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  Wadsworth Theatre Adam Rose (left) and Hal Linden star in "The Gathering," an original drama by Arje Shaw.

By Jacqueline Maar

Daily Bruin Contributor

Generation gaps often cause tension between rebellious young people and their more traditional elders over what they consider outdated customs.

Exploring the strained bonds that exist within a Jewish family, the theatrical production “The Gathering” opens this Saturday at the Wadsworth Theatre. The play tells the story of three generations of men and the issues each of them confronts as they become divided over an event that nearly tears their family apart.

“The play is essentially a story of fathers and sons and deals with issues of healing and forgiveness,” said Arje Shaw, playwright of “The Gathering.”

Tony Award-winner Hal Linden, plays Gabe, a Holocaust survivor living in New York City. Traditional Jewish culture is brought to light as he helps his grandson Michael prepare for his upcoming bat mitzvah.

  Illustration by ERICA PINTO/Daily Bruin

“Gabe’s a Holocaust survivor, who has many of the scars that he has learned to live with, but obviously not really resolved,” Linden said. “And if they don’t get resolved they get stirred up a little in this play.”

Meanwhile, Stuart, Gabe’s son, is a career-driven journalist who’s far removed from his feelings and his father. Tension grows between Stuart and Gabe as it becomes apparent that Stuart’s career is more important to him than Jewish tradition.

During the production, conflict arises within the nation as well as Gabe’s family, when President Ronald Reagan makes his controversial 1985 visit to Bitburg cemetery, the burial site for Nazi soldiers, in Germany. Further exacerbating tensions within the family, Stuart, a recently appointed speechwriter for Reagan, is selected to write a “forgive and forget speech” for the event. This leads to internal conflicts within the Jewish family.

“We’ve got two generations more or less fighting for the soul of the third, trying to bring him around to their way of thinking,” Linden said. “But, then they’re placed in a position where they have to identify with what they feel and believe.

“It’s kind of a light family play that takes on a very heavy significance because of Bitburg,” he continued.

Linden, best known for his role as the title character on the television series “Barney Miller” has also starred in numerous Broadway plays and musicals, earning a Tony award for his performance in “The Rothschilds.”

Linden first learned about the role of Gabe after a friend sent the play to him.

“The whole subject matter attracted me, the way (Gabe) was treated,” Linden said. “I think I’m still emotionally tied to that, and it was treated in a good way of bringing it up without making it into a polemic.”

The Holocaust was a very personal subject for Shaw, whose father, was a Holocaust survivor that escaped from Poland after the invasion of the Nazis. Gabe is named after Shaw’s father.

“To a certain extent it’s based on my father’s experience,” Shaw said of the similarities between the production and his father’s life.

“It’s not totally autobiographical, but he had lost his mother and his sister while living in Poland in 1939 when the Nazis occupied his town, and he had to escape to Russia,” he continued.

Shaw began writing in his mid-’40s, as he began to reflect upon his own personal experiences – like most of the characters in the production. As an 8-year-old child, he came to America from Germany, where he was torn away from his roots and had to integrate himself into a new culture.

“I didn’t know the language, didn’t know the ways and was so busy trying to assimilate, that I kind of cut myself out from my history, and somehow in my 40s I started thinking about what shaped my life,” Shaw said. “‘Why am I the way I am?’ And I started thinking about my father a lot, how his life was cut out from under him.”

From this introspection, Shaw began to write “The Gathering” in 1990 to explore the bonds that exist between families, in addition to his own family roots.

“I wrote it to honor the strength of the people who had to pick up the pieces and also to make sure that those who perished didn’t die in vain,” Shaw said.

Although the play deals with issues such as the Holocaust and Bitburg, Shaw wanted “The Gathering” to focus more on the issues within the family and the effects of these events on them.

“(The Holocaust) was the defining moment of the 20th century, but I wasn’t writing a history, I was just writing a story of a family that’s going along and rebuilding their lives and putting love and such into their grandson,” Shaw said. “Then all of a sudden the whole thing comes undone: how do you live through that?

“It’s a story of hope and reconciliation,” Shaw continued.

Before coming to Los Angeles, “The Gathering” first opened off-Broadway in December of 1999. Originally given only a couple of weeks to run, the play had such favorable response from New York audiences that the play went on to run for five months.

“It has such an amazingly powerful connection to many people that need opportunities to heal with their own children and with their own families,” Shaw said. “It’s been an unbelievable experience watching the play make such an impact.

“It’s not entertainment; it’s education,” he continued. “This has been a really wonderful vehicle for teaching and also for adults to come to peace and to terms with themselves and their families.”

THEATER: “The Gathering” opens at the Wadsworth Theatre, 11301 Wilshire Blvd., this Saturday, and runs through Feb. 28. Performances are Wednesday through Saturday and ticket prices range from $25 to $50. For show times and information call (800) 233-3122.