U of M PROFESSOR RECEIVES RARE RENEWAL OF SECOND FULBRIGHT SCHOLAR AWARD

HISTORICAL SPACES inspire Sarah Brown to write plays. In fact, international sitespecific playwriting and directing has earned her a rare renewal of her second Fulbright Scholar award from the U.S. State Department. Fulbright Renewals are so rare that Mihai Moroiu, the director of the American Fulbright program in Romania, says it’s not even worth establishing a percentage to figure out how many are granted.

“Renewals have been indeed quite rare in the last 10 years or so,” said Moroiu. “Extensions are more common, but again they have never been in abundance.”

Brown is an associate professor of performance in the UofM’s Department of Theatre and Dance and currently lives in Romania.

In the summer of 2022, she wrote and directed a site-specific play with music featuring 27 performers called “A Secret About Joy” about the Jewish community of 1927 Sibiu, an historically significant city in the heart of Romania’s Transylvania region. The play was performed in the 123-year-old Grand Synagogue of Sibiu, which is one of thousands of nearly abandoned or re-purposed synagogues throughout Eastern Europe.

“Before World War II, Romania’s Jewish population totaled around 700,000, and now it is closer to 3,000,” noted Brown. “Nearly 400,000 Jews were either murdered in Romania or deported from Romania to death camps under the Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu.”

Brown originally believed she would be directing student performed solo shows for Sibiu’s NATO population; however, the NATO command post was not yet fully established, and Brown saw a far more meaningful opportunity when she discovered the non-operating Grand Synagogue.

Her play was an immersive experience for the audience as the scenes took place in the aisles, in the balcony, on the central bimah and at the front of the synagogue near the Torah ark. The play was made up of intertwining stories about several families within the

Jewish community, with Brown casting a mix of professional actors and acting students pursuing their master’s degree. Her play also featured a 10-person choir and a small four-person band playing klezmer tunes as well as authentic Jewish music from the Transylvania region.

“It was important to me that non-Jewish Romanians come into the synagogue and learn that the Torah is simply the first five books of the Bible, the same Bible that Jesus studied — and that Jews come to their places of worship with the same hopes, dreams and struggles that non-Jews bring with them to their churches,” Brown said. “I wanted the audience to fall a little in love with the characters and to leave the play having had an intimate connection with this lost community — a connection they may never get otherwise.”

“ A Secret About Joy ,” , premiered in the summer of 2022 at the International Theatre Festival of Sibiu.

The Radu Stanca National Theatre of Sibiu is now supporting Brown in another site-specific theatre project: a play about the Transylvania Saxon craft guilds of the Middle Ages that will be performed this summer in the Evangelical Church of St. Mary, Sibiu’s landmark 14th century Saxon church.

“This will be a diversity and inclusion play, a kind of morality play for the 21st century couched in a Saxon-style folktale,” Brown said.

“The story’s main character is a cabinet maker whose work is phenomenally beautiful yet slightly dysfunctional. His doors don’t close correctly, his chairs wobble a bit, and his personality and parentage are always under question. Though he barely survives the unrelenting discrimination of his jealous and suspicious colleagues, everyone learns how to love themselves a little more because of his example.

“The Transylvania Saxons are another minority in Romania,” explained Brown. “They built the medieval towns, cities and fortified churches that have made Transylvania one of the most beautiful and wellpreserved historical regions of Europe. There were Saxons here for 800 years, but due to wars and discrimination the population dwindled, and 90 percent have left.”

Brown’s play will be performed in German by the German company of actors from the National Theatre of Sibiu.

The Romania-US Fulbright Commission granted Brown a renewal of her Fulbright, giving her another nine months to realize her Saxon project and oversee, if necessary, continued performances of “ A Secret About Joy. ”

This will be Brown’s third Fulbright Scholarship. Her first Fulbright was to Israel in 2010 where she taught solo performance at the University of Haifa and wrote her own solo show that she performed in Haifa, Tel Aviv; Sao Paulo, Brazil and New York City.

The Fulbright Program is a prestigious academic exchange program established and sponsored by the U.S. government since 1946. Each year, the program grants approximately 8,000 Fulbright scholarships of which 3,000 are intended exclusively for American students and professionals, while the remaining 5,000 are for students participating in the Fulbright foreign student program.