Over and Under

IT wasn’t overnight that a group of chassidishe men began putting on shows for huge crowds in venues the likes of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. The Interen Crew, as they have become known to tens of thousands of fans across the United States and abroad, started out rather humbly. But they soon became the undisputed masters in the field of heimishe entertainment, raising the bar in the fledgling industry one show at a time.

What does it take to produce an Interen play? Who are the creative personalities behind these complex plots and adept character portrayals?  What gave them their start, and how have their standards evolved over the years? To get a better glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes, I went to check out one of their final rehearsals before this year’s Chol Hamoed Succos show, titled Iberen Shtetl.

After spending what felt like an eternity finding parking in Boro Park, I finally enter the Brooklyn Square office building and make my way to the suite where the practice session is about to begin. I’m expecting to encounter a very tense environment; after all, the big day is just about three weeks away. But when I walk through the nondescript door, I wonder if this is the right place. There is no tension at all in this large room. Instead, I find about 25 chassidishe guys sitting around a couple of folding tables, eating chopped liver, kichel, and dips, and the best-smelling cholent I have come across in quite a while.

I turn to leave, wondering why these folks are treating themselves to a kiddush on a random Wednesday night. But then a tall fellow at the front of the table jumps up and beckons; it’s Shlome Steinmetz, CEO of the Pivot Group marketing company and producer of the Interen enterprise.

“I thought I mentioned to you that the oilam first has to get into the right mood before practice,” he says, shaking my hand and introducing me to the directors, coordinators, and actors sitting around the table. It turns out “the oilam” includes me too: Actor and scriptwriter Yoel Hersh Fuchs — also famous for his lead role in the Yedidim Choir — pulls up a chair for me and says, “First, get some hot food into your system. Then we’ll talk business.”

After tasting the succulent cholent, I ask the group to introduce themselves. Veteran show producer Lezer Neuhaus takes the lead, stroking his long gray beard in mock concentration, accentuating his decades-long career in the show business. “Well, the first thing you need to know is that I made that cholent you’re eating,” he says with a deadpan stare, and everyone laughs. “But more importantly, you should hear all about how we got here.”

Twenty years ago, Boro Park’s Skver day camp employed a young and magnetic chassidishe yungerman named Reb Lezer Neuhaus as its beloved head counselor. He was well-known for his gusto and dynamic personality, forever concocting avant-garde color war breakouts and hysterical night activities. But the thing that Lezer prioritized above all else was camp plays. He viewed them as the perfect opportunity to enthrall the children and cultivate their creativity. Each summer, Lezer would organize a grand play for the end of the season, which all the kids would highly anticipate. It was always sure to include a suspenseful plot, skilled acting, and dashes of humor — along with a powerful takeaway message.

After the campers went back to school in 2004, Lezer was approached by Shloime Reichberg and Shimshy Haskel, founders of the world-renowned organization Mekimi, which is dedicated to bringing simchah to the lives of those struggling with illness. There were three Mekimi children who came from the hospital to play at the Skver camp that summer, and they had been raving about the grand play ever since the summer had ended.

“You don’t understand how valuable your plays are,” they told Lezer. “We know of so many bedridden children in hospitals who have no form of kosher entertainment during the many hours they spend alone. Very often, they end up watching the material available on the televisions in their rooms. You need to produce shows for the public and get them on DVDs — it will be a total game-changer for these children.”

Never one to turn down a challenge, Lezer got right to it. “These children needed a form of kosher entertainment as an outlet, rather than the garbage that the world had to offer,” he tells me. “I had already felt for a while that the general public also had this need, but the request from Mekimi is what got me to actually make it happen.”

Lezer gathered a couple of counselor friends, and they began to prepare a show for Chol Hamoed Pesach. They all had day jobs, so their scriptwriting, planning, practicing, and perfecting was all done during the night (and early morning) hours. Finally, after six months of prep, the newbie crew was ready for showtime.

Titled Interen Bank (Underneath the Bench), the play premiered at Brooklyn’s John Dewey High School auditorium. But of the 930 seats in the room, only 200 were occupied. “Nobody knew who we were. We had almost no name recognition,” Lezer relates.

However, the first showing of Interen Bank made waves throughout the Boro Park community. The acting, the storyline, the humor, the musical scenes — all presented in a heimishe Yiddish — became the talk of town. By the last show that Chol Hamoed, the entrance lobby of John Dewey High School was flooded with throngs of eager spectators. “We had to inform people that only standing room was available, but that didn’t stop them. They just kept coming,” Lezer says.

Although the last few showings were at maximum capacity, the newfound Interen Crew didn’t make any money on that production.

“The play cost us $93,000 to produce. We knew we weren’t going to earn a profit,” Lezer says. “But that’s not what we did it for. We did it to accomplish a goal — and we succeeded.”

Even from the early days, Interen never functioned as a startup, with investor money being spent with no rhyme or reason; Lezer took full achrayus for all of it. Once he decided it was happening, he set Interen up like a business  — hiring and paying actors, investing the exorbitant overhead, and absorbing the initial losses — with his vision of what Interen could become keeping him focused.

The next show was called Interen Fenster (Under the Window), and from then on, the word “Interen” became a tag for top-notch professionalism in the fledgling heimishe show industry.

“There’s no underlying message. Interen literally means ‘under the.’ But the name stuck, and it became a brand of its own. When a brand works, you don’t mess with it,” says Shlome Steinmetz, ever the marketing expert.

Interen’s cast tapped actors who already had name recognition in chassidishe circles from their performances at large rebbishe weddings and camp plays, which enhanced the new group’s appeal; everyone wanted to see stars the likes of Kuppy Elbogen, Ahron Mintz, and Mordche Hersh Hershkowitz finally performing together on one stage. Show after show, the venues kept selling out — and Lezer kept upping the ante with each production. They also began selling DVDs of their various plays, which would fly off the shelves wherever heimishe Yidden could be found, both in the United States and abroad.

“Of course, the first ones to get the DVDs were the kids in the hospitals,” Lezer says. Children battling medical challenges are at the forefront of his mind until this day; after all, it was Mekimi that gave him the initial motivation to enter the business.

Plot Twists

After the chevreh wraps up their little farbrengen, they lead me behind a partition where there’s a small stage, along with a couple of couches for the oilam to sit on while waiting their turn to practice. Lezer Neuhaus and coordinator Chaim Frankel take their seats facing the small stage, and the first batch of actors starts practicing their lines.

Although they’re wearing white right-over-left shirts and wool tzitzis, the actors seamlessly transform into the characters in the script books they’re holding. The friendly and gregarious Yoel Hersh Fuchs is suddenly shouting in a fit of rage: “Ehr vet kein muhl nisht zahn der held voos di zichst! (He will never be the hero you seek!)” Yaakov Yosef Langsam, who was kibbitzing just moments before, is now wagging his finger threateningly at Yoel Hersh, totally consumed by the character he’s portraying.

In the midst of the mock show, star singer Dovy Meisels suddenly walks in. He has a break from work — a short reprieve between the first and second dance at a nearby chasunah — and so he’s decided to pop in and join the party. The Crew invites Dovy up on the stage for a quick photo op. They all laugh as he takes a self-appointed role, scrunching up his face in concentration and pretending to plead with an irate Yoel Hersh.

I ask Lezer if the oilam always has fun like this, even during the rehearsals so close to the show. “Of course,” he says. “These guys are never stressed out.”

Nor are they in this for the money. There are only a couple of shows a year, so they’re obviously not able to make a living from acting.

“We all have day jobs,” Lezer says, “but we spend numerous nights a year doing show prep. The hours we spend on this are not justified by the money we get for it. But we’re all still here because we’re passionate about our mission.

“And,” he adds, gesturing toward the knot of men schmoozing on the couches, “let’s be honest — we all have fun doing it.”

About eight successful years after the first Interen play, Lezer felt that the show was ready to climb to new levels of theatrical pizazz. The massive crowds attending their yearly shows evinced a strong demand for high-quality kosher entertainment, and the Interen Crew wanted to provide their clientele with the best they could possibly offer. At that time, there was a star head counselor that was turning heads in the heimishe world with his grand plays and colorful style — the highly innovative Shlome Steinmetz.

The Crew reached out to him, and it didn’t take much convincing; Shlome thrives on the challenge of captivating large audiences. He eagerly hopped on board the Interen bandwagon and assumed the position of producer.

It’s a good thing they didn’t wait any longer to contact Shlome; today, it’s almost impossible to reach him. Aside from running Pivot Group, a successful marketing company, he’s constantly busy producing mass-scale events — be it the HASC concert, the Siyum HaShas, or the Adirei HaTorah rally.

Shlome Steinmetz brought new ambition and vision to Interen, incorporating all kinds of special effects — such as creating massive “fires” onstage via multiple light projectors and screens, or replicating extreme weather conditions like rainstorms and snow. He also began using realistic props such as life-size warplanes, military tanks, and multi-story buildings — all fluidly set up onstage during 15-second intermissions. “The props and effects may be jaw-dropping,” he concedes, “but the speed of the setup is probably the most fascinating part. These shows run like a well-oiled machine.”

Which scene was the most daunting to produce? “Easy: the scene with Leiby Wieder diving into the water,” Shlome says. Not only did the production team have to arrange for the sophisticated blue lighting, the wave-like effects, and underwater props, Leiby himself had to train extensively for the scene. “It’s not easy to act like you’re swimming while suspended in midair by some ropes and a harness,” Lezer Neuhaus explains. “Plus, he was being jolted back and forth the entire time, to give the effect of someone fighting shifting currents.”

Leiby spent several sessions in a training center in Pennsylvania where he was taught how to carry out the stunt. “I had about two months to learn a skill that people practice for ten to twelve years,” he says. “It was all about balance. If I would move my chin to a slightly different angle, I would start flailing uncontrollably. The trick was to pretend the audience wasn’t there and just focus on the stunt.”

In addition to the high-tech effects, the Interen Crew also utilizes the services of master set craftsman Sruli Weisberg. His first assignment, 20 years ago, was to build a waterfall. Since then, the assignments have gotten more ambitious and more daunting — but Sruli is never fazed.

These days, each Interen play requires at least ten sets, and the creative plots mean that Sruli has to push the limits of his imagination and innovative talents. A bridge that can hold 30 actors? No problem. A sudden explosion? You got it. A Roman Senator’s villa? Coming right up. “There’s no such thing as a problem,” he says. “You just haven’t found the solution yet. Every day, we have issues, and we always manage to find solutions.”

Over the years, Sruli has moved his operation from Boro Park to a facility in Rahway, New Jersey, where he has the space to construct multi-story structures that incorporate electricity, historic details, and incredibly lifelike artwork. He has a faithful team that helps with the woodworking and electricity, but for the creation of the realistic facades and textures, he is the sole artist.

Sruli and his team have built a 40-foot bridge, a two-story Yemenite-style boat, an elaborate royal throne room, and an entire prison ward. All his structures must be built in easy-to-assemble pieces, and he carefully measures the NJPAC stage and the entrances to ensure that the pieces can be transferred smoothly and efficiently in minimal time. As the actors dazzle the audience with their storylines and singing, he’s busy backstage, directing his team through their intense but perfectly choreographed routine.

“I’ve never watched an Interen play,” he confesses. “There’s way too much for me to do backstage.”

Raising the Stakes

IN the decades since its inception, Interen didn’t only up their game with sets, stunts, and special effects. With the addition of scriptwriter and actor Yoel Hersh Fuchs, the plays also took on a highly accurate historical flavor. “He’s a shtickel history buff,” says coordinator Yanky Landau. “He studies the time periods in which the plays take place, and he makes sure that the plot details accurately reflect the historical facts.” In addition to the extensive research needed, the scriptwriting process itself is quite difficult. Yoel Hersh throws himself into each character — delving into their personalities, speech patterns, and thought processes — so that actors have a rich persona to step into, and the audience can believe what they’re watching.

The shows’ novel storylines — contrived by Shlome, Lezer, Yoel Hersh, and director Yossi Frankel — result in entrancing plays that are anything but clichéd. The plays span eras and continents that are hardly ever explored by others in the industry, and the plots always revolve around unpredictable, original ideas. Yossi’s experience, with over 40 years of acting in classic Yiddish plays like Yosef Spiel and Bustenai himself, gives him a perspective that enables him to bring the Interen plays to the next level. He works one-on-one with his actors, workshopping the roles in scene and privately so that every actor is a star in his own role.

A recent play was set in Ancient Rome, involving two Roman dignitaries vying to assume the position of Caesar. Both men were attempting to retrieve a stolen map that led to Rome’s lost treasures, in order to demonstrate their competence and commitment to restoring Rome’s national pride. As the play unfolds, the audience learns that the highly coveted map is actually in the possession of a Jew who’s in cahoots with a group of rebels — and the Romans take all sorts of measures to get their hands on him.

The scenes in this show depicted sessions in the Roman Senate, costumes that accurately reflected the attire of both the upper echelon and lower class of Ancient Roman society, and realistic weapons, among many other eye-catching details and effects. Another play was set in 17th-century Yemen, and the scenes were intertwined with a story taking place in modern-day New York City. Other plays involved Czarist Russia, the American Revolutionary War, and the American Civil War, to name a few.

And then there’s the music. Each play includes several musical scenes featuring live singing by the actors. The songs range from classics to fresh releases, fitted to original Yiddish lyrics. Additionally, each show features one brand-new song composed by the Interen Crew — a highlight for the more musically inclined spectators.

During the musical scenes, Leiby Wieder is often the lead soloist; his expressive voice can reduce the crowd to tears during the most dramatic moments, evoking deep feelings of sorrow for past tragedies, or appreciation for our ancestors’ unrelenting service of Hashem in the face of extreme adversity. Lezer points out that this is a massive accomplishment: Our children don’t normally get an opportunity to viscerally experience our rich history, but during these poignant scenes, they are able to identify with the past in a profound way.

The musical scenes — as well as the background music that dramatizes the key moments — are played live by talented one-man-band Heshy Pavel. The plays also feature children’s choirs in certain instances, but only when the team feels that it flows with the storyline. “We don’t bring in random choirs and soloists stam,” Yanky Landau explains. “That would make the play less natural. There will only be a choir if it enhances the scene.”

A perfect example is the Interen play set in 19th-century Czarist Russia. During one scene, the captive Cantonist children, played by the Shir V’Shevach Boys Choir, poured out their hearts to Hashem in a stunning Yiddish rendition of the Miami Boys Choir’s “Achas Sha’alti.” This tear-jerking performance displayed a perfect integration of the character portrayals and the emotions conveyed in the song.

Role Play

The young orphan had traveled all the way to the US from Russia in search of a better life. Now, forcibly drafted into the Union army amid the Civil War, he and his fellow Jewish soldiers walk into the woods to daven to Hashem on the holiest day of Yom Kippur — when they suddenly come face to face with a garrison of Confederate soldiers, guns drawn.

The audience waits with bated breath: Who will take the first shot? The foliage on the trees, the boulders and pebbles on the ground, the owl gazing down from a branch way above — it’s all so realistic that the viewers feel like they’re right there in the forest with the soldiers, possibly experiencing their last moments. But then one of the Confederates cry out those ageless words of “Shema Yisrael!”  — and the two groups lay down their weapons and embrace each other. The crowd cheers uproariously.

Fresh talent Pinny Massarano, playing the young Russian stowaway now drafted to the Union army, looks up to the heavens and begins eloquently singing Zanvil Weinberger’s smash hit, “Shaarei Shamayim P’sach.” He begins the first word of the chorus, “Shaarei…” but is caught off-guard by the response from the crowd, 2,700 strong, thundering in unison: “Shamayim p’sach, ve’otzarcha hatov lanu siftach!”

I ask Pinny, a recent addition to the Interen cast, what it’s like to perform in front of thousands of spectators at NJPAC. After all, the closest audience size encountered by the average chassidishe yungerman is davening for the amud at his local shul — which generally wouldn’t top 50 to 100 people.

“Honestly, I think davening for the amud is more overwhelming,” he says. “By the time you get on stage for an Interen show, you’ve spent so many hours practicing, the words just flow. Plus, the lighting at large auditoriums blocks out your long-distance vision. The actors can only see the first few rows, which makes it feel less intimidating.”

Still, he says, during the Shaarei Shamayim scene, he was initially distracted from his careful practicing by the crowd’s sudden outburst of song. He froze for a brief moment, but then pulled himself together, realizing that this was his moment to join the crowd and make the performance a truly unforgettable experience for all those gathered.

Spontaneous moments like those are not the standard, though. The Interen actors work hard to memorize their lines so the scenes will flow smoothly and professionally.

“But I’m not just memorizing the lines,” Leiby Weider points out. “I’m internalizing them, trying to get into my character’s mindset. I try to imagine how the character would be feeling at that exact moment in that tough situation, and then the portrayal comes naturally — even if it’s not how I would personally react in that setting, it’s true to my character.”

Kuppy Elbogen, another Interen actor, has been acting on stage for over 45 years. Still, he admits, there are no shortcuts to achieving a convincing portrayal of a character. It always takes lots of preparation and focus. “It isn’t easy to act out an emotion when you’re not feeling the character’s feelings,” he says. “You have to really envision yourself in his shoes.

“In the Interen Fenster play,” he remembers, “I played a character who was generally an easygoing fellow. But during one scene, this fellow got into a confrontation with his long-lost brother who had hurt him deeply, and he spoke in this very angry, bitter way. It was challenging to make that sudden switch from a relaxed personality to such extreme anger. So I spent a lot of time imagining that I was also a laid-back type of guy who had been hurt by someone he trusted. That way, when I got to that scene, I knew how to portray his frustration with his brother in a way that suited his personality.”

Scriptwriter Yoel Hersh Fuchs says the key is to forget about yourself and focus on your character.

“When you’re part of a play, you have to lose yourself in the story, and feel like you are the character. Your own personality and feelings have to be set aside. Instead, think about your character — how would this guy react. How would he feel?”

He’s noticed that this tends to be more of a struggle for an actor who has already developed a certain persona or “brand” for playing major roles. “In one of the recent shows, I chose not to play a main character for this reason. I picked a minor role and worked to get into character perfectly, without injecting my own personality or previous roles into it. I saw that you can make your character shine just by being a perfect portrayal of that person, even if it’s only a minor role.”

Offstage and away from those blinding lights, do the Interen performers ever get spotted by the heimish version of the paparazzi? “I can’t walk down the street without getting stopped multiple times,” says Ahron Mintz. “I once walked down Malchei Yisrael Street in Yerushalayim and got stopped more than 20 times by people who wanted to thank me for my acts and for providing them with kosher entertainment.”

There’s something else that Interen fans are grateful for. “Many children in communities like Lakewood aren’t accustomed to Yiddish, and they tend to never really acquaint themselves with the heiligeh shprach,” says Lezer Neuhaus. But by faithfully following the Interen plays, many children from English-speaking homes are picking up authentic Yiddish. “One individual approached me after a show and said he wanted to thank me personally. He always tried to get his kids to learn Yiddish, but they weren’t interested. Yiddish wasn’t ‘cool’ enough. But since they got involved in the Interen DVDs, they’ve been talking Yiddish all the time… It became ‘cool’ again.”

Bedside Manner

Today, you’d be hard-pressed to find a chassidishe kid who isn’t well-versed in the plot lines and humor segments of the long list of Interen shows. When the kids return to cheder after a Chol Hamoed featuring an Interen production, they’ll spend recess hocking about the play, hashing out who deserves the “best actor” award, or singing the new Yiddish lyrics to the mid-show cover of Hanan Ben Ari’s “Amen Al Hayeladim.”

“Ticket sales became a little crazy the past few years,” says Shlome Steinmetz. “We advertise the exact date and time that our website will be going live, and all the fans snatch their tickets like hotcakes. Before our last play, we went live a couple of nights before Yom Tov at exactly nine p.m. All six showings — 2,700 seats each, totaling 16,200 tickets altogether — were completely sold out by nine-thirteen, less than fifteen minutes later.” The team recently began hiring cyber experts to ensure that the website doesn’t crash from all of the sudden traffic.

But despite their staggering popularity, the Interen Crew has never lost sight of their original goal: to bring joy to people in dire situations.

“If you want to hear about chesed, this is the person to speak to,” Shlome Steinmetz says, leading me to a tall fellow standing in the back of the room, minding his own business. “This is Zalman Leib Eisenberger. He’s an actor and a great costume designer, but more importantly, a walking chesed machine.”

Zalman Leib shares the soul-stirring tale of his relationship with the Interen Crew. When he was a newlywed about eight years ago, both his mother and mother-in-law were suffering from debilitating illnesses, and there was just one thing that kept them cheerful. The guys from the Interen cast would come by regularly to visit them, putting up little impromptu skits or simply schmoozing with them for hours. “Those performances were the only thing that kept them happy; they gave them the feeling that there was a reason to look forward to tomorrow,” Zalman Leib remembers.

Interen’s impact on Zalman Leib’s family compelled him to join the gang. He wanted to pay the favor forward, helping others in similar situations. He started out as an actor, and soon began to play a big role in costume development.

The Interen show costumes are masterfully crafted by Mrs. Miriam Hurwitz and her son Shaya, Lubavitcher chassidim from Crown Heights. “We have a big following in the Crown Heights community, because the kids there are fluent in Yiddish — although they pronounce it ‘Unteren,’” Lezer interjects.

Before they get to work sewing the costumes, the Hurwitz team meticulously studies the clothing worn during the era of each play’s setting; they make sure to differentiate between the various societal classes to ensure that each actor wears exactly what his character would have worn in that setting.

Mrs. Hurwitz is something of a globetrotter, and during her extensive travels she has picked up costumes and trimmings from exotic locations like Bangkok, Beijing, South Africa. It’s always exciting to see a colorful item from her private collection find its place in an Interen costume. For some roles, she rents costumes from a professional costume company, but the sizing doesn’t always work. “This chevreh,” she says, “Kein ayin hara know how to eat cholent!”

So she often builds costumes from scratch — everything from Roman togas and Chinese robes to military costumes, complete with coordinating footwear, headgear, accessories, and even weapons. Then she meets with makeup artist Moishy Greenfield of the Panim Chadashos company to plan the right makeup, wigs, and beards for each character.

“We discovered an enormous feathered military helmet and paired it with a lavish Russian costume. The actor, resplendent in the caped costume, was led onto the stage on horseback by a servant,” she remembers. “When we had to recreate Roman costumes, I made wreaths (the ones in the costume catalogue wouldn’t fit our actors), sourced sandals (we put sheer knee-highs under them), and spent days in Manhattan looking for the right appliques for the general’s toga. I once took a group of actors to Burlington Coat Factory to outfit them as FBI agents — these were a chassidishe chevreh who were trying on suits and ties for the first time. Once we had guys riding onstage on motorcycles with black leather jackets. Remember, in real life, they walk around Boro Park with beaver hats and their tzitzis out, but by the time we finished with their costumes and makeup, you would never guess.”

Mrs. Hurwitz obviously cannot personally take the measurements of the actors, but her son Shaya has learned how to step in and help out. She is present backstage at every Interen show, and does a final inspection of each character before he goes onstage. Sometimes a costume isn’t sitting right, or the actor isn’t quite sure how to arrange his headgear. The Roman soldiers, for example, were dressed in tunics, skirts, vests, neckwear, and helmets, and many were baffled by the multiple layers. Often she can direct the actor to tug, tighten, or straighten out his costume. But when communication stalls, her grandson Chaim’ke Vogel helps achieve the look she is after. “He gets them and he gets me,” she says.

Mrs. Hurwitz finds particular satisfaction in pulling off a look that is authentic but completely modest. “Everyone in an Interen show is 101 percent tzanua,” she says. “No one is going onstage with exposed elbows or bare legs. Remember, the primary aim is kosher entertainment for Yiddishe kinderlach — no compromises! But that doesn’t mean we can’t aim for the highest professional standards.”

When Zalman Leib Eisenberger joined the costume team, he brought not only creative design talent, but also a valuable personal perspective from his experience onstage.

“It was important to have an actor involved in the costume design. We needed someone who understood the actors’ needs,” he explains. “Nobody wants to be uncomfortable onstage. For example, if the actor is on the heavier side, he might prefer his outfit to be more loosely fitted — even if the character he’s portraying would typically wear a tighter outfit. And if he’s going to be singing, we need extra room in the chest so he can really fill his lungs.”

But Zalman Leib’s true passion is the chesed element of the Interen Crew. Always on the lookout for families struggling with medical issues, he will assemble a group of actors who perform impromptu plays whenever there’s a need to brighten up the day of a fellow Jew — and they’ll go just about anywhere to make it happen.

“It isn’t easy,” he concedes. “We all have jobs and families, and we can’t just disappear all the time. But what can we do? When there’s a lonely child in CHOP, somebody needs to go and breathe some life into him. We’re actually heading to Texas next week for a kid who can use some chizuk.”

Recently, Zalman Leib got a distressed voice note from a parent of an ill child in the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. Just a few hours later, he was sitting on a plane with Lezer Neuhaus and Yanky Landau. The chesed had to get done, no questions asked.

After injecting a fresh spirit of vitality and hope into the sweet little boy, the trio was ready to head back to the airport — only to discover that their flight had been canceled due to an impending hurricane.

“I’m a bus driver, and I needed to be back in time to do my morning route,” Zalman Leib relates. “And both Lezer and Yanky needed to be back in their offices the next morning. You know what they say in this business, the show must go on. So we had no choice but to rent a car and make the eleven-hour drive back to Boro Park through the night.”

Show and Tell

For the audiences seated in the jam-packed auditorium on Chol Hamoed, the Interen shows seem to proceed without a glitch or hitch: scene slides into scene, actors appear at just the right moment, background music lends that perfect note of pathos or tension. But the Crew, with their onstage or backstage view, know that it takes quick thinking and improvisation to finesse the inevitable bloopers and blunders that visit virtually every sparkling performance.

Yanky Landau’s most memorable blooper was a messy one. It happened during an airplane scene, when two actors were busy hustling their hefty packages up the ramp onto the plane. Yanky was playing the flight attendant, and as he bent down to lift a suitcase off the ground, one of the character’s packages slammed into his forehead.

“It didn’t feel like such a bad hit, so I kept up with my role. But then, as I looked down at the suitcase I was holding, I noticed that it was covered in blood.” So Yanky inconspicuously walked offstage and quickly got swapped out with a backup actor. In seconds, Hatzolah was there backstage with him, stitching up the fresh laceration on his forehead.

“There was also that time with the soldier on the balcony,” Lezer Neuhaus says with a smirk. The crew had asked their prop designer to fashion a balcony overlooking a crowded restaurant, but they forgot to tell him one crucial bit of information: The balcony wasn’t just a scenic detail — an actor was actually supposed to pace on it while searching for someone down below. The prop designer only realized this as the soldier was already pacing the balcony in front of thousands of spectators.

He rushed backstage to set coordinator Chaim Frankel, yelling: “Get him down from there! It can’t support his weight!” Chaim gently spoke into the actor’s earpiece, and the fellow gingerly climbed down from the balcony without disrupting the show. “Noch ah mazel he didn’t break his neck,” Yoel Hersh quips.

“Mordche Hersh, should we tell him about the scene with the bed?” Shlome Steinmetz asks longtime actor Mordche Hersh Hershkowitz, who gravitates toward roles of laid-back, no-pressure characters. Mordche Hersh looks up from his bowl of cholent for a brief moment, and says, “Sure, why not?”

One year, the Interen play featured a scene that opened with an elderly man sleeping in a bed, played by Mordche Hersh. When showtime arrived, the props were all in place, Mordche Hersh took his position, and the curtains came up. Director Chaim Frankel was sitting backstage, carefully monitoring the audio output of the various headsets of the actors onstage. Chaim is always on the ready to speak into the earpieces, reminding the actors of their lines in case they seem to be slipping up. Suddenly, he heard an odd sound coming from Mordche Hersh’s mic. Chaim turned up the volume, and wondered… could that possibly be… snoring?

“Mordche Hersh!” Chaim barked into the earpiece onstage. “Wake up! You’re live in front of the entire NJPAC!”

Funny as this little anecdote may be, Mordche Hersh finds it perfectly telling of how much investment goes into each play. “Look, we were up practicing until three a.m. the night before, and the night before that — and the night before that,” he says. “And there I was, lying in a pretty comfortable bed. Why not chap a well-deserved nap?” —

A Time to Laugh

Along with high drama and emotions, the Interen plays are known for their episodes of comic relief. But it isn’t as easy as it looks. “Comedy is one of the hardest things to get right in a play,” says producer Shlome Steinmetz. “You can get away with some action scenes that aren’t that dramatic, or some emotional scenes that aren’t all that moving. Those are okay from time to time. But comedy scenes that aren’t all that funny — those are just painful to watch.”

That’s why the Interen cast includes two of the funniest people in the heimishe world: Yaakov Yosef Langsam and Velvi Feldman of New Square.

In what are arguably the most anticipated segments of the shows, these two comedians always play the same two bumbling characters whose very appearance onstage cracks up the spectators: a clodhopping duo named Sender and Moshe Itche.

In one of their most iconic scenes, Sender and Moshe Itche can be seen sitting near each other on an airplane with their oversized, cumbersome packages obstructing the aisles, arguing loudly in Yiddish about everything from the weather to politics, clearly enraging the non-Jewish passengers surrounding them. Langsam and Feldman skillfully reenact a scene we’ve all been a part of at some point or another — those awkward times where our visibly divergent culture stands out like a sore thumb, albeit in a less extreme way.

At the close of the hilarious scene, the flight attendant approaches the pair and asks them to kindly switch their seats, to spare the disgruntled passengers nearby. They deliberate the prospect of hauling their various belongings to a different location, but after a heated debate, they finally agree that making a kiddush Hashem is the most important thing.

And with those words, they obediently get up with all of their bulky packages in hand, and promptly swap seats — with each other.

Recently, Sender and Moshe Itche have become an act of their own, and often do solo appearances at simchahs and other events, dressed in their signature outfits, hairdos, and “beardos.” Whether they’re bickering in a prison cell at the Interen play, caricaturizing common shalom bayis issues at a sheva brachos, or simply telling corny jokes as a backdrop to Lipa Schmeltzer’s “Tri Badchana” song, the celebrated duo is sure to have the crowd in stitches.

Supporting Role

The plots, costumes, songs, and effects may change from show to show, but there are some constants at every Interen performance. Here, the Top Ten (plus one vital addition) elements present at every show

15 Versions (on average) of the Script

Sure, the script is prepared months in advance. But the Interen actors are skilled improvisers, and they tend to come up with new lines and even twists during rehearsals. So the script is constantly updated — and the most updated version might be emerging from the printer the morning of the show.

At Least One Original Song

A few of the Interen members have doubled as composers, including Yoel Hersh Fuchs and Yoelie Brown. The plays have also been enhanced by custom numbers created by well-known composers like Hershy Weinberger and Naftali Schnitzler.

The Wow Factor
Like the famous underwater scene that required professional harnessing and rigging, the Interen crew seeks out elements that will make the crowd gasp. The list includes live animals on stage, explosions, and pyrotechnics, and of course, actual planes, helicopters, and motorcycles.

VJ lighting gear

Every scene has its own VJ, a video jockey, which functions as the visual counterpart of a sound mixer and projects a lifelike background on the LED wall behind the actors. For the most basic scene, the screen will just display a background set to match the milieu of the plot. For more dynamic scenes — like if there’s a fire or water element — the VJ will be programmed to project special effects.

Smoke Machines

The most basic reason for a smoke machine is when a script calls for a fire or explosion. But Shlome Steinmetz will often call for the smoky effect for other reasons. If there’s a water scene, a bridge scene, a border scene, or even a dream scene, the team will use the smoke machine to create the effect of a light fog — and amp up the drama.

Child-Sized

Interen plays have at least one child actor, who usually also sings a solo number. And the scripts are crafted to include at least one scene that plays out from a child’s perspective, so that younger audience members can relate to the plot in a visceral way.

At Least 15 “Extras”

In addition to the cast of seasoned actors who’ve spent weeks practicing their lines and gestures, there are always a dozen-plus guys who show up onstage. They’ll fill up a street scene to make it look realistic or supplement the trained actors to simulate a crowd.

Mystery Motif

If you follow the Interen plots carefully, you’ll notice that each one is embedded with a mysterious element, motif, or character present throughout the show, whose full significance is only revealed at the conclusion.

Full-Face Makeup

To get the actors fully in character, four professional stage makeup artists work for seven hours each, utilizing every trick of the trade — from changing skin tone to aging effects, beard attachments, and more. This means that on show day, the cast and crew usually arrive in the venue by 7 a.m. to ensure they’re ready for a 1 p.m. curtain time. One or two actors will have a custom full head face mask fitted — this process happens a couple of months before the show — which enhances the element of surprise.

A Reminder of Who Really Runs the Show

The team gives tzedakah before every rehearsal and every show, and holds a Shacharis minyan every show day. Yes, they have their own director, productor, and coordinator, with exhaustive checklists of instructions and contingency plans — but everyone knows Who’s really pulling the strings.

Interen by the Numbers

As the creative standards and popularity of the Interen Crew have grown, their “baggage” has grown too. Gone are the days when they traveled light and improvised with makeshift props and costumes. These days, when the Interen Crew hit the backstage of the NJPAC auditorium, they’re sure to bring along head-turning quantities of equipment, support staff, and behind-the-scenes work:

30 face-colored microphone headsets

6 trailers filled with props

100 producers and coordinators

300 plus light fixtures

6  costume specialists

600+ items of the list of sound and lighting queues (that’s when a change in the special effects or sound system gets generated)

10-12

hours of makeup, hair styling, and wig prep

48 hours of onsite tech and props rehearsals

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1033)