The second play she had been working on was about a marriage between two writers, one of whom had begun to email a movie star and become obsessed by her.
It was inspired by some correspondence between Natalie Portman and the author Jonathan Safran Foer, which was published in The New York Times Style Magazine to promote a movie of Portman’s. The pair’s email banter, titled The Emails of Natalie Portman and Jonathan Safran Foer, had stirred interest from the public, because, says Ziegler, it was “so baldly flirtatious and there was a lot of intellectual posturing”. Ziegler was gripped. “I found it very amusing and human, and that really sparked me,” she says.
And so in The Wanderers, which opened last Friday at Marylebone Theatre, prize-winning novelist Abe – who lives in Brooklyn with his wife and children – is plagued by whether he’s living the wrong life and embarks on correspondence with an actress. In a second narrative thread, Esther and Schmuli are beginning married life as members of a Chasidic community across the city. Both couples ask themselves: can we rewrite the narratives we’ve inherited, or are we forever defined by them?
The topic of inherited identity is something Ziegler has long considered, as indeed have Jews the world over. Yet this is the first play she has written that touches upon generational trauma.
“Even I, a fairly secular Jew in Brooklyn whose family was not directly touched by the Holocaust, feel like I grew up in the shadow of that event,” she says.
“Most Jews of my generation, and certainly older Jews, feel there’s a certain weight of history that they experience. I was really interested in exploring whether there are ways, either through art or relationships, to escape that trauma. All the characters in the play are dealing with inherited trauma, to one degree or another.”
Each character also struggles in varying ways with their identity. Take the line towards the end of the play where they discuss the author Philip Roth who’s at a reading when someone asks if he feels he is primarily a Jew, an American or a writer. Abe is struggling with all aspects of his life – as a Jew, an American, a writer, a father, a husband...
“They’re all freighted with a certain anxiety and weight for him, in part because of the inherited I address in the play,” says Ziegler. Sophie’s identity is further complicated by grappling with her various roles in her life as she admits she does not want to be any of them. “That feels like a central theme for them all,” says Ziegler.
As for the play’s Chasidic characters, especially Esther, there is a tension between wanting to be part of her community and faithful to her Judaism, but also longing for freedom and the ability to express herself in the way she chooses. Meanwhile, Schmuli feels torn between honouring his parents and his wife’s needs.
“Those are very recognisable tensions that even those of us who are not deeply religious feel,” says Ziegler.
As a mother to two sons aged eight and 12, the playwright identifies with her characters through her own life’s challenges – right now, balancing her writing career with being a good parent and partner.
It is certainly a career worth balancing one’s life for. Her 2015 play Photograph 51 – which told the story of chemist Rosalind Franklin’s contribution to the discovery of the DNA double helix structure, and how she was overlooked for her male colleagues for a Nobel Prize – was a West End hit starring Nicole Kidman.
But despite the previous stage successes, watching any stage performance of her work remains a “nail-biting” experience that requires a medicinal glass of wine, she says.
“It’s very anxiety-producing, because I’m Jewish and neurotic, and I don’t like that loss of control,” she says with a smile. “I like the writing part, and if I hadn’t been a playwright, my plan was to write poetry and be a book editor.”
Watching any stage performance of my work is very anxiety-producing because I am Jewish and neurotic and I don’t like the loss of control
It was living in Brooklyn that sparked her interest in Chasidim. “In some ways, I felt guilty in the fact that I knew so little about people who live so close to me and share some of our heritage and religion,” she says. “I wanted to learn more.”
She expresses her heritage by being a member of a Reform synagogue, and sending her children to Hebrew school. She describes herself as “not terribly religious” and essentially “secular”, lest people seeing the play assume she is Orthodox. “It’s all relative, right?” she says.
If there is a message she hopes audiences might take away from the play, it’s to “try to be happy with the lives that we have, as opposed to constantly searching for better lives elsewhere”.
“We’re so inundated by choice in our modern world; it’s beguiling,” she says, adding that she hopes people will avoid finding themselves in the same trap as her characters. “In some cases, they regret the looking and don’t see the blessings that are right in front of them.”
The Wanderers is at Marylebone Theatre until November 29
The JC in association with BRAMI and the Israel Philharmonic Foundation UK invite you to a performance of The Wanderers at 7.30pm on November 5, followed by a Q&A with the cast. Book your ticket at: go.thejc.com/thewanderers.com
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