Going So1o “Pumping Josey”
Friday, November 12, 2004
When Pam Sherman graduated from law school, she envisioned jumping into the pot boiling courtrooms of NBC’s “L.A. Law.”
But the New Dorp natives’ life as a corporate litigator didn’t exactly measure up.
I thought I was going to be Susan Dey with short skirts, but the skirts couldn’t be short, and it was really boring,” she confessed.
So when her prominent Washington, D.C. firm tanked, Ms. Sherman ditched her legal briefs and went for her dream career.
The result: “Pumping Josey: Life and Death in Suburbia,” a one-woman show to be presented by the Jewish Community Center of Staten Island this weekend in Veterans Memorial Hall at Snug Harbor Cultural Center, 1000 Richmond Terr., Livingston.
The curtain goes up tomorrow at 8 pm. And Sunday at 2 p.m.
Tickets ranged from $20 to $50. All proceeds will be matched by SI Bank & Trust Foundation and benefit construction on the JCC’s new flagship building in Sea View.
In “Pumping Josey” – a “highly fictionalized version” of her life – which she co-wrote, Ms. Sherman, 42, plays 10 characters who tell the story of Josey, a suburban Jewish actuary juggling her newborn’s bris and career while she searches for her raison d’etre.
As so happened in her real life, the plot hinges on the shock of a best friend’s unexpected death. The loss becomes a reflection point for Josey, just as it did for her portrayer.
“We’re all struggling against being sucked into the mundane. Our lives can become a round of running errands, grocery shopping and returning things,” said Ms. Sherman, who moved from Washington, D.C. to Romulus, New York, the “ultimate suburb” outside of Rochester – while writing the play with Caleen Jennings.
Josey summons the advice of poetess Hannah Senesh, a parachutist in the Jewish resistance under the British Armed Forces during World War II; child psychologist Anna Freud; and Mary Todd Lincoln – all of whom she brings to life.
The characters are Ms. Sherman’s real-life inspiration as was her father, Dr. William Weinstein, a well-regarded obstetrician and gynecologist, who practiced on the Island for 40 years. He died in September at age 74.
She dedicates these performances to her dad, who caught the show’s Washington, D.C., premiere and gave her words she lives by: “Life is short for goodness sakes, you better be working on your dream.”