By all accounts, especially Abraham's and Horowitz's, a season devoted to politically incorrect visions of "the Jew" is risky, challenging and exciting. Fagin, Shylock and Barabas embody some of the worst of Jewish stereotypes, negative characteristics that have become deeply embedded in contemporary culture. "I studied to be an actor in London and had a roommate from Oxford," Horowitz recalls, explaining some of his own personal encounters with anti-Semitic prejudice. "One night he asked me if he could touch my head. He said, 'You don't have horns.' He'd always been told that Jews had horns, and he wondered if there was something in the physiognomy of my skull."