#JewPlay: What is the Future of Jewish Theatre?

As a response to the realities of the current state of the theater for religiously observant theater artists, I co-founded 24/6: A Jewish Theater Company with likeminded artists. 24/6 is a home for Sabbath-observant artists in New York which is committed to cultivating innovative theater grounded in a rigorous engagement with Jewish tradition.

In this installation, Deborah Yarchun sheds insight on the importance of Jewish theatre in the United States. 

We chose to do "Yellow Face" because of the meaningful questions it raises about the parameters of identity. We chose to do "Yellow Face" because of the revealing and resonant glimpse it gives at immigrant families in the United States; because of its multi-layered examination of the “American Dream”; because of the uproarious and irreverent way it uses humor to expose darker themes. We chose to do "Yellow Face" because clearly, it’s a Jewish play!

What make theater Jewish? This strikes me as just as complex a query as, “What makes a person Jewish?” or, for that matter, “What makes theater?”

Despite the fact that I have never thought of myself as an artist engaged in an exploration of my own background, I have somehow, almost inadvertently authored a trilogy of plays (over twelve years and separated by five other plays) about the search for faith, each of which features an atheist, or at least hard-questioning Jew.

In this installation, David Winitsky offers a brief history of Jewish theatre and shares insight on its future.

I believe that the future of Jewish theater is in the hands of those who identify themselves as both practitioners and Jews, but independently of one another. It is not about the Jewish theater practitioners, but rather about the theater practitioners who are Jewish. Since being a Jew doesn’t mean it’ll change the type of theater you do or how you do it, we need to focus on the fact that being Jewish changes your approach to it. And much like alumni of a certain school of acting have a type of shorthand with one another, so do a group of Jews.