Marisa Gold Cast As Female Lead Of BIRDS OF PARADISE

Marisa Gold grew up quite a distance from the Great Depression, which might as well have been not just another time, but another world. Still, she heard stories of what life was like back then.

"My grandmother always told me stories about growing up during the Depression," says Gold, "But I was removed from it by two generations of business success and financial recovery."

Now Gold is recreating a woman who lived during the Great Depression as the female lead of Birds of Paradise, a new play written by Claude Solnik and directed by Jim Keeler, running at Theater For the New City July 6-14.

Gold plays Emma, while Dan Pavacic plays her husband Jake, Peter Tarantino plays their friend Dennis and Abigail Grizzle plays their daughter Elizabeth.

"The play shows how, despite love, good will and best intentions, it's difficult if not impossible to escape the destructive effects of the Great Depression," says Keeler, who's directing the play. "We watch financial pressures bring out both the best and the flaws in each character."

Birds of Paradise was inspired by the true story of a man whose family owned a store during the Great Depression. When customers couldn't pay for goods, he let them give him IOUs, which set the stage for events that follow.

"He was a good man who did what he could to help everyone else," Solnik says. "In this play, we see what happens when the family faces its own financial problems, in part because they're looking out for others."

Gold says "in searching for the reality of daily life for Emma," the stories she heard so many times from her relatives became more real.

"How my great-grandmother meticulously portioned food for the family based on need, and when there wasn't enough to go around, how she, herself, 'simply wasn't hungry,'" Gold says.

Her family used to walk from Brooklyn across the bridge into Manhattan because "they had no money for trolley fare," Gold says.

"I can never seem to take the train across the bridge and not think of my grandmother walking the same route home late at night," she says.

Gold did research to try to comprehend life during the Great Depression, putting that world back together not simply from stories she had heard.

"I began searching for more details like this, that would enrich the inner world of my character," she says. "I have always found memoirs to be an excellent tool when crafting the inner-life of someone whose circumstances are very different from my own, and there are only too many heartbreaking and inspiring accounts of ordinary life during those hardest of hard years."

She said she" learned how commonplace it was to think of another woman as wasteful if she forgot to wipe the inside of an eggshell with her finger while baking."

She talked about how many young children no longer responded to the innocent question, "what do you want to be when you grow up?" That wasn't a question.

"They could see that everyone was out of work," she says. "These very intimate bits of knowledge helped me to grasp a broader picture of what life might have been like as a young mother, wanting to prepare her maturing daughter for a harsher reality than she had ever known, while instinctively hoping to shield her child from every hurt."

Dan Pavacic, who plays Jake, also found ways to make that world real. He remembers watching the economy crash in 2007 as the country's own financial security was suddenly at risk.

"It was the first time I had heard the word 'Recession' in my life," he says. "I was only 11 years old at the time, very similar to Elizabeth's age in our play, so the experience I had then is something I'm empathetic about and have carried with me as we all tackle this new play."

Laura Lonski is stage manager for this production with lighting design by Shelly Callahan and costume design by Everett Clark.

Shows are Sat. July 6 at 8 p.m.; Sun. Jul 7 at 3 p.m.; Fri. July 12 at 8 p.m.; Sat. July 13 at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. and Sun. Jul 14 at 3 p.m.

Tickets are $18/ $15 seniors and students. www.theaterforthenewcity.net and 212-254-1109.