RIP Corey Fischer

Corey Fischer, actor and co-founder of A Traveling Jewish Theatre, dies at 75

Datebook

By Lily Janiak

June 9, 20209

Corey Fischer was quoting Walt Whitman, among others, up until the end, his wife, China Galland, said of her husband’s death on Saturday, June 6. The longtime Bay Area actor and co-founder of A Traveling Jewish Theatre (later known as the Jewish Theatre San Francisco) died at Driftwood Healthcare Center, in Hayward, after suffering a brain aneurysm, which had stroke-like effects, in December. He was 75.

A family friend and longtime student, Evan Spector, confirmed the details of Fischer’s death.

Fischer left behind a slew of credits in television (“M*A*S*H,” “All in the Family,” “Sunshine,” “Sanford and Sun” and “Frasier,” among others) and film (“The Five-Year Engagement” and “Final Analysis,” among others). But in the Bay Area, where he came with the Los Angeles-founded TJT in 1982, after a tour was well-received here, he will be remembered for his work in theater — for a restless artistic and intellectual curiosity; for a belief in the creative power of the ensemble and improvisation; for a deeply physical connection to his characters; for his elevation of, and collaboration with, his students; for his advancement of Jewish stories, in all their richness and range; for a passionate commitment to progressive causes.

Reflecting on current events, Spector said Fischer “would have been marching in the protests without a doubt.”

“His wish to create — and to create meaningful works — was much deeper than his wish to be famous,” said TJT cofounder and lifelong collaborator Naomi Newman.

For foolsFURY founder and co-artistic director Ben Yalom, Fischer was an early inspiration to stick with a career in theater. Yalom was an undergrad at Stanford University when he met Fischer, who was a guest lecturer.

“I remember that he had us lie down and took us on a guided meditation,” Yalom said. (Fischer was an avid practitioner of meditation; toward the end of his life, he sought lay ordination as a Zen Buddhist.) “I had never encountered anything of the sort in my theater classes. It was the idea that making theater was connected to life, that there was something about what we were doing that could be connected to one’s whole person.”

In what ended up being one of his last roles at a major local theater company, Fischer towered in Marin Theatre Company’s “Oslo,” in 2018, as Shimon Peres. The casting alone was a brilliant stroke: The actor and director and playwright who for decades was a pillar of Jewish theater in the Bay Area was now playing the Israeli leader.

But Fischer brought more to the part. He was power embodied, power that didn’t have to strain to be understood and obeyed, power that could relax into itself, be tickled with itself, not needing anyone else to feel the same.

Fischer met Newman in an acting class in Los Angeles more than a half-century ago and the pair found their groove as improvisers. TJT, which they cofounded with Albert Greenberg in 1978, came in part from a desire to “go deeper” than they could with improv, Newman told The Chronicle. It also came from Fischer’s exposure to other identity-specific theater companies, while he was on tour with the Provisional Theatre, and from a desire to find a new way to connect to Jewish identity.

Fischer didn’t find meaning in the Jewish culture of his parents, Newman said.

“He was looking for the soul of Jewishness. That’s where we went to poetry and music and our imaginations. The reason our first piece was called ‘Coming from a Great Distance’ was because both Corey and Albert were coming from a great distance back to Jewish connection.”

“We wanted a theater that was rooted in the Jewish experience but was contemporary and unconventional,” Newman said. They were influenced by the raw, experimental practices of New York’s Open Theatre and Living Theatre. “We wanted the Jewishness to be a bridge to other cultures, that people from all over would be interested in — not just a parochial theater.”

The trio weren’t sure if they’d stay an official group past their first show, which was inspired by the life and work of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, and first performed in a Methodist church in Santa Monica.

“I was making our first hand-drawn poster when I realized it needed to say who was doing this piece,” Fischer told The Chronicle in 2011, of coming up with a name for the company. They took “A Traveling Jewish Theatre,” with permission, from fellow theater artist Bruce Myers.

“Fischer and Greenberg are riveting, passionate performers, capable of evoking a larger effect than a small stage and a few props, instruments and costumes would appear to permit,” The Chronicle’s Steven Winn wrote of “Coming from a Great Distance,” in 1981. He added that the company was not about “hollow tradition-rescuing and empty experimentation. This is theater with a heart.”

For Yalom, TJT’s work embodied the idea that playwrights aren’t the only creators in theater, that performers are more than vessels for a preexisting text.

“The voice of the stage doesn’t have to be purely the interpretation of the playwright’s words,” Yalom said. “The performer could also be a creator, a generator of the piece.”

For him, a TJT show frequently manifested “a much deeper connection to the people doing the work than I sometimes saw.”

Among Fischer’s highlights with TJT was his adaptation of David Grossman’s novel “See Under: Love” to the stage. Reviewing the 2001 production for The Chronicle, theater critic Robert Hurwitt wrote, “More than a Holocaust play — though ‘Love’ is certainly that — it’s a captivatingly creative but bracingly bold look into the depths of the heart where the vengeful fury of the victim meets the humanity of the torturer.”

The company performed its last show in 2011, but Fischer continued to create, notably with a solo show, “Lightning in the Brain,” which he performed at the Marsh and elsewhere.

“He never stopped having visions about ways to create,” Newman said.

Fischer was working on his memoirs up until he suffered the brain stem bleed, and he had been slated to direct in foolsFURY’s 2020 Fury Factory this summer.

“He had 40 years or more of making theater under his belt when (Newman and he) applied to the Fury Factory, with their most recent piece,” Yalom said. “He was calling me and asking me advice.”

For Yalom, that reflected Fischer’s lack of ego and artistic integrity.

“I never felt like Corey was either telling me what to do or withholding telling me what to do,” Yalom said. “It was always the sense of both being artists and humans and trying to figure things out in the world, with the intention or effort to help one another figure those things out.”

Corey John Fischer was born Feb. 28, 1945, in Los Angeles, to parents Ethel (née Pasternak) and Samuel, who were involved with Chicago theater and vaudeville in the 1930s. He is survived by his wife, China Galland; children Matthew Galland, Madelon Verhalen Galland and Ben Galland; and grandchildren River, Sebastian, Phoebe, Skyler and Eli.

Plans for a public memorial will be announced at a later date.

FISCHER, Corey (Corey John Fischer)

Born: 2/28/1945, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.

Died: 6/6/2020, Hayward, California, U.S.A.

Corey Fischer’s westerns – actor:

Daniel Boone (TV) – 1967 (Freddie Ledbetter)

McCabe & Mrs. Miller – 1971 (Mr. Elliott)