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Conversations: Ilene Fins

Ragtime & The Jewish Experience in America: A Conversation With Ilene Fins

In preparation for this weekend's shows, Ragtime Director Julian Deleon sat down Midlands Tech professor Ilene Fins for a conversation about family, the Jewish experience in America, and why Ragtime stays to relevant to the American story years later. Ragtime will run on the Harbison Theatre stage November 11-13. For more information on ticketing and showtimes, visit the show's page here.


Ilene, thank you for stopping by the office to share some of your insights with us as we get ready for Ragtime!

Thanks for having me! Always happy to chat.


To start off, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your role at Midlands Tech?

My name is Ilene Fins, and I am a theater artist and teacher here in Columbia, South Carolina. I am a full-time theater instructor, the only one that's full-time, actually. I teach Theater 101: Introduction to Theater, which is a theater appreciation course. I've also, in the past, taught beginning acting or acting fundamentals class.


Do you think theatre education has value for folks who won't go on to work in the arts?

Of course! You don't have to want to be an actor to take an acting class, right? It gives you confidence in speaking. It's good for business, it's good for education majors. It's just a matter of making people see that side, right? Public speaking is essential in everything, really, I think that's the key thing.


Absolutely. So tell me a little about your story. Did you grow up in Columbia?

My family moved here from Brooklyn, or from New York. They lived on Long Island. I was born in a Brooklyn hospital, my parents are from Brooklyn. They moved to Columbia, South Carolina, when I was almost two years old. I'm the youngest of four. That was 1964.

 

My mother always told me stories about that transition. We did StoryCorps one time, and she was telling me that she, with my dad and some people from his office, went to a Howard Johnson's that was right across the Blossom Street Bridge. In walked a bowling team, and on the back of their shirts was the KKK. It was the KKK bowling team. She said she looked at my father and said, "Where you have brought me?"

 

(Laughter) So why Columbia?

Actually, there are a lot of Jews here from their old neighborhood. I can't remember who was first, but my aunt and her husband had moved here before my parents, but I think they're all of my parents' age, so they're all gone now, all of these older people who were from the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, or my mom was from Brighton Beach. But it was sort of like, "Come on down." I used to say to my mom, "Gosh, if you had stayed in New York, I would have gone to LaGuardia High School, the “Fame" school, she's like, "We couldn't afford you to go to college. It would have been too expensive." So that's how we ended up here.


My parents, however, were born in New York, but their parents were not. Their parents were immigrants. So, my mom's family was from Bessarabia, Russia, Russian immigrants. My grandfather, who I'm named after, came over after the Czar died. He was a Trotskyite, Russian soldier, and he came over. In New York, they had all these social clubs. Immigrants lived in and congregated in neighborhoods of the same ilk, villages, whatever. They'd have social clubs. He met my grandma there, who was also from Russia. My mom said they came over in steerage class in the boat.

 

What does steerage class mean?

That's the lowest. If you remember the Titanic.

 

Yeah.

Leonardo DiCaprio.

 

So literally the bottom.

The bottom.

 

Oh my gosh.

My father's family was from Turkey, who were Spanish Jews that left Spain during the Inquisition and settled in Turkey. He and his brothers came to America. They were business people. They came over first class, so different. They had money in Turkey, and he had a furniture store.

 

My mom’s dad bought a set of Funk and Wagnall encyclopedias when he came to America to teach himself English. He was a furrier for coats, designing stuff. My grandmother’s brother was in a Broadway musical called Pins and Needles. He was a garment worker.

 

I pick up these stories where I can. Supposedly, my father's mother had been kidnapped from her village in Turkey, because she was the most beautiful girl. This could be a story that was completely made up and told to me as a child. I have no idea. But just some interesting stuff back there.


That's such an interesting story. So coming from immigrants, what was your own transition like coming to Columbia?

Because I grew up here in Columbia, I would say to my mom... Often, I was the only Jewish kid in my class, and I was always like, "What's this mean? What's that? Why don't we have a Christmas tree?" Whatever, just not knowing what's what. For her, growing up in Brooklyn, everybody in her neighborhood was Jewish. The teachers at the schools were. The schools closed for the Jewish holidays. I just was like- "Wow, what would that be like?"


Her parents, coming to America, they tried to Americanize as much as possible. When their parents, who came over with them, when they died, they no longer kept kosher. They kind of let Judaism fall away a bit. I didn't learn very much. I was not raised religious at all. We celebrated holidays, but I didn't really understand. Anything I learned, I learned on my own as an adult.

 

Did you know that you always wanted to study theater?

Well, I wanted to be a Rockette, but I remember saying that. I just wanted to be a dancer. Who didn't want to be a dancer?

 

Everybody wants to be a dancer.

My mom was like, "You're too short to be a Rockette. They have to be 5'10"." I was like, (laughter) I just, "Please, please, may I have dance lessons?" Third grade, I started ballet. I did five years of ballet and it hurt my foot, and those toe shoes were so painful, so then I did one year of jazz and I was like, "I'm so used to ballet, I can't do this jazz thing," and then I took a drama class.

 

In ninth grade, I took a drama class at Dent Junior High. I was like, "Oh, well this is fun," because I was painfully, painfully shy. But I wanted attention. I wanted to be famous, I wanted to be a star, all that kind of stuff, but just so, super shy. I took a drama class in ninth grade, then I did another class in tenth grade when I went to Spring Valley. Then, I got cast in The Children's Hour. I just had two lines, one of the girls, wasn't even in act two, kind of thing. But, we would also go and do ETV extra work. I did a lot of that in high school. I did stuff at ETV, filming. But I was going to be a lawyer. I said I was going to be a lawyer.

 

In my senior year of high school, I started doing more theater. That's when Jim Thigpen came to my high school, senior year. I went away to college to study political science and theater, but one summer... I used to work as a day camp counselor every summer at the Jewish Community Center, I worked with this woman who was a dancer, and she was telling me her mom ran a dance school, and when she graduated high school, she wanted to go to the Grand Ole Opry to audition, and she didn't because she stayed home and got married and worked at her mom's dance school. She's like, "I'll never know."

Wow

Changed my life. That was the summer between freshman and sophomore year of college, and I was like, "No way am I going to live with regret."

 

So I started doing theater. Clemson at that time had a minor [no major], but they were really good. Larry Hembree was there, he's my mentor, and we did excellent theater. We went to The Kennedy Center. I've got a big medallion for that. It was the best education, because I ended up with an English degree and a minor in theater, but I was so well-prepared when I went to grad school, because I could write papers, I could analyze, and theater was an extracurricular activity, so I knew all about

discipline, about doing the stuff I didn't want to do to get to the stuff that I did want to do. So I had an incredible work ethic, ensemble training. Wasn't about me, no stars, none of that stuff. We did everything. I designed lights, I stage managed, I acted, I directed, you know?


Then, I went to grad school and I thought, "This is where it's really going to begin." The very first audition I had in grad school, I remember, for South Pacific, and this girl, we're all in a line, probably a dance call, and she pushed her way in front of me. We became friends later, but at the time I was like, "Nobody's ever done that to me... We're doing a play and we're an ensemble and we're all together." I'm pie-eyed. I still feel that way, because it's not about you, it's about the whole. That sort of led into why I became an educator, a theater educator.


After grad school I worked at Flatrock Playhouse. I was an intern,  we got paid [as opposed to apprentices]. We got some stage time, but we did still do all the grunt work. So, I'm working on props on this show and an actor comes up to the prop master and he's like, "Could you come here?" There was sawdust on the prop table. I was like, "What was that about?" I thought, "What kind of actor?" You know? Who trained him? Where in his training did he learn that he was so above wiping a little dust off a prop table?


Right, or just even ignoring it.

I thought... "I want to teach kids theater so they don't grow up to be [jerks]."

 

That leads into my next question. What do you enjoy about teaching theater to young adults?

I've worked with third graders on up, but then kind of really worked with high school students because I can be a bit intense, as you can imagine from my directing. It's best for me to work with high school students and above. There's two different things. I've worked in places like the Seattle Children's Theatre or a performing arts high school where these kids are seriously talented and intense and I'm watching them on TV now, some of my former students. Just that energy, just to be able to be in that presence and help them craft and make connections is amazing, but there is something really cool when you have students, and this is what I love about teaching at the community college level, where there is a diverse population. My students are anywhere from 16 to 60 years old. I have a 50-year-old woman working with an 18-year-old who's a freshman, right? Because people come back and go to school. You have this wide net, but I also have students who have never stepped foot in a theater or seen a play. Now, I'm showing them the world of theater and they're like, "I had no idea."


In my classes now, I have recorded interviews with all my friends who work all over the country in theater, and I have them talk about how they started or what they're doing now, because I also have some friends who used to do theater and have degrees in theater, but now - like one friend who is a VP in marketing for a seafood company. He said, "I got hired because I could talk to people."


And that's generally what it is.

Yes, it's communication and knowing how to deal with people and understanding what motivates people. It's really exciting that you could love theater and be a grant writer. People think theater, acting- but what about the person who makes something or sells something, or, like I said, the marketing or concessions? It's all part of it. We're all working together to do it, and telling students about dramaturgy for the first time they're like, "I like researching. This is so cool.” I have students who are like, "I never thought about this." Sometimes, they don't get it right away, because we always ask them at the end of the semester, "How will you apply this?” Some say, "Oh, nothing. I don't want to be an actor." But then there are others who are like - "It's opened my eyes." Often, you have students who come back later and they're like, they'll never watch a play, a movie, a TV show the same way because they can analyze the script, how it's made, the lighting choices, the costume choices, why is that character in that color and that fabric texture?

Right? They had never thought about anything like that before. You're ruining them a little bit, too.

That's what I tell them. You know it's good when you sit down and you're just wrapped up in the story. But then, you go see something and it's boring, and then you're like, "Well, what kind of ellipsoidal is that? What's the lighting?"

 

That brings us to Ragtime. My question is twofold. When did you first see Ragtime and what were your thoughts?

Sure. Well, I read the book, I think I was in eighth grade. It came out in '76, the book? It was a big, adult book, and I read it.

I loved it, because I love that it tells so many stories, so many people's stories. That's what America is, right? This melting pot. I mean, that's the idealized version of America, anyway, I think. Then, they made it into a musical. I saw it on tour. I was living in Seattle. The music is just so powerful. And, to know that part of my immigrant family story is told, right? The Sephardic Jews from Turkey and the Ashkenazi Jews from Russia.

 

This story, the immigrants in the play are just my mother's side of the family [Ashkenazi], but that idea of coming to a new country and assimilating and making money for a better life and all of those things. There's that part of the story, but there's so much more. I mean, of course there's just so much more in that. I think it's so interesting that you're doing this show now.

 

Which is another great question. Why do you think it's relevant?

Well, this is interesting, Julian, because today in my theater class, we talked about the “BIPOC Demands for White American Theatre”, so just sort of where we are culturally as a country and starting with the land acknowledgement - that we don't even talk about on whose land we are on. It's very important to know your history and to get it right. Because I know there are so many things I don't remember being taught. When I moved out West to Seattle, it was like, "Japanese internment camps? What? I don't remember learning that." Growing up in the South, I think there's a lot of history that is... what would be the word? It's taught in a way... it's so watered down.

 

That's a good word. I will say, to not put words in your mouth, but when we initially started this production, that is what some of our participants were worried about going into it, was that if we censor the show too much, it's going to water down the American experience of what it was.

You can't do that anymore. I was explaining to my students today... I don't usually talk about personal stuff in school, but I was like, "Growing up here in 1964, I felt like an “other." I have never thought of myself as white. Then, I could see all my students of color roll their eyes and I'm like, "Oh, I know. I hear you. I hear you," because now I understand that when I walk through the door, I have white privilege, but, when we moved here, we weren't allowed certain places. We couldn't live in Spring Valley. We couldn't belong to any of those country clubs. There were places we could not go, and I was told "No Jews, no Blacks, no Catholics." It was like there was a lot of segregation and antisemitism,  kids that wouldn't play with me once their moms found out I was Jewish, I was like, "How come I don't get invited to your party anymore?" "Oh, my mom found out you were Jewish. I can't play with her." There's so many people that had that experience and we have to reconcile with that, and we have to do better. It's time that America does that.


So yeah, what a great way, through theater. This is what theater can do. This is why we have theater, because we can talk about things, we can laugh about things, we can cry, we can listen to this beautiful music and it can open your eyes and change your world and change your life. That's why we do theater. For one person. You have 50 people in the audience, but one person gets it, job done. Job done. That's why we do it.

 

I agree. This season, speaking on the ideas of the needs of BIPOC and in general cultural equity, we as a theater at CCT, have tried to steer our focus more towards socially relevant material. We opened with Grace for President, we're doing Ragtime. We actually have a main stage production of Akeelah and the Bee. We're really focusing on telling these stories. When it comes to Ragtime, why do you think it's important for young people to engage and see a show like this?

Because... and we were talking about that today in my class, too, and every single student agreed that with theater, you want to see yourself on stage, you want your story to be told, and, by seeing other stories, you learn empathy, because it's human. It's a human story. I may not be able to relate to what Sarah goes through. It's not my experience, but I can have empathy for her and for her experience, and all of those characters. That's the thing, but who's to say that there's some little kid in the audience whose great grandpa, by this time, emigrated from Poland or whatever. Then, you can have a conversation with your family. Where are we from? Because unless you're one of the indigenous tribes, you came from somewhere else. You're not from here. I think people forget that and politics aside, that's the thing. What are you thinking? Because somebody came here to push somebody else out.

 

Correct. The reason I'm so passionate about the show, specifically with the group that we're doing it with, because this generation that's going forward, these juniors and seniors in high school are very engaged in the cultural shift that this world is about to take.

 

How do you think Judaism and the Jewish culture is represented in theatre? I know that's a big, old question.

I can think of the times that I feel like I've seen myself represented. Not a lot. Thank goodness for Neil Simon, right? But it's really just more like that New York kind of comedy, but come on, they're all Jews, right?

 

Really the first lead role I ever had... after grad school, I moved back to Columbia to work at Trustus. They hired two actors, and Stan Brown and I got hired as full-time actors. They did Wendy Wassterstein's Isn't it Romantic. I essentially was playing myself. I was 26 years old or 27 years old playing a 27-year-old Jewish girl, you know? Wore my own clothes for costume. You just don't see it a lot. I don't, especially not in Columbia. Because there are larger cities that have Jewish theaters, dedicated to that. In New York, they have a Yiddish theater. I kind of wanted to go see Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish. Even though I wouldn't understand, still, it's just that cool thing. I think about that every time I go to New York and I'm walking around on the Upper West Side. I'm like, "Look at all the Jews." I'm one, too. It has nothing to do with religion. It's purely a cultural heritage kind of thing, nothing about religion at all. I think it's interesting for everyone to look at history.

 

Speaking of cultural representation and stuff, specifically with Ragtime, how do you think the musical or the story, how do you think it pushes forward the Jewish story specifically?

I think it does a good job of showing the struggles Jewish immigrants had to keep their families and their culture together. People have tried to wipe us out for so long. I mean, my grandmother, the Russian grandmother, when she was little, her village was raided by Cossacks in a pogrom. When she took my oldest sister to see Fiddler on the Roof when the movie came out, that opening scene when the village is raided, my grandma leaned down to Viky and said, "It was just like that." She was traumatized the rest of her life. We didn't know it was PTSD. She had mental health problems. People are still leaving their homes because of X, Y, Z, whatever it is, so it's important to know that. It's important to know people's stories. Stories deserve to be told and heard and listened to. Think about it, because we all inhabit the planet, right?

 

Which is what makes story telling so important.

I think everything: theater, education today, is about expanding that world, because you can live in your own little bubble, especially depending on what you choose to watch and listen to and stay home and if you don't travel, I think travel's very important. I understand that not everybody can afford to travel, but that's what's so important about this kind of thing, that you can see a story and you can learn something about somebody so completely different from your background.


Well thanks again for sharing your story today. Any questions for me?

The music sounds so hard to me. I'm not a singer, I'm not a music person, but it seems so hard to me. Is it?

 

It is. I will tell you, as the director of this, and I'm not one of those that I'm like, "Oh, my stuff is so great, but yeah, there's 34 of them, the music is a huge feat, and the CCTeens are truly amazing. Nothing about this music is easy - and they are doing an amazing job.

Are the teens engaging with the material? 


Absolutely. And its been a process not only learning music, touching on really difficult topics of racism, racial inequality, and gender inequality. Not only did you have Blacks, whites, Jews and that segregation, you also had what a woman was supposed to do at that time versus what a man was supposed to do and what children were required to do and this idea of it was so looked down upon to have even a child out of wedlock. These things that you're looking at now that you're like, "We're over a hundred years from when this was set and it's still stuff that people talk about." I'd love to say that we're past that, but the conversation is ongoing

 

I think that's the thing I love about it, the weaving of these underlying themes with the music. You can hear the stifledness of New Rochelle versus the kind of cultural rhythms of the immigrants versus that kind of sway of Ragtime for the people of Harlem.

It's not a fluff piece musical.

No, it really isn't. It's not. I talk to people, I'm like, "They're doing Ragtime," and everybody's like, "What? Is it a junior? Is it a high school version?" I'm like - no it's the real thing.

 

And we are excited to perform it. Ilene thank you so much for chatting with us and sharing your story!

Thanks for having me!

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