Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on May 12, 2022

A family of Jewish women connect over their shared grief and love of baking. A haredi woman adopts a biracial child after her marriage falls apart. A small-town Iowa synagogue welcomes a surprising visitor.

These are the stories that unfold in three new plays competing in this years international Jewish Playwriting Contest. And on May 21 at Congregation Beth Am, local theater lovers will be able to experience a taste of each Madeleines by Bess Welden, To Reach Across a River by Marshall Botvinick and Tree of Life by Victor Wishna and vote for their favorite.

I describe the event as a combination of a TED Talk, a play reading and American Idol, said David Winitsky, artistic director of the Jewish Plays Project, which sponsors the contest. Winitsky will kick things off by talking about the state of contemporary Jewish theater. Afterward, seven local actors will perform 20-minute dramatic readings from the plays, and audience members will use their smartphones to vote for the play they wish to see produced.

The contest received 250 submissions this year, and works by three playwrights with Bay Area ties were among the top 20 selections: Daniel Holzmans BERLINDIA!, Jamie Greenblatts Female, Ashkenazi With A Sewing Machine and Nigel Berkeleys simply so much night.

Holzman, 23, grew up in San Francisco and graduated from NYUs playwriting program last year. He called his play in which a character based on his mother becomes obsessed with techno and moves to Berlin crazy and absurd and told J. he appreciated that the Jewish Plays Project is taking chances on fun, strange things. (His play is also a finalist in the Bay Area Playwrights Festival; the winners will be announced on May 15.)

Greenblatts play, which follows a Jewish woman on a journey of self-discovery after she is diagnosed with ovarian cancer, was first staged at Berkeleys Inferno Theatre Co. in 2017. Jewish Plays Project readers called it a poetic story of grace, love, and imagination.

Greenblatt, who lives in Berkeley, told J. the play is based on her own experience with cancer. I would love for the play to gain a wider audience than the tiny one it had when it was first staged, she said.

The top three vote-getters at several regional competitions, including the one at Beth Am, will make it to the final round of the Jewish Playwriting Contest, which will be livestreamed next month on the Virtual JCC platform. The winning play will be produced in New York City. Over the years, several finalists have also been produced.

Our ultimate goal is to get these plays produced on mainstream stages around the country, and Im very proud to say that this spring, there are six plays that the JPP has developed that are in production, Winitsky said. Trayf, a 2016 finalist, recently completed a monthlong run at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles.

Since its founding in 2011, the Jewish Plays Project has developed 53 plays, and 33 of them have been staged across North America, as well as in the U.K. and Israel. This is the seventh year that the international contest has been held on the West Coast. Other local Jewish communities that are participating are in Chicago; Houston; Fairfax, Virginia; and Raanana, Israel.

Read the rest here:

Cast your vote: annual Jewish Playwriting Contest comes to Bay Area J. - The Jewish News of Northern California

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