On the Road to Havana

The below, excerpted from Lisa Traiger’s July 2011 article for Washington Jewish Week, “'On the Road To Havana': A Jewish woman's awakening” illuminates the autobiographical aspects of the play:

"I based this on an experience I had as a college student," Rausch said. "I was in Cuba during the revolution, singing with an all-girls group from my college. I was 18."

It was 1958; Rausch, a Russell Sage College student, was primed for further adventure.

"I went back and got involved in the revolution ... printing out things on a mimeograph. Things I didn't even know much about ... I was an innocent."

Structured as a memory play, On the Road To Havana begins with an older woman, Wendy, looking back on her youthful adventure in revolutionary Cuba. And for Rausch, it was a chance to relive her own experiences: "I did meet a boy there who was working as our translator at a Bacardi rum factory."

Prerevolutionary Cuba was an exciting vacation destination for Americans - a Riviera without the European airfare - that is, until Castro came to power. While a small Jewish community, pre- and post-revolution has long maintained itself in Havana, Rausch didn't encounter it. Instead, she said, "It's a play about a Jewish girl's awakening. She lived a protected life, going to a

public high school, a women's college and never venturing anywhere before this trip."

…[The play] examine[s] the awakening of a young Jewish woman's consciousness to the politics in Cuba, to youthful love, to the disparity of social classes in Cuba and back home in New York.

Asked if youths of today, with all their electronic gadgetry and media savvy, have that same need to be awakened, Rausch turns thoughtful: "In teaching voice and singing to young adults, I find that because of the instant news, computers and the Internet, nobody seems that taken with anything ... nobody's come in appalled with anything in the news or politics."

As for her personal awakenings, they continue. A few years ago, Rausch celebrated her bat mitzvah at Adas Israel in the District, under the tutelage of Rabbi Avis Miller. "I had my bat mitzvah when I was in my early 60s and I talked about the prophets and the Jewish voice in the prophets. ... As a society and individuals, when we make a decision to speak out," she says, just as her Wendy character does in her play. "I think that's very Jewish."