September 2- 8, 2004

cover story

Brotherly Loves

FRIENDS OF THE LIBRARY: Ben Katchor's illustrations provide the setting for The Rosenbach Company: A Tragicomedy, co-created by musician Mark Mulcahy.

Two artists set the lives and obsessions of the Rosenbach brothers to image and song.

by Toby Zinman

Once upon a time, long ago in the 19th century, there were two Jewish boys who lived in North Philadelphia. Abie and Philip lived with their parents and sisters, and by 1877, their immigrant father was bankrupt. Little could anyone have imagined that the two brothers would create the Rosenbach Company in 1903 and become the most famous dealers in rare books and antique artifacts in America. After their deaths in the 1950s, their elegant home on Delancey Street became the world-famous museum, the Rosenbach.

Unlikely material for a rock opera, but then the Fringe is all about unlikely: The Rosenbach Company: A Tragicomedy is the collaborative effort of award-winning cartoonist Ben Katchor (Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer and The Jew of New York) and singer-composer Mark Mulcahy (Miracle Legion). The digital projections will provide the setting, while Mulcahy and a cast of singers will provide the story.

Bill Adair, director of education at the Rosenbach, said the show began as part of the artist-in-residence program, which introduces an artist to the collection and then invites him/her to mine it. Katchor was more intrigued by the story of the brothers than by their stuff and has spent two years working in the archival records of everything they bought and sold. Their reputations in the great auction rooms were legendary: invincible chutzpah.

Abie became "A.S.W." or "Dr. R," a passionately scholarly man, while Philip, the stylish dandy, had the commercial acumen. A.S.W. was snapping up the libraries of newly broke European aristocrats and selling them to newly rich American industrialists; creating libraries was the thing to do in the early 20th century, and the Folger, Morgan and Huntington libraries were all created by acquisitions from Rosenbach. A.S.W. supplied Yale's Beinecke Rare Book Library with its Gutenberg Bible (the first book printed in Europe) as well as its 1640 Bay Psalm Book (the first book printed in North America). The most famous acquisitions, including the Joyce manuscript, 100 letters written by George Washington and Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, reside alongside William Blake's The Number of the Beast is 666. Philip's collection ranged from jeweled walking sticks and monogrammed toothpicks, to Fragonard paintings and objects belonging to Charles II.

The Rosenbach Company: A Tragicomedy has a variety of subjects to explore, from the eccentricities of the two men to the odd domestic drama of their unmarried lives, to the fascination of obsessive collecting. City Paper caught up with Ben Katchor via e-mail.

City Paper: I know your book, The Jew Of New York, and I wonder if you're bringing the same sort of postmodern Yiddishkeit to the show — the images I've seen online seem different in two obvious ways: They are in color and they are not populated.

Ben Katchor: Most of the major characters are not seen in the projected images, but appear onstage as live singers. The drawings are in color to give each scene a dramatic color temperature.

CP: Do you see the projections as a digital set design or as something more than backdrop? Will the singers interact with the images (i.e., walk through "doors," etc.)?

BK: I wanted this theater production to be suffused with the handwriting of my drawings. This handmade atmosphere invites the audience to use their imagination in a way that three-dimensional props can't. The audience is forced to "read" each drawing and construct scenic worlds as the show unfolds. The drawings sometime serve to establish a setting, sometimes as close-up view of an event or object, sometimes they're used to propel the narrative. They are much more than backdrops. At the Adrienne we're presenting a concert version of the show with projections. In a fully staged version of the show, the singers would interact with the images in a variety of ways.

CP: You've been working on this for two years. What's the nature of the work?

BK: I started reading about the Rosenbachs two years ago. For about a year, my work on this project was confined to reading, writing and looking at photographs.

CP: I hear from Bill Adair that you were "immediately obsessed with these guys [i.e., the Rosenbach brothers]" — what intrigues you about them? Do you identify with one? Does Mark Mulcahy identify with the other?

BK: The Rosenbach Museum is a strange monument to the obsessions of two men. I'm fascinated by people who are able to completely surrender to and play out their obsessions in the material world — book and antique collecting in the case of the Rosenbachs. I can more readily identify with the collecting obsessions, not so much the business side of their lives. Mark will sing the role of Abe Rosenbach; Ryan Mercy will sing Philip.

CP: Why is it a "tragicomedy"?

BK: There is a hopeless futility in wanting to come closer to history and art through the possession of historical artifacts — old books, antiques, etc. The pursuit of such objects, within the finite span of a human life, offers both tragic and comedic possibilities.

The Rosenbach Company: A Tragicomedy, Fri., Sept. 10, 8 p.m., Sat., Sept. 11, 2 and 8 p.m., Sun., Sept. 2512, 8 p.m., $12-$15, The Adrienne Theater, 2030 Sansom St.