Person Place Thing with Zalmen Mlotek and Steven Skybell
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Discussion
Co-presented by the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, Person Place Thing, and YIVO In Person:Admission: $15 Zoom Livestream:Admission: Free |
Join YIVO and the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene for a recording of the public radio show, Person Place Thing, with actor Steven Skybell and Artistic Director of the NYTF Zalmen Mlotek. Hosted by humorist Randy Cohen, Person Place Thing is an interview show based on the idea that people are especially engaging when they speak, not directly about themselves, but something they care about. Guests talk about one person, one place, and one thing with particular meaning to them.
The conversation will consist of reflections on Skybell and Mlotek’s work, including their experiences with the North American production of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish and Skybell’s current role as Herr Schultz in Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club on Broadway, for which he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical. Skybell and Mlotek will also perform live music throughout the event.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
About the Participants
Steven Skybell is an award-winning actor equally at home on film, television, and the Broadway stage. He is currently starring as as Herr Schultz in Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club on Broadway. He previously starred as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish at New World Stages. This role won him the 2019 Drama League and Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Leading Actor in a Musical, as well as an Outer Critics Circle Award Nomination. On Broadway, he has starred as Lazar Wolf in Fiddler on the Roof (dir. Bartlett Sher), Ernst in Pal Joey with Stockard Channing, Dr. Dillamond in Wicked (dir. Joe Mantello), Harold Nichols in The Full Monty (dir. Jack O’Brien), Love, Valour Compassion! (dir. Joe Mantello), among others. Select television credits include guest starring roles on Blue Bloods (CBS), Chicago PD (NBC), Elementary (NBC), Sex and the City (HBO), Law & Order (NBC), and a recurring role on the long-running All My Children. On film, he has appeared in many features, including Simply Irresistible (dir. Mark Tarlov), The Cradle Will Rock (dir. Tim Robbins), Liberty (dir. Muffie Meyer), and Everybody Wins (dir. Karel Reisz).
Zalmen Mlotek is an internationally recognized authority on Yiddish folk and theater music as well as creator of new musicals such as The Golden Land which toured Italy under the sponsorship of Leonard Bernstein and Those Were The Days, nominated for two Tony Awards. As the artistic director of the NYTF for the past twenty years, Mlotek helped revive Yiddish classics, instituted simultaneous English and Russian supertitles at performances and brought leading creative artists of television, theatre and film, such as Itzhak Perlman, Mandy Patinkin, Sheldon Harnick, Ron Rifkin and Joel Grey to the Yiddish stage. His vision has propelled classics, including NYTF productions of the world premiere of Isaac Bashevis Singer's Yentl in Yiddish (1998), Di Yam Gazlonim (The Yiddish Pirates of Penzance, 2006) the 1923 Rumshinky operetta The Golden Bride (2016), and the critically acclaimed Fidler Afn Dakh (Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish, 2018). During his tenure at the NYTF, the theatre company has been nominated or received over ten Drama Desk Awards and four Lucille Lortel Awards.
Randy Cohen’s first professional work was writing humor pieces, essays, and stories for newspapers and magazines (The New Yorker, Harpers, the Atlantic, Young Love Comics). His first television work was writing for "Late Night With David Letterman" for which he won three Emmy awards. His fourth Emmy was for his work on Michael Moore’s "TV Nation." He received a fifth Emmy as a result of a clerical error, and he kept it. For twelve years he wrote "The Ethicist," a weekly column for the New York Times Magazine. He is currently the creator and host of Person Place Thing, a public radio program.