As Rabbi Nachman of Breslov lay dying of tuberculosis in a Ukrainian shtetl, he set down his last kabbalistic story about seven beggars with big lessons to teach.
The great 19th century sage (famous for his “All the world is a narrow bridge” dictum) could not have known that 200 years later, a gay California-born playwright would turn his final Chassidic tale into an allegory about spiritual awakening, set in the Bay Area.
Like Nachman’s story, actor-playwright Yehuda Hyman’s very Jewish one-man show, “The Mad 7,” features interwoven tales as told by a handful of strange beggars — a blind man, a deaf woman, a stutterer and more — all played by Hyman with schizophrenic finesse. “It’s stories within stories,” Hyman noted. “Very complex, yet still a childlike fairytale.”
Unlike in the original tale, Hyman created a central character, Elliot Green, a hapless nebbish slaving away in a humdrum Market Street office building. One day, he meets a string of mysterious strangers who whisk him off to magical lands.
The character shares some similarities to the playwright. “I’m a regular guy,” Hyman said. “Most of my career I’ve worked in offices. I dwell in the everyday work world. I’m drawn to stories about people you pass on the street and [do] not notice, and their interior world; the strange happenstance of meeting someone who changes your life.”
While Thursday, Sept. 15 is the play’s official Bay Area premiere, Hyman has performed bits and pieces of “The Mad 7” here while it’s been in progress, and the show was staged at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, N.J. in 2008 and at the New York International Fringe Festival in 2010.
He first got the idea while living in San Francisco back in the 1990s. A brief stint at a downtown IBM office gave him the idea for his lead character, Elliot, who, Dante-like, becomes lost in his own “dark wood” midway through life.
The idea of weaving that thread with the Nachman story came during one of Hyman’s trips to Israel. A Breslover Chassid in the holy city of Tsfat suggested he look into the Nachman tale.
Then there was the holy city of San Francisco to consider.
“San Francisco is really important to me,” Hyman said by phone from his Brooklyn home. “Things started unfolding Jewishly for me there. I was very involved with Congregation Sha’ar Zahav and I got a job as a secretary at Congregation Sherith Israel.”
That was just his day job. A devoted theater professional, Hyman has written several works for the stage, and collaborated with theaters such as the Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, Ky. and the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. His honors include a Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award and a National Endowment for the Arts/TCG Playwrights Residency Grant.
But his most often-performed work, “The Mad 7,” began life modestly in San Francisco, even before he had heard of Nachman’s “Seven Beggars” story.
“I started working on this piece Monday nights at the Marsh in San Francisco and at Café Beano on Valencia
Street,” he recalls. “I started creating this piece knowing it was an expression of my Jewish soul.”
After his first visit to Israel in the 1990s, Hyman realized the Jewish world was much bigger than the bowdlerized Yiddish he had overheard as a kid on outings to Canter’s Deli in L.A. He discovered in Israel the Jewish cultures of medieval Spain, of Yemen, of Ethiopia, aspects of which he folded into his play.
Not to mention klezmer and Mizrachi music, as well as plenty of Chassidic dancing, all of which color “The Mad 7” throughout. He and director Mara Isaacs polished the complete two-act play while serving as artists in residence at a theater in Bulgaria.
It turns out playing multiple roles and dancing for 90 minutes actually is as exhausting as it looks.
“The day after a show I’m usually completely wiped out,” Hyman said. “I have to soak in a hot bath. But it’s a high to do it.”
“The Mad 7” plays Thursday, Sept. 15 at 8 p.m.; Saturday, Sept. 17 at 8:30 p.m.; and Sunday, Sept. 18 at 2 p.m. at the Marsh, 2120 Allston Way, Berkeley. Tickets and information: www.themarsh.org or (415) 282-3055.