The Performance with Shira Piven and Jade Jenise Dixon (Ep. 526)

The Director’s Cut - A DGA Podcast

Directors Guild of America

Tv & Film

4.6 • 806 Ratings

🗓️ 8 January 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Director Shira Piven discusses her new film, The Performance, with fellow Director Jade Jenise Dixon in a Q&A at the DGA theater in Los Angeles. In the conversation, she discusses working with her brother as the lead Actor to capture authentic tap dancing performances, making a period piece movie on an independent film budget and mixing 8mm film and real footage from the era to capture a 1930s Berlin time period. The film tells the story of Harold, an accomplished tap dancer touring Europe with his troupe in the late 1930s. When they are scouted by a Nazi attache for an exclusive performance, he realizes they don’t know about his Jewish identity and is faced with the dangerous dilemma of performing in secret or staying true to himself. See photos and a summary of this event below: https://dga.org/Events/2025/February2025/ThePerformance_QnA_1224

Transcript

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0:00.0	Jeremy was not a tap dancer. He was a drummer. So he started to learn how to tap dance when he started optioning the script about 15 years ago. So bit by bit, he learned this strange art form. And yes, we had doubles. And they were so important to the process.
0:21.7	But at the same time, what he was doing, you couldn't fake.
0:48.1	Okay. Hello and welcome back to the director's cut, brought to you by the Directors Guild of America.
0:58.0	In this episode, a gifted Jewish tap dancer is recruited to perform in 1930s Berlin in director Shira Pivens drama, The Performance. The film tells the story of Harold, an accomplished tap dancer touring Europe with his troop in the late 1930s.
1:06.0	When they are scouted by a Nazi attaché for an exclusive performance, he realizes they don't
1:11.5	know about his Jewish identity and is faced with the dangerous dilemma of performing in secret
1:16.5	or staying true to himself.
1:19.6	In addition to the performance, Piven's other directorial credits include the feature films,
1:24.7	Welcome to Me, and Fully Loaded, and episodes of the series, Room 104, Clause, Transparent, and One Mississippi.
1:34.5	Following a screening of the film at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles, Piven spoke with director Jade Janice Dixon about filming the performance.
1:43.7	Listen on for their spoiler-filled conversation.
1:51.5	Well, hello, everyone.
1:53.6	Thank you guys for coming out.
1:55.9	Wasn't that an awesome film?
2:06.4	So I'd like to first congratulate you on a wonderful film and female director.
2:11.1	And I just, I'm so happy I'm the one to moderate this because I just love it. Thanks for doing it, Jade. Of course, of course. So I saw on the screen that this was based on a short story
2:17.3	that was in The New Yorker by Arthur Miller.
2:20.5	Can you tell me how you came to know about it, how you found this, and just gives that journey?
2:28.6	Sure. First of all, thanks for coming out on a holiday afternoon, everyone.
2:35.0	And it's nice that they play the whole credits here.
2:39.0	We often, when we do a Q&A, we don't, we just sort of interrupt the credits.
2:44.0	But I think it gives people time to kind of digest the film a little bit.
	...

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