Dreamers of the Stage and Beyond
Photo by Danny Sanchez
By Gretchen Van Benthuysen
Even though the street in Long Branch is named Broadway, who in their right mind would choose to locate a theater devoted to staging new plays only in a neighborhood that is not lit up at night, has no restaurants, no foot traffic and a muddy parking lot when it rains.
“We’re obviously dreamers, but we have some pragmatism,” said Gabor Barabas, executive producer of the New Jersey Repertory Company. SuzAnne Barabas, his wife, is the artistic director. “We were very aware that if one wanted to start with a business plan that was destined to fail, this was it.
“Producing exclusively new plays is not the most effective way of drawing an audience,” he admitted.
But that was 20 years ago.
New Jersey Rep no longer is the only building with its lights on at night. There are several restaurants, a McDonald’s and numerous businesses. Plus, lower Broadway, less than a mile from the Atlantic Ocean, is part of the first construction phase of a $200 million mixed-use redevelopment plan.
And that fulfills another dream the couple had.
“We wanted to be a catalyst for Long Branch and surrounding communities,” he said. “We viewed ourselves as more than just a theater that creates and disseminates.
“We wanted to be a part of the overall well-being of our community,” Gabor said.
Taking care of people is not new to Gabor. For 30 years he practiced medicine as a pediatric neurologist. He worked at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Robert Wood Johnson in New Brunswick, Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch and had a private practice with his brother.
An unexpected health issue forced him to reevaluate his life.
The son of Holocaust survivors, Gabor was born and lived in Hungary until he was 8 years old and the family fled the Hungarian Revolution in 1956.
“We escaped to Austria in the winter through the forests traveling at night and I could see the Russian campfires through the trees,” he said. “Somehow we made it across the border.”
The family settled in New England and then made its way to Brooklyn where his brother was born. Gabor attended Brooklyn Technical High School and New York University.
Until then, he had no interest in theater. Then he met SuzAnne, who had dreamed of being an actress as long as she can remember.
“When I was 7 or 8 I’d make up stories and girlfriends would act them out,” SuzAnne said. “We were improvising, but we didn’t know that then.”
She watched plays on TV and a friend’s mother introduced her to PBS and took her to her first play, “Mary, Mary.”
“I couldn’t believe you could see live theater with actors on stage,” she said.
She remembers a family friend in show business taking her to Yonkers to see “Milk and Honey” starring Molly Picon and sitting in the first row.
By the time her junior high school production of “My Fair Lady” came around, she was hooked, reading the Sunday entertainment section of The New York Times and searching for the “Ninas” in Al Hirschfeld drawings.
SuzAnne used all her spending money on Broadway shows and would only sit in the first 10 rows, center orchestra.
“I wanted to experience it and I learned a tremendous amount,” she said. “It was a remarkable opportunity.”
She studied with the legendary acting teacher Lee Strasberg, a co-founder of the Group Theatre and known as the “father of method acting” in America. Tips he taught she still uses.
She also attended Brooklyn College and graduated from Villanova University.
She and Gabor married and moved every four or five years for his career. But every place they lived – Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Long Branch – SuzAnne started a theater company.
Starting a theater is one thing, building an audience is another.
Carl Hoffman, Eatontown, was intrigued when he saw a notice in his local Barnes & Noble for a play reading. He wasn’t a theatergoer and had never been to Long Branch.
“It was incredible. I never laughed so much,” he said. That was in 2002. He became a subscriber and then a board member.
“Every show may not ring your bell, but it’s an oasis and a place to recharge,” he said.
With the addition of the 20,000-square-foot West End Arts Center, Gabor said NJ Rep can offer 52 weeks of art that includes poetry, photography, art, music and meeting spaces.
In 20 years they have produced 100 new works, many of which are then mounted round the country and in New York.
“We had the idea it was a good thing to help living playwrights who have tremendous difficulty getting their work done in a pro- fessional setting,” Gabor said.
“And we wanted to offer a cultural center to champion other arts and provide space for community such as gay pride events and poets theater,” he said, adding he’s pleased they have a space in the funky West End.
This article originally appeared on the Scene Page of the Jan. 30, 2020 edition of The Two River Times.
