s going on.”
Using music to punctuate Jewish stories is highly appropriate, said Lann-Clark, since “in Judaic thought, singing is the highest form of prayer. Anyone in the congregation can read, but it’s the cantor who keeps the melody and passes it on.” Her grandfather was a cantor, and she views the cantorial tradition as “a place where folk culture and the sacred meet.”
In Santa Cruz County, Lann-Clark is known through her twice-monthly radio program on KKUP, in which she tells stories from different cultures. But the title of her latest performance has some people wondering.
“They say, ‘Tribal Tales and Whales’?” said Lann-Clark. “I think they’re expecting some kind of marine saga.”
Well, there’s always Jonah. As for the minor chords and drawn-out notes found in much Jewish music, she said, “It’s really a Jewish version of the blues.”