Soul Doctor Interview With Lisa Simone, Danny Wise & Dari Carlebach

This week, I had the opportunity to watch an advance preview of Soul Doctor and attend the virtual press conference. This Broadway musical-turned-film will be presented as a special one-night event at select theaters on June 13th, which is also the 10th anniversary of its debut on Broadway. Soul Doctor is a poignant, joyous celebration of the unlikely friendship between the legendary Dr. Nina Simone and the “Rock Star” Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. During the press conference, I was able to interview three key figures associated with the story: Executive Producer Lisa Simone, who is also Nina Simone’s daughter; Writer & Director Danny Wise; and Dari Carlebach, the daughter of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach.

Many works that are based on a true story take a lot of artistic liberty, but Soul Doctor is different. Although the story is so poetic that a casual viewer would assume creative license had been taken, the film ends with a historical epilogue: As the credits roll, a clip of each actor is shown, which then morphs into a photo of the real-life person they were portraying. Rare footage of Simone and Carlebach performing is shown, and the viewer learns that some of the smallest moments in the play also happened in real life, as well as the large ones – for example, there is a funny moment in the Soul Doctor where two young “Fangirls” are holding Rabbi Carlebach’s records and swooning. At the end, you see a wonderful 1960s-era photo of the real-life girls that inspired the scene!

It’s impressive – and rare – to watch a film based on a true story that has taken such care to stay close to actual events. Danny Wise explained how they spent three years recording and transcribing interviews while writing Soul Doctor. “The process of doing the research was so exciting as a dramatist, because we were looking for his inner conflicts and the turning points in his life,” said Wise. “And wherever we turned, in the least expected places, we heard [from] people who knew Shlomo and were affected by Shlomo in the most random circumstances.”

“We did archival research through the Red Cross to find records in Europe,” continued Wise. “And the Northwestern University has an extensive archive of the Berkeley Folk Festival in Haight-Ashbury during that time, which was just a wealth – boxes and boxes of undiscovered relationships, how his life and Nina Simone’s life intersected. And when we were reading about Shlomo’s only telling of his own life story, that’s when we really discovered the turning point of his transformative relationship with Nina Simone.”

Soul Doctor has an extremely talented cast, starring Nya as Nina Simone and Tony Award® nominee Josh Young as Shlomo Carlebach. For her part, Lisa Simone found it “Refreshing” to watch Nya’s performance. “It was really nice,” Simone said. “Mom’s been dead about 20 years now. This is the 20th year of her transition. And so for me, who’s perhaps one of the most biased Nina Simone fans that exists – I was with the original, you know – so to be able to enjoy everybody’s homage to my mother in a way that’s not biased, and to be able to recognize that this is their way of honoring her and bringing her to life – I enjoyed, and I continue to enjoy Nya’s rendition of my mother.”

When Nina Simone introduced Rabbi Carlebach to soul and gospel music, he was so inspired that he went on to create a new genre of worship music that remains a popular part of synagogue services to this day. His “Jewish Gospel/Soul” sound is a reflection of his upbringing, according to daughter Dari Carlebach. “He was raised from the beginning with a huge openness for all religions,” she said. “He used to talk about how in his house, his father had a bishop and the priest and every possible religion coming in and they all came together.”

And her father’s path was clear from a young age. “He was told from when he was three years old, you’re gonna be a rabbi. He actually [at] one point took his kippah off his head, his yarmulke, and his twin brother cried because he wasn’t going to be a rabbi. And he said he felt bad for his brother crying so he said, OK, fine, I’ll be a rabbi!” she laughed. “He was
a great scholar and [had] the highest level of understanding, depth, in Torah knowledge. But every choice he made along the way reflects his big heart and his kindness.”

This play tells the story of how two musical icons from different backgrounds intersected, with a message of love and tolerance that is very timely. And the research that went into this work was crucial not only for telling an authentic story about music, but most importantly of all, preserving history that should never be forgotten. Soul Doctor relays the powerful history of how Rabbi Carlebach’s family escaped Nazi Germany, and how this shaped him in his life’s work. Dari Carlebach became emotional discussing the pride she feels seeing her father’s message conveyed in the play.

“My father was born in Europe and fled the Holocaust, and was part of a great dynasty of rabbis,” said Carlebach. “And I believe that his soul came into the earth to bring back the joy and the passion of Judaism that was lost in the Holocaust, because he endlessly talked about the six million and how the six million angels are with us and we’re walking through them. And so when I watch him, and I see that he had this never ending heart to follow that, and bring the loss and the trauma and transform it into prayer, and meaning. And it just inspires me to want to do the same in my life.”

Soul Doctor is coming to select theaters for one night only on June 13th, 2023 – click here for locations and to buy your tickets now at SoulDoctorMovie.com.