A Conversation with Playwright Dennis Danziger, "The Brothers Abelson Since 1946," Electric Lodge, by James Scarborough

"The Brothers Abelson Since 1946" examines the intersection of family duty and personal identity through the lens of post-war Jewish American experience. Playwright Dennis Danziger, known for his work in television and theater, builds a narrative that begins as comedy but evolves into a profound meditation on intergenerational trauma and concealed truths. Set during Thanksgiving 1977, the play uses the protagonist Benny Abelson's cartoonist perspective to frame the unraveling of his family's carefully maintained façade. The timing is significant. It’s late enough for the immediate post-war generation to have established themselves, yet early enough for the wounds of the past to remain fresh.

The production benefits from Matthew Leavitt's directorial experience with both classical and contemporary works, suggesting a treatment that honors both theatrical tradition and modern sensibilities. Rick Zieff's portrayal of Isaac Abelson and Wendy Hammers' interpretation of Miriam promise to illuminate the complexity of a marriage strained by unspoken burdens. Their son Benny, played by Jonah Robinson, serves as both witness and catalyst to the family's transformation. The setting in America's first solar-powered theatre provides an apt metaphor for the play's themes of innovation versus tradition, progress versus preservation.

Below follows an email conversation with the playwright.

JS: Your work spans television comedy and serious theatrical drama. How does this dual background inform your treatment of humor and tragedy in "The Brothers Abelson Since 1946"?

DD: Frank Gagliano, my playwriting teacher at the University of Texas, instilled in his students a basic truth: you can lead with comedy and then become serious, but never the other way around. I’ve always remembered that, and The Abelsons starts out feeling like a family comedy but takes a turn as the people in the family begin to get honest with themselves and with each other.

I wrote sitcoms in the 1980s when the rule was three jokes per page, but that rhythm doesn’t work in any other form. I’ve spent decades trying to kick the habit of always going for the laugh because often that gets in the way of digging beneath a character’s surface, of focusing on each character’s humanity.

An early draft of The Abelsons began with a 10-minute scene between the mother and son that was all laughs. After I’d heard several readings, my audiences assured me it was time for me to ditch most of that scene and to try to understand mother and son and what was really at stake between them, and naturally, and over time, that led me to a understand about  what was going on with every member of the family, including those who don’t show up onstage.

The play is set in 1977, a period of significant social change. Why did you choose this specific moment to explore these particular family dynamics?

The play is set on Thanksgiving Day/weekend 1977 because the play is largely based on that specific weekend in my own life and because I wanted to make evident the profound impact of The Great Depression and World War II on Isaac Abelson’s life, and thus on his son’s, and an entire generation, and beyond. The ‘70s was the right era to reveal the clash of generations and cultures that occurred after Nixon ended America’s draft—while that fact is not specifically mentioned in the play, the end of the draft played a significant role in the social changes in this country.

JS: Discuss how Benny's profession as a cartoonist serves as both character details and metaphor within the larger narrative. 

DD: I made a deal with myself years ago: Never write about a writer. In my experience, we sit, look out the window, drink coffee, occasionally type a few words. Not very dramatic. So, I knew my main character could not be the aspiring writer I was in the 1970s, but I did have an artistic addiction, and so does Benny—his is manifested through a different kind of note taking—he sketches, observes, re-draws, observes, and we, the audience, can watch him do that. Also, although like 20-something me, Benny is shy, anti-social, rebellious, immature, and mostly a loner, he’s often able to get off a good one-liner, making him a frustrating, and thus perfect, foil for his mother who talks non-stop and his father who rages.

My comedy, like Benny’s, provides ammunition against the onslaught of his parents’ Orthodox Jewish commandments.   

JS: The play takes place during Thanksgiving, traditionally a time of family unity. How does this setting amplify the larger narrative?

DD: Thanksgiving conjures an image of family and friends gathered around a long table filled with sumptuous foods, and the fact that The Abelsons have called off Thanksgiving to sit around a kitchen table drinking water and orange juice sets the stage for the sorrows to come.

Early in the play we learn that just a few blocks away the extended family is gathering for the traditional feast, and I felt this also would subtly highlight the deep divisions within the family. The fact that on this most festive day of the year, the Abelson brothers cannot bear even to be around each other amplifies the way in which family members can inflict some of the deepest pain on each other—and, as I hope the play also reveals, they can also offer surprising balm.

JS: What influenced your decision to structure the revelation of family secrets as a gradual unfolding rather than the immediate disclosure?

DD: Failure inspired me. That is, in early drafts, family secrets came out early and all at once, and that didn’t work. In subsequent drafts, all the secrets were spilled at the end, and that felt like too much information, too late in the game.

My wife, Amy Friedman, is a writer and an editor and my in-house dramaturg, and it was she who suggested that Benny keep probing, keep trying to learn the source of his father’s mental breakdown. As I played with that idea, I discovered something I hadn’t been aware that I knew, and it was this: That as investigator, Benny (aka me, and with him the audience) learn bit by bit, the cause of his father’s fragile state, and bit by bit, that changes him. And of course I hope that this journey will change the audience as well.

JS: How does Isaac’s status as World War II veteran impact his relationship with his son and his approach to family life?

DD: Isaac is proud of his army service, but he also hated every minute he served. What he saw during the war, and what he did, particularly at the Battle of Anzio, still haunts him 30+ years later, as the play opens.

Still, as much as Isaac despised the war, he expected Benny to serve in Vietnam and is distressed, almost mortified, that his son used his student deferment to “dodge the draft.” Isaac’s religious upbringing and his time as an army sergeant created a man who craves and obeys authority, a man who accepts the orders of higher ups. The fact that Benny, a Baby Boomer, questions everything Isaac values has been the cause of a decade-long rift between father and son.

Among the values Benny most deeply questions is Isaac’s belief—fueled by politics and religion—that men must make all important decisions, for their family and for their nation. Having seen the way his father’s chauvinism has pushed his wife over the edge is part of what stoked Benny’s belief in feminism.  

And these tensions, too, are part of the backdrop of the story—that is, in the tensions between those Americans who proudly served their country in a war most agreed was not only just but vital and those protesting the first of many unjust wars to follow. In the ‘70s that conflict felt clear. In hindsight, ending the draft, I believe, has ultimately created the unfathomable divisions between rich and poor in this country.

JS: Elaborate on your collaboration with Matthew Leavitt in developing the play's balance between comedy and drama.

DD: Okay, this is embarrassing. Matt read an early version when it was a 6-character/2 set play.  He gently told me that the cost of building a revolving set would add, you know, $30,000 - $100,000 to the budget. So, I got rid of one of the sets and three of the characters.

Through the many iterations of this play, Matt reads the drafts, then gives me notes. And I immediately reject all his notes. Then I let his notes sink in, realize that many of them are spot on, and I go back and rewrite. He’s very patient with me.

For example, Matt thought that in one of the most recent versions the ending was too ambiguous. I told him that I wanted it to be ambiguous. He asked me to think about it. I did. I liked that it was ambiguous. Months later I had another reading of the play and almost everyone hated the ending. They said it was too ambiguous. So, I changed it. Now, we're all happy, because they all pushed me to commit to what I actually needed and wanted to say.

JS: Electric Lodge's status as America's first solar-powered theatre adds an interesting contemporary dimension to this historical piece. How do you see this environmental context relating to the play's themes of progress and tradition?

DD: To be honest, before I met Dr. Joel Shapiro, the founder and executive director of Electric Lodge and Kent Jenkins, its associate artistic director, I had seen a number of productions there when it was home to the Rogue Machine Theatre. I wasn’t aware that it was America’s first solar-powered theatre. I chose the theatre because they produce great shows.

That said, their pro-environmental stance, including their insistence on using virtual programs, also aligns with my beliefs. I love your question—and I love the idea that I might have sought to add a contemporary dimension to an historical piece, so from now on, I’ll point out the spiritual alignment I feel to Electric Lodge.

JS: How do you see this play contributing to the broader conversation about Jewish American identity in contemporary theatre?

DD: So, this may sound crazy, particularly since our website includes a glossary of 21 words most of which are in Yiddish or Hebrew so audience members can study up before the play. Although I’m Jewish and grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family in Texas in the 1950s and 1960s; and although there many, many references to Jewish life—keeping kosher, taboos against inter-faith marriage, saying Kaddish for the deceased—I don’t think of The Brothers Abelson Since 1946 as a Jewish play. Or as an American play. Or as a kitchen sink drama, which it is.

I think of it simply as a family play. I think of it as being about a family torn apart by a generational divide, religious and political pressures, sibling rivalry, money pressures, greed and fear. And all of that, to me, seems universal.

Regarding Jewish post-play conversations:

In November 2024 in the United States, 12 percent of Jewish women and 29 percent of Jewish men voted for Donald J. Trump for President. Donald J. Trump and his MAGA Party reflect not a single value I hold or anything I learned in Hebrew school.

So more honestly, I have no idea what is going on in Jewish people’s minds or what people will make of my play, Jewish and otherwise.

I do know that in 1977, most Jews, myself included, believed that America was a safe place for Jews, and that American Jews understood what it felt like to be embattled immigrants. I’m sad to say, I no longer believe that to be true.

JS: Discuss your work with the design team in creating the visual world of the play, especially in representing both 1977 Texas and the characters' emotional landscapes.

DD: This is mostly Matt’s world. And he has found a brilliant production/set designer, David Offner. When David showed us his renderings for the set, I wondered if he had traveled back in time and stood in my parents’ kitchen and taken Polaroids.  

I’m happy to sit back and give a thought here and there, but since I know almost nothing about the technical aspects of theatre, I let Matt do his thing. He’s good at finding talented people who are easy to work with, and inspiring.

Hannah Schatzle, our costume designer, collaborated with Matt and me on my play, Double Play, and when we found out she was available (she’ s been in NYC working on a film the past few months), we were thrilled. Side note: Hannah’s a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and she was my student at Palisades Charter High School in the early 2000s.  I know she’ll go out, shop around for a few days, come back with a lot of wardrobe choices and blow our minds. That’s the kind of people Matt attracts to his productions. I’m also lucky enough to have a daughter who married one of the loveliest and most talented graphic designers I’ve ever met; Kenny Barela who created the poster for The Brothers Abelson, is also part of the inspiration for Benny’s being a cartoonist—watching the way he transforms my words into the perfect images continually astonishes me. And like Kenny, John Ciccolini is such a masterful website designer that he took in hours of conversation we had and created a visually stunning website that I feared was going to have to be 40 pages long.