Metropolitan Playhouse
Virtual Playhouse
Presents
A Screened Reading
of
The Alphabet City Monologue

POOR MAN’S BUTCHER

Starring
JARED HOUSEMAN

www.metropolitanplayhouse.org/virtualplayhouse

Essex Street Market butcher Jeffrey Ruhalter is last in a long family line of butchers, starting in Germany and arriving at Ellis Island in 1899. They were “poor man’s butchers”. Pig ears, pigs’ feet, chicken backs, jowls, tails, spines, neck bones. Sold from a pushcart by his father and grandfather. When New York made pushcarts illegal in 1939, they found a small shop and continued their business.

His dad picked the meat up in an Econoline van. No refrigeration. Interesting factoid: Blood eats through metal. He and his dad would butcher all night, then open at 8 a.m. A gradual change began. There were Italians asking for veal cutlets. Blacks buying pigs’ heads. Then came the Latinos. Jeffrey learned Spanish so he could hit on the women. Soon came orders for filet mignon. Whoa. That signaled his golden days, finally making lots of money. The Good Life had arrived.

So did Whole Foods. Five blocks away.

One of a series of monologues, POOR MAN’S BUTCHER uses the actual words of interviewees in “Alphabet City” (Avenues A through D). Starting in 2004, actors interviewed neighborhood residents, then turned the interviews into solo performances. These snapshots of “everyday” people record the morphing of one precious area in the melting pot of New York City. A remarkable and very personal look at change and its effects.

-Karen D’Onofrio-