The eighties, City News, PBS' American Playhouse '', NYC, Oct. 1983. From 1979 to 1983, Fishelson worked as a
production assistant in the film and television industry in New York, while writing and directing the feature film
City News with Zinman. Shot on a small budget,
City News found success in 1983–4 by being selected for the Film Festivals of Atlanta, Edinburgh, Houston, Munich, Florence, Athens, Santa Fe, Seattle, Vancouver, Dallas, Göteborg and Antwerp — winning "Best Dramatic Film" at Atlanta, "Best Low-Budget Feature" at Houston, and "Best Feature (Narrative)" at Athens. After its tour of festivals,
City News was exhibited in U.S. theaters by film distributor
Cinecom Pictures, and was nationally broadcast on the third season (1984) of the PBS television series
American Playhouse. By 1989,
City News had been curated for the permanent collection of the
Museum of Television & Radio, as well as listed in the
American Film Institute's
Catalog of Feature Films.
The nineties, Cocteau Rep, NPR, plays published and Joseph McKenna in Fishelson's adaptation of
The Golem at
Manhattan Ensemble Theatre, 2002 In 1989, Fishelson joined the staff of the Off-Broadway
repertory theatre company
Jean Cocteau Repertory (a.k.a. "The Cocteau", founded 1973), located on the
Bowery (NYC) at the
Bouwerie Lane Theatre. Fishelson was the Cocteau's executive director from 1989 to 1992, its
associate artistic director from 1992 to 1994, and a resident director there from 1994 to 1997, where he wrote and directed
dramatizations of two novels by
Fyodor Dostoyevsky:
The Idiot and
The Brothers Karamazov. Following reviews in
The New York Times, both plays were published by
Dramatists Play Service (1995). In 1994 and 1997, they were broadcast as radio plays – with Fishelson directing both – on the
NPR series
National Public Radio Playhouse, starring
Ed Asner,
Sharon Gless and
Harry Hamlin among others. Both dramatizations remain in circulation (in written and audio/radio drama format), and both continue to be produced worldwide, including (in the 2000s) runs at
Copenhagen's
Royal Danish Theatre (2006), as well as the
Aarhus Theatre (2007). Following both plays' publication, Fishelson became a member of the
Dramatists Guild of America.
The 2000s and 2010s, MET, Hank and Golda, Broadway and touring, 9 Parts, Golda as film In 1999, Fishelson founded his own theater company – the nonprofit, 140-seat, Off-Broadway "
Manhattan Ensemble Theatre" ("MET") — with a stated mission "to create new theatrical adaptations of stories found in fiction, journalism, film, biography and
memoir." From 1999 to 2007, Fishelson's MET featured several well-known stars in its productions, including
Jim Parsons (
CBS's
The Big Bang Theory),
Mireille Enos (
AMC's
The Killing),
Robert Prosky (
NBC's
Hill Street Blues),
Valerie Harper (CBS's
The Mary Tyler Moore Show), and
Tovah Feldshuh (NBC's
Holocaust). Among Fishelson's nine shows from 1999 to 2007 were two of his own plays: an adaptation of the
Yiddish play
The Golem; and his dramatization of
Franz Kafka's unfinished novel
The Castle. For the latter, Fishelson was nominated in 2002 for "Best Off-Broadway Play" by the Outer Critics Circle, as well as for "Best Play" by the Drama League (each time as writer and producer). With the publication of
The Golem and
The Castle in 2003, Fishelson had four published plays to his name. ,
Jim Parsons and
William Atherton in Fishelson's adaptation of
Franz Kafka's
The Castle at
Manhattan Ensemble Theatre, 2002. Fishelson's 2003–04 season saw frequent transfers of his shows from MET's 140-seat, SoHo-based home, as described in
Playbill: With ''Golda's Balcony
(which opened at the Helen Hayes Theatre on Broadway on Oct. 15), MET has two hits based on the lives of renowned historical figures. Its first offering this season, Hank Williams: Lost Highway'', about the troubled country singer and composer, was hailed and quickly transferred following an extended run. It is currently playing the
Little Shubert Off-Broadway. (In fact, the runaway success of MET's first two shows caused the nonprofit to postpone its third selection until the (2004–05) season.) Before transferring,
Lost Highway earned positive reviews in the New York press and multiple theatre award nominations, including two for Fishelson in the "Best Musical" and "Best Off-Broadway Musical" categories.
Rolling Stone critic and editor
Anthony DeCurtis wrote "I was genuinely surprised, even stunned by [MET's version of]
Hank Williams: Lost Highway.... a rare achievement in any musical theater that I've ever seen”; while Jeremy McCarter of
New York Magazine called Fishelson's production "electrifying", "the most successful jukebox musical I've seen," and "New York's most exciting new musical since
Urinetown." Fishelson's three subsequent mountings of ''Golda's Balcony
, the one-woman show about Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, earned nominations and awards in each of its manifestations, including Off-Broadway (a 4-month sold-out run at the MET SoHo space), on Broadway (starring Tovah Feldshuh), and the 9-month "National Tour" of the U.S. and Canada (starring Valerie Harper). The Off-Broadway production earned a Drama League "Best Play" nomination for Fishelson (as producer); the Broadway production earned a 2004 Tony Award nomination for "Best Actress" for Feldshuh, and went on to become the longest-running one-woman show in Broadway history; while the National Tour won Fishelson the 2006 "Best Play" Touring Broadway Award from the Broadway League (shared with playwright William Gibson). After lead producing both the Broadway show and its tour, Fishelson was invited to become a Tony Award voter, a status he retains to the present day. Critic John Simon, in his New York Magazine
review of the Broadway version, wrote that "Golda's Balcony'' is the perfect merging of playwright, actress and character." in
Lost Highway at
Manhattan Ensemble Theatre, 2002 Fishelson's final production in the MET space was
Heather Raffo's
9 Parts of Desire, winner of the 2005 Lortel Award for "Best Solo Production" (shared by Fishelson and Raffo), and recipient of a 2005 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for "Best English Language Play Written by a Woman".
9 Parts of Desire had a 9-month sold-out run from 2004 to 2005, and earned MET some of its more positive reviews – with
John Lahr in
The New Yorker calling it "an example of how art can remake the world," and
Charles Isherwood in
The New York Times calling it an "impassioned theatrical documentary about contemporary Iraqi women[,] marked by vivid, memorable details." Following its run at MET, Fishelson arranged for further productions of
9 Parts at five of the larger
LORT theaters in the U.S. — including
Berkeley Rep,
Seattle Rep, Los Angeles'
Geffen Playhouse, Philadelphia's
Wilma Theater, and D.C.'s
Arena Stage — through the fall of 2006. In 2019–20, Fishelson and MET produced and distributed the feature film ''
Golda's Balcony'' which went on to win 21 “Audience Favorite” awards at 75 international film festivals in 2019–20. ==Producing, directing, and writing credits==