Rebecca Gutterman has one of those soft and pleasant speaking voices, evidence of her "good-Jewish-girl" upbringing. But when she steps into her role as a storyteller she is a powerful presence on stage, displaying strength through her quirkiness, irony and humor.
In her functional, comfortable dress and bare feet, this wild, brown-haired 26-year-old solo performer brings her storytelling pieces to campus Hillels, other Jewish organizations and a variety of secular venues. Gutterman's theater pieces are drawn from her personal experiences during childhood and young adulthood.
A 1993 graduate of Hampshire College, Gutterman first got involved with storytelling as part of her senior project. After she researched and interviewed both professional and nonprofessional storytellers, Gutterman decided to perform at a storytelling conference. "My knees were shaking, but I had a feeling . . . that this was the form that I wanted to perform in. I realized that this was something unique, individual, and . . . not purely selfish or indulgent."
In person, Gutterman sprinkles her speech with familiar liberal arts intellectual jargon, such as "lens" and "gender," and on her promotional flyer, she describes her work as "performances that use story and song to explore the intersection of feminism, Jewish identity and coming of age." In fact, her pieces are sincere and deal with a variety of life experiences that twentysomethings can relate to, including nostalgia for their childhood years, not wanting to grow up and move away from ones close-knit group of friends, and the harsh reality of entering the working world after four years of sheltered college life.
In her shows, Gutterman uses her own Jewish experience growing up in Providence, R.I., where she attended an Orthodox Hebrew Day School. She talks about "the feeling of standing off to the side" when the boys were called up to the Torah and the girls, in contrast, were "silenced." Gutterman intersperses this experience through the "lens" of the Lilith story. Unfortunately this particular piece is less convincing than some of her other pieces as she fails to adequately project the intense feelings of alienation.
One of her most successful works is her role as a cashier at an organic food company in San Francisco. Gutterman relays the frustration in her position as an "overeducated, bitter, organic cashier."
"Paper or plastic? Paper or plastic? My name is not baby . . . Have a good day," says Gutterman as she interacts with imaginary customers, working up to a frantic staccato pace. "Spill in aisle 2-I think it's olive oil . . . Spill in aisle 3-I think it's organic mayonnaise," she calls out to an imaginary manager with a frozen smile pasted on her face. The cashier doesn't know the difference between watercress and Italian parsley‹essential information if you're working in an organic food store, and in San Francisco no less! Her performance allows the audience to understand the depressing realities of working a dead-end job while trying to support ones art.
Currently, Gutterman lives in Jamaica Plain, MA, outside Boston and works as a clinic assistant at Planned Parenthood. She previously studied in theater workshops for two years in San Francisco while performing in the Traveling Jewish Theater.
Although her pieces are long and occasionally scattered, the ideas that emerge from the unique combination of her strong, traditional Jewish identity and her artsy, bohemian lifestyle do work; the audience responds positively. At one point, Gutterman asks, "What I still want to know is, where are the right blessings for us? 'Bless the house of this friend and her table, even though her housemate who moves out next month will be taking it . . .' Where are the right blessings for four chronic interrupters in transition who weren't supposed to be able to sustain anything for two years?" Evidently Gutterman received the right blessings, as she has the talent and individualism to sustain her performance art and will undoubtedly grow and blossom in the future.
Jennifer Zweben is the Arts Editor of New Voices.