I don’t know exactly when I crossed the journalistic line with Janice Noga, who will deliver her 180th and final performance playing the title character of “Janka” on Sept. 8 and 9. When the phone rang at my desk back in 2014 in the Fresno Bee newsroom, all I knew was that the woman I met on the other end of the line was an extremely gregarious and persuasive actor determined to get some good publicity for her project. I listened patiently. Years later, Janice would tell me that was one of the things that she appreciated about me: that I let her talk. (And, believe me, Janice can talk. Her family and friends would unanimously concur.) As she told me her story, I found I could sketch out the intriguing outlines of a story: For over a decade, she explained, she had played her mother-in-law, a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp, on stage. Now she wanted to take the one-woman show, which was created and directed by her husband, Oscar Speace, to Broadway. Or perhaps a little Off-Broadway. Or maybe Off-Off-Off Broadway. She was a dreamer, but she was also realistic.
Oh, and she casually mentioned a tremendous human-interest angle underpinning the entire story: She’d had brain surgery years earlier and for a time completely lost her ability to remember things — and even to speak. Now she wanted to get up on a stage and perform a 90-minute show from memory.
In front of New York critics…