Meet Yechezkel Zach Greenberger | Playwright, Multidisciplinary artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Yechezkel Zach Greenberger and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Yechezkel Zach, is there something you believe many others might not?
I disagree with the way conventional advice is often given and applied. People are too complex and their lives are too specific for generalizations to be that useful – there are innumerable reasons why someone might be in a given situation and one cliched sentence can’t speak to all of it. But, at the same time, that doesn’t mean conventional advice is of no value. There is great value in studying the root-humanity of popular phrases, in trying to understand what about them is true, and why so many people hang them on their walls and fridges. I just don’t take those quotes so seriously that it obstructs my ability to empathize with the unique realities of any one person’s life.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I’m an artist working in playwriting, ghostwriting, prose fiction and non-fiction, street/art/portrait photography, voice-over, filmmaking, and long-form improv theater. Basically, I get bored quickly and so I’m artistically non-monogamous. Most recently I produced a staged reading of my new play “The Mashuganas.” It was incredibly exhilarating watching a sold-out crowd react live to that very personal work. Especially with everything I’d put into it creatively and logistically.

The whole process helped me further realize the power of “writing what you know.” All writing is work and takes time and commitment but I find I make it much easier on myself when I write about situations, themes, questions, and characters that occupy my mind anyway. I listen carefully to my daydreams for repetitive ideas and scenarios and then I fiddle with them and see what comes out. Is it a short story? A photoshoot? A short video? A play? For “The Mashuganas” I kept being visited by this scene where two yente matchmakers were trying to help an older bachelor find a wife. Every time the scene returned, the voices of the matchmakers became sharper and sharper, and so by the time I sat down to write the first few scenes basically fell out of me unobstructed.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I would give them a comprehensive tour of the improv scene in NYC. We’d go see shows at the BCC, Magnet, UCB (soon-to-be reopened), and PIT, and then hang out afterward at their neighboring bars. I’d also look for random off-off-Broadway shows to check out. Maybe something at La MaMa or at a friend’s theater collective. Something weird. Optimally we’d pack in nearly as many silly shows as serious shows. We’d eat at all the food spots that are decent enough and conveniently near the improv theaters. Triple Crown, Haymaker, and Stickies by Magnet and PIT. Win Son by BCC. And we’d go see a movie at the Nitehawk Theater by Prospect Park.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Artistically I’d have to shout out “Portnoy’s Complaint” by Philip Roth. Before reading Roth I’d held a subconscious belief that I wasn’t allowed to write hyper-specific Jewish stories. I didn’t think anyone would care. If I wanted to be a writer I’d have to write what appeared in popular media – stories that were secular, safe, and broadly relatable (even though all I really knew was the insular orthodox community in which I grew up). “Portnoy’s Complaint” changed all of that. It was intensely personal, specific, and psychologically unrelenting. It blew me away. It dispelled a mental fog that had been plaguing my work for years. I realized that I didn’t love any old kind of storytelling but specifically storytelling that was raw, ugly, human, funny, personal, and, in some cases, extremely Jewish. I remember reading the first couple of pages and thinking “hold on, you’re allowed to write like this??? Why didn’t anyone tell me???” It was frightening, exhilarating, and life-altering.

Personally, I’d like to shout out the friends, artists, and collaborators who became my first community in the outside world. The folks who know me as both Yechezkel and Zach – incorporating my very Jewish birth name, and my secular “work name” into my new life. Their support and friendship mean the absolute world to me. And special shoutout to Anna Dashem, who was the one to popularize “Yechezkel” among our friends (I never did have the social courage to introduce myself with a name that had a hard Jewish “CHHH” right in the middle of it).

Website: yechezkelgreenberger.com (photography website)

Instagram: @yechezkelzach

Image Credits
Yitzy Herskowitz