photo: Irene Young https://ireneyoungfoto.com
This is my website and blog. You can navigate using the menu above. I post as often as I’m able to – go to My Blog Posts to see the latest. You’ll also find specific pages about Traveling Jewish Theatre (1978-2012), my recent writing and some modern theatre history
I’m now available for free-lance editing, writing and creative consultation. I’m happy to help with anything from novels to grant proposals including performance work, screenplays and creative non-fiction. I’ve worked in all those forms for many years. Besides the material on this site, you can read my some of my own short pieces in The Sun, an amazing magazine based in Chapel Hill, NC. Most recently, The Sun featured Our Grand Delusion, my interview with Zen priest and poet Norman Fischer. If you’d like to know more, email me at corey@coreyfischer.com to arrange a free consultation – in person or by phone.
The storytelling class I’ve been teaching at Book Passage in Corte Madera has gotten such an enthusiastic response, that I’ve been asked to do more next year. Here’s an advance notice of the listings that will be in their next newsletter:
Finding Your Story (one day intensive) Sunday January 19, 2020. 10:00am – 4:00pm. Tuition: $150. Registration limited to 10
Telling Your Story: Six Thursdays, February 20, 27 and March 5, 12, 19, and 26, 2020. 6:00 – 8:00pm. Tuition $250. Registration limited to 10.
These classes haven’t been posted on the Book Passage website yet, but you can get on their email list at https://www.bookpassage.com/classes-workshops
or call (415) 927-0960
About Me
My life is animated by a flow of creativity, as mysterious as being and as simple as breathing. It guided me into a career as an actor, first in film and TV in L.A. and then in ensemble, experimental theatre. In 1978, I co-founded Traveling Jewish Theatre and was a core ensemble member – acting, writing, directing and fundraising – until we closed the company in 2012. My last TJT project was writing and directing In the Maze of Our Own Lives, based on the history of the Group Theatre.
I continue making theatre and doing all I can to help others as a teacher, mentor and coach. I work with people, both one-to-one and in groups, using my fifty-plus years of experience to evoke and support the creative energy that runs through us all.
I’m currently writing a memoir about my experiences making theatre. During the past 50+ years, I’ve had the good fortune to meet and work with some giants of world theatre. Several – like Jeff Corey, The Committee, The Provisional Theatre and Joseph Chaikin were in a lineage of socially engaged American theatre that began in the 1930s, others, like Jerzy Grotowski, members of Peter Brook’s company, and members of the Roy Hart theatre were pioneers in the European avant-garde. Many of them have passed away. None of them are household names. We’ve become a society that neglects the stories of ancestors, ignores history and promotes collective amnesia. Having worked with so many exceptional artists, I feel a responsibility to tell their stories while I can. You can read an in-progress excerpt here.
Corey Fischer 
congrats to your wonderful, life-long concept, “to evoke and support the creative energy that runs through us all…”
Hi Corey. Our paths crossed a few times in the 1980s, including a workshop on solo storytelling in Tel Aviv at the first International Theatre of Jewish Theatre. My first wife, Rita Abrahamsen, and I visited you in San Francisco in 86, then had you to our home in Oslo when you brought “Berlin, Jerusalem and the Moon”. That piece, and three plays you showed in Israel, had a profound effect on me. Also, the piece I created out of the workshop “A Travelogue of There and Back” has served me well over the years. I’m writing to you because I have been commissioned to write and direct a play about Finland’s Jewish soldiers during WW2 (for the Swedish Theatre in Helsinki, where I work as a dramaturge). An amazing story. I’m researching now, and it seems to me the material would benefit from a TJT approach. I have lots of images and facts and, indeed, a kind of guiding thesis for the show, but have yet to dive in and see what actually happens once the creative juices flow. I think I will use as much authentic material as possible in a colláge structure of stories and images, songs, facts… Anyway, I just wanted to let you know how those early plays of yours inspired and continue to inspire me, and to thank you for that. I hope and trust you’re well. Best regards. Julian Garner
I remember your presentations in Palo Alto. Always a breathe of fresh air . Hopefulness.
I would love to do a workshop with you however am doing an art workshop on Saturdays now for several more weeks. Not sure how many. Please let me know when you will be doing more of these. I do have some theater experience but it has been a while now. I’m leaving my job in early Dec so will have more time then.
Corey, are you there? I see no recent blog posts. I was searching for video of my favorite theatre of all time. Found you, even better. That story by Stan about sparking new theatre in Taiwan was thrilling. The craving for A Dance of Exile or a bit of Last Yiddish Poet overtakes me frequently. But they are not to be found on the stage of the internet. I am well and still living in the backwoods of Missouri. Relearning piano. Jazz piano this time. The precious harmonium came out a while ago, to voice interesting chord progressions with me. It still has a piece of glow tape on the starting note used in the dark at the opening of Dance. … well, I miss you all. Email me please. Totternot at gmail. Deb