Life froze when President John Kennedy was shot in Dealey Plaza. Those of a certain age, no matter where they were, can recall exactly what they were doing at that moment: studying geometry, hammering a nail, trying a case. With this telling, that list includes the grade-school acting triumph of Dr. Ezriel Edward Kornel in Alabama.
Born in Jeruselum, Kornel’s family moved to Birmingham when he was five. In Birmingham, a Jerusalem accent was considered talking like a Yankee, then about as welcome in the school play as a soliloquy by Ulysses S. Grant.
“They did not like my accent so they did not give me any lines,” the 55-year-old Kornel said of his sixth-grade stage debut Nov. 22, 1963. “I was a bus driver on a tour bus visiting historic sites. Even though they didn”™t let me speak, I was a damn good bus driver.”
For Kornel, the Kennedy assassination proved a line of demarcation beyond which there would be no footlights. “I never thought about acting again,” he said. The closest he came to greasepaint was playing in the band accompanying high school musicals in suburban Chicago. In college, “Chris Reeve (Superman in several films) was my friend; he was right across the hall from me. Still, I had no interest in acting.”
Kornel would find the stage again as an adult after attending a weekend personal growth seminar in the early ”™90s. “We were asked to write down what we really wanted to do,” he said. “And it hit me: I really wanted to act.” He heeded his inner voice and began taking classes, eventually landing roles Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway and in Rye (Off-Broadway with sailboats).
He has a starring role in Terrence McNally”™s “A Perfect Ganesh” Oct. 30-31 and Nov. 1,2, 6-8, 13-15 at the Chappaqua Crossing Auditorium on the Readers Digest campus.
By day, Kornel is a neurosurgeon: backs, brains and the like.
You often hear of surgeons who like to work with their hands. Thoughts naturally turn to knitting a busted femur, but the personality foible translates to neurosurgery, too. “I have always enjoyed fine manual work,” he said. Unlike many people who like to work with their hands and who move on to cabinetry or transmissions, Kornel majored in neurophysiology at Cornell University. His musical bent also embraces the dexterous: the violin.
“I was blessed to discover I had the capacity to do this work,” he said of surgery in the beyond-daunting company of ganglia gone bad. “It”™s a strange gift. You don”™t know if you have it until you start to try it.”
Kornel operates three days per week at five regional hospitals, but mostly at Northern Westchester Hospital Center. Typically, four types of problem land on the operating table in front of him: trauma; tumors; hemorrhages and ruptured aneurysms; and spinal problems like herniated discs. He sees about 800 patients per year.
Kornel rides a pair of BMW motorcycles and he laughs genuinely at a bawdy poem.
He”™s lanky and athletic, which translates to a quiet confidence in conversation ”“ seemingly an ideal personality trait when poised with drills and scalpels above living nerve tissue. He”™s actor-handsome, too, which might be meaningless in the operating room, but never hurts onstage.
“Good theater creates a reality people can share with the actors through the language of the playwright,” Kornel said. “When delivered properly, it can transform people”™s lives, which is what great art should be capable of doing, I believe.
“What I love about theater is the art ”“ as music does ”“ transfers energy between the artist and the audience in the moment. I find that exhilarating.
“In medicine, especially with what I do, there is a very close bond between the doctor and the patient. It”™s very powerful. I have a great respect for it. But it is a relationship that has to maintain a certain emotional distance in order to work properly. Theater allows me to go to the other extreme ”“ to share an emotional bond that”™s very intimate.”
Kornel”™s parents, Esther and Ludwig Kornel, live in Chicago. His wife is Katherine Pettiti Kornel. His son, Eugene, is in law school at Emory Law School in Atlanta and his daughter, Clea, is an undergraduate at Indiana University. His stepdaughters are Danielle and Ally Pettiti, 13 and 10 years old.
“A Perfect Ganesh” stars Susan Keith, David Arkeme, Sarah-Ann Rogers and Kornel. It is directed by James Kiberd. For ticket information, visit www.thatssocool.net.
