‘Awake and Sing!’ gets a long- (long!)-awaited local debut

March 14, 2017 10 AM PT

The play “Awake and Sing!” has been hitting American stages in all its effusively punctuated glory since 1935.

Everywhere, it seems, except San Diego — a fact that deserves its own exclamation point.

When New Village Arts begins performances of the Clifford Odets classic Friday, it will represent — is this possible? — the work’s local professional premiere.

NVA’s own research suggests that’s the case, and a search of the U-T archives likewise turns up no pro production since at least the early 1980s (although PowPAC, the Poway community theater, did stage the play in 2012).

Even if “Awake and Sing!” — the story of a Jewish family struggling in the early years of the Depression — did grace a stage here sometime in the mid-20th century, it’s still remarkable that the piece has been seen so little locally in recent decades.

“Awake and Sing!” is considered the signature work by one of America’s most distinguished dramatists, and it came out of the storied Group Theatre, formed in the early 1930s as a response to the country’s social and economic crises.

“For me it’s kind of a project of the heart, because it comes straight from my training and my grad-school experience,” says NVA executive artistic director Kristianne Kurner, who studied at the Actors Studio Drama School, an institution that shares DNA with the long-defunct Group Theatre.

“We were so respectful and involved with the work of Clifford Odets that it’s been a play I’ve always wanted to do.”

‘Awake and Sing!’

When: Previews begin Friday. Opens March 25. 8 p.m. Thursdays-Fridays; 3 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays. Through April 16.

Where: New Village Arts Theatre, 2787 State St., Carlsbad.

Tickets: $36 (discounts available)

Phone: (760) 433-3245

Online: newvillagearts.org

NVA produced another widely known work by Odets, the boxing drama “Golden Boy,” in 2008, and Kurner — who’s directing “Awake and Sing!” — says that production helped further her comfort level with the playwright’s style.

The play’s title comes from a passage in the biblical Book of Isaiah: “Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust.” The piece centers on the extended Berger family, who all share one small apartment in the Bronx but deal with the specter of poverty in very different ways.

“Every person in the family is searching for their version of the American Dream,” says Kurner. “It’s very much about these characters, but then it’s also about these much bigger societal issues and ideas.”

The eight-actor play doesn’t shy from provocative politics, which is another reason Kurner feels this is the right time (and maybe way past time) for it.

“(Odets) was a political writer,” as she puts it. “And it’s just amazing how cyclical things are, and how so many of the things in ‘Awake and Sing’ are exactly what we’re going through now: The plight of immigrants, the idea of how we live our lives and what we base our worth on.

“What are the things that matter to us as Americans? That’s very much the argument of the play.”

DID YOU KNOW?

Onetime San Diegan Bartlett Sher directed the most recent Broadway revival of “Awake and Sing!,” in 2006.

San Diego Theater