Fringe player

Spring Garden resident John Rosenberg returns to Kensington’s Paper Mill Theater with “Jericho Road Improvement Association” for the Fringe Fest.

Spring Garden resident John Rosenberg brings his California love to the Live Arts Festival & Philly Fringe next month.

  Philly Fringe and Live Arts Festival is just around the corner and this year, John Rosenberg, a resident of the Spring Garden neighborhood, will present “Jericho Road Improvement Association.”
The play, written, directed and produced by Rosenberg, focuses on race relations in Oakland, Calif., and the life of a former police officer who moves into the neighborhood where he fought Black Panthers in the past.
“He’s a man looking for redemption, but at the same time, he’s left his own family,” said Rosenberg, in discussing the upcoming play during an interview last Friday.
“He has good intentions, but he goes about it all wrong,” he said.
As the last show he produced in the Golden State before he moved to Philadelphia in 2009, Rosenberg said the play is similar to some of the more recent productions that he’s put on at the Paper Mill Theater, 2825 Ormes St., in Kensington, in that they all focus on California-based characters.
“I kind of miss California,” he said.
A lifelong Californian, Rosenberg said he became interested in writing and producing his own plays about “five or six” years ago when he performed in “a really bad production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.”
“A couple of us got together and decided to do our own work,” he said.
After moving to Philadelphia, Rosenberg said his group, Hella Fresh Theatre, found a home in Kensington, where they are able to perform plays on a regular basis, even if the idea of live theater seems like an odd event for the urban Kensington neighborhood.
“We are feeling it out, but it’s our home,” he said. “We are taking a long view with this … Everyone has been really great in the neighborhood.”
Performing in Kensington, he said, has been a unique experience, but the other shows he’s done this year, California Redemption Value in January and Queen of All Weapons in July, have seen a strong turn out.
With the upcoming shows to be held during the 2011 Live Art and Philly Fringe Festival, Rosenberg believes interested visitors will travel outside of Center City for a unique, quality show like Jericho Road Improvement Association.
“At Fringe, you get to see a wider audience. People will travel off the beaten path,” he said. “It’s a chance to present good work to an audience that never thought they’d ever see a live performance in Kensington.”
And, with Jericho Road Improvement Association, even though it’s based in the rough and tumble Oakland, California, Rosenberg said there are many parallels between that West Coast urban community and the many neighborhoods in Philadelphia.
“The play is an attempt to look at race relations in a different way. Its law enforcement and race, it’s a difficult thing … But, I think Oakland and Philly are sister cities in a way,” he said. “Especially in terms of race relations.”
Just as in Oakland, he says that in Kensington, he sees a strained relationship often between minorities and police, and it’s this type of mentality he’s looking at in the play.
“It’s a six man cast with a lot of yelling and arguing,” he said.
The play focuses on a former police officer named Paul, who is seeking self-redemption, and moves to a neighborhood where he had fought the Black Panthers in the past. During the play, Paul befriends a young, black man and their relationship alters both of their lives.
After the play has run its course, Rosenberg said he has a full slate of future events for the rest of this year, including a festival of short plays with the nearby Walking Fish Theatre, to be held in October, and other short plays to be held at Papermill Theater in November.
“We have a whole thing going on,” he said confidently.
Reporter Hayden Mitman can be reached at 215-354-3124 or hmitman@bsmphilly.com