WITH ZACHARY L. SHRIER '99

THC: How autobiographical do you feel "The Jerusalem Disease" is?

ZLS: It's not autobiographical in the sense that any one of the characters represented a totality of my Yeshiva experience. When I was in Yeshiva, I was neither one of the "stark" guys, one of the guys on the inside, who was fiercely loyal to the rabbis and their ideas, nor was I one of the parking lot guys who stood on the outside looking in and sort of denigrating what was going on inside. I was actually a personality that I didn't really show at all, the person who was very committed and devoted and stayed on the inside, but had his own internal life, in which he questioned what was going on. And I felt that in the play the best way to hold the mirror up to the Yeshiva experience was by creating this group of parking lot guys who are detached from what's going on inside and can criticize it freely.

THC: How did you resolve the problem of the Yeshiva being too narrow for you?

ZLS: I took a trip to the Dead Sea by myself, during the week, and just sat at the Dead Sea and tried to get the Muses to talk to me again. I tried writing a little bit, but I didn't find it too successful. Finally, one of the rabbis approached me and said he was working on a book. It was a book about a medieval Talmudic commentary from France, and he asked me whether I wanted to be his editor, so I told him that I would and we worked together for many months. But in the second half of the year I felt that [creative aspect] missing a lot, and that's Noah Feltschreiber's problem with Yeshiva, that it doesn't recognize the spectrum of human potential and human talent that he feels like he possesses, and he doesn't want to just focus for the rest of his life on the couple of things that are appreciated in the Yeshiva, which are spiritual growth and learning.

THC: Is there anything you would like to add?

ZLS: I would say that opening night, while I sat there, clutching the chair in a cold sweat, mouthing all the lines along with the actors, was the most incredible experience of my life, to this point. To say this has been a dream come true is a true understatement.