Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on May 1, 2013

By Cindy Mindell

WOODBRIDGE First there was Yiddish theater, and then the iconic English-language works: Fiddler on the Roof, The Diary of Anne Frank, anything by Neil Simon.

But what has happened to Jewish theater since the 70s? The Jewish Plays Project (JPP), the brainchild of Manhattan-based theater artist David Winitsky, is one way to find out.

Founded in 2011, the JPP is an incubator for new plays on Jewish themes and contemporary Jewish experience. The JPP is hosted by a JCC or synagogue that mounts a playwriting competition whose submissions are reviewed by a local committee and whittled down to three finalists. Those works are staged for an audience who votes on a favorite, and the winner gets a month-long performance residency and workshop inNew York.

Michael Bradley Cohen and Bill DeMerritt in Jim Shankmans A Jew from east Jesus at the JPPs NJ Jewish Playwriting Contest

Now the JPP is coming to New Haven, sponsored by JCC of Greater New Haven and produced by DeDe Jacobs-Kamisar, cultural arts manager and founder of the JCCs new Theaterworks division. Jacobs-Kamisar, who earned a Masters degree in theater management from the Yale School of Drama (YSD) last year, is joined in JPP by fellow YSD alumni and current students, including review committee members MJ Kaufman (13), Whitney Dibo (14), and Reuven Russell (87), and actors Bill Demeritt (12) and Adina Verson (12). The project is co-sponsored in New Haven by Michael and Jo-Ann Price and the JCC Cultural Arts Advisory Board, headed by playwright Doron Ben-Atar, who heads the Fordham University history department.

From January through March, each member of the JPP review committee read and ranked the 10 play submissions independently, then gathered to debate which selections would be the most appropriate, according to Ben-Atar.

Appropriate is not about taste, he says. We selected three very different pieces that represent three very different Jewish plays not in a traditional sense, not Jewish shtick or about a kind of coming back to religion or secularizing a Jewish theme. Rather, each has a dynamic fabulous story in its own right that unfolds in a surprising fashion.

Whats really wonderful about this project, in my mind, is that it changes the experience of going to theater, says Ben-Atar. As an audience, we are primarily passive: we applaud, laugh, or fall asleep. Theater has been sterilized to a great degree in the Western world; it used to be more interactive. By participating in the production and selection process, the JPP audience is empowered.

One of the most encouraging and yet depressing elements of the theater world is that there are multiple Jewish writers and authors who write interesting and wonderful things that never see the stage, says Ben-Atar. Thats part of the plight of many writers the stuff that gets performed very often is not the best stuff but rather, artistic directors choose works that had previous success or appeal to a broad audience. The Jewish Plays Project demonstrates that there are hundreds of people writing Jewish plays and many of them are excellent.

Read the original:
Curtain Up: New Haven explores the art of Jewish theater

Category: Jewish American Heritage Month
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