The Buzz Intro Interview | Sarah Michelson

Respondent: Sarah Michelson
Position in Company: Playwright and Director
Show Title: Dybbrooke

“I’m deeply fascinated by the idea of hauntings. I’ve felt haunted. And ignoring a ghost is not the same as exorcising it.”

Why should people see your show?

We’ve got a non-Christian possession narrative! We’ve got honest discussions of grief and sadness! We’ve got folklore in a modern setting! We’ve got catharsis! We’ve got dudes crying!

What about festivals intrigues you? And why the Atlanta Fringe?

I love that it’s a space for experimentation, and I love that it’s in my backyard! Being able to create weird art with and for the people in my community is always the dream, and it’s always so wonderful when it can become reality.

What inspired you to create this?

I’m deeply fascinated by the idea of hauntings— something that sticks around and demands to be heard. Graduate school introduced me to the term “hauntology,” which is broadly used to describe the eruption of the past into the present. I like to call it the presence of absence. We certainly live in a haunted world; a world beset by disease, violence, and trauma; a world where having honest conversations about those things is increasingly difficult. A lonely, isolated world. Or maybe I’m just depressed, I don’t know. But I’ve felt haunted. And ignoring a ghost is not the same as exorcising it.

When I decided that I wanted to write something from my cultural background, the dybbuk became an obvious choice. A dybbuk is a Kabbalistic creature; a deceased soul taking up residence in a living body. How better to explore the idea of hauntings— of emotional attachment— than through a ghost that quite literally clings to one of the living? How does one feel the presence of absence any more than by playing host to a person who’s already dead?

Another aspect of the dybbuk that I discovered through my research, and that really spoke to me, was this idea of a therapeutic exorcism. A dybbuk wants to rest, and an exorcist often wants to help the soul move on peacefully. In S. Ansky’s early 20th century play The Dybbuk, one of the rabbis exorcising the titular dybbuk proclaims, as part the the ritual, “Behold the great suffering of the homeless and afflicted soul…take into account his earlier good deeds, his great torments, and the merits of his ancestors…clear away all demons from his path and grant him eternal rest in Your heavenly palaces.” What a profound kindness, I thought. This idea that care transcends mortal and heavenly boundaries.

Life has been weird the last few years, to say the least. How has the “real world” affected the art you’re creating?

Like many of us these days, I’ve felt the constant presence of grief. Grief feels hard to talk about, and I wanted to talk about it. I wanted to talk about it casually— after all it’s universal. Even the happiest, most well-adjusted person alive inevitably loses someone they love. And I wanted to talk about feeling lonely. Which is also, to a certain extent, universal. But how to talk about it without seeming self-pitying? And also, is it self-pitying to be concerned that people will find you self-pitying? You sublimate that shit into ART, baby.

What have you learned from working on your show so far?

-Making a rehearsal schedule is like scheduling a high stakes game of DnD

-In one early modern dybbuk account, a dybbuk confesses to having had an affair while he was alive, and when other young men come in to examine the possessed, the dybbuk immediately rats them out for their own affairs. Major bro code violation.

A mysterious stranger asks to meet you and your cast and crew after loving your show. In your WILDEST DREAMS, who is it? (Bonus points if your mysterious stranger is an Atlanta celeb.)

David Cronenberg, honestly. David Cronenberg if you’re reading this and you’re free in early June please come see this play.

Fringes are the place to really push the boundaries so we gotta ask: are you inviting your family to this show are “Hey, maybe sit this one out you guys…”

I’m definitely inviting them, but I’m not sure I want to talk with them about it afterwards! Good art makes for weird dinner table conversations, in my opinion.

Will your show change the world?

It’d be cool if it did, but if it affects the people that it was meant to affect, that’s good enough for me.

AI: the death of our art form or just a new tool to create?

In the 2023 film Evil Dead Rise, a deadite attacks the heroine by shredding her leg with a cheese grater, and that is how I feel every time I hear someone talk about AI as the future of art. Like having my skin grated by an approximation of a human being.