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.  
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Curtain Up: New Haven explores the art of Jewish theater
				
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