Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on January 4, 2022

Not many people would launch a new theater company in the middle of a pandemic, but Carole Kleinberg was determined to show there is an audience for the revived version of Sarasota Jewish Theatre she is leading.

For its first season, the company presented a series of Zoom presentations of three shows, along with discussions with actors and directors. She was happily surprised to find the company had 300 subscribers for its initial online programs. Aseries of friend events has been helping to build financial support.

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It shows that there is a place for this kind of theater in the community, particularly after the way the world turned over the last year, she said. It seemed more important than ever to have a positive, creative, strong, successful Jewish voice playing in the world.

Kleinberg, who worked as a college theater professor and director in Illinois before moving to Sarasota, served as artistic director of the Banyan Theater Company in Sarasota and associate artistic director of the short-lived PLATO arts company.

She said the feedback from the first season was encouraging.

I think it was a really successful first year and a lot of people were surprised at the quality, and Zoom gave us some unexpected benefits, such as having out-of-town actors more readily available to take part.

For its second season, Kleinberg and her colleagues will be presenting a series of three fully-staged productions at the Players Centres new Studio 1130 in the Crossings at Siesta Key shopping mall.

She had hoped to have a Zoom option for the productions but could not work out agreements with playwrights for two of the works and with the Actors Equity Association. But we will be doing ancillary programs for all the plays.

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The season will open Feb. 2-6 with Rose, Martin Shermans one-person play about an 80-year-old woman who talks to the audience from a bench outside her Miami Beach apartment about her childhood in Ukraine, dealing with the Nazi invasion of Poland, and life as an older adult in the United States.

It stars Carolyn Michel, who first performed the play at Florida Studio Theatre in 2003, and has returned to it periodically, including the 2016 SaraSolo Festival. A scene from the play was featured in her one-person Zoom presentation Women I Have Loved, in which she recreated characters she has played over the years. The full production will be directed by her husband, Howard Millman, the former producing artistic director of Asolo Repertory Theatre.

Geraldine Librandi, who has appeared in several productions at Sarasota theaters and was featured in last seasons reading of James Shermans From Door to Door, returns for The Interview by Faye Sholiton. It runs from March 2-6. She plays Bracha Weissman, a Holocaust survivor who reluctantlyagrees to be interviewed about her experiences for a history program similar tothe Shoah Project. Katherine Michelle Tanner and Jeanette Dudash will be featured in the production.

The final production will feature Don Walker as college professor Morrie Schwartz in the stage version of Mitch Alboms best-selling memoir Tuesdays with Morrie. Kleinberg says its a role that Walker was born to play. Derek Brookens plays Albom, a reporter--turned-author who recounts his visits to his aging and dying professor and the wit and wisdom that he shared. It runs April 6-10.

Its contemporary and it's uplifting, and I was looking for something that celebrates positivity and relationships and making the best out of every moment of your life.

And though all theseplays deal with Jewish characters or situations, Its a theater for everybody, Kleinberg said. You dont have to be Jewish to like Jewish theater. Its telling the story of our lives but theres a universality to all of the plays that makes them speak to everyone.

The new SJT has become an official project of the Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee, which sponsored the initial season. Tickets for the performances are $18-$36 and are available at Jfedsrq.org/events. For more information about the company: sarasotajewistheater.org

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Sarasota Jewish Theatre returns for first season of full productions - Sarasota Herald-Tribune

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