“Bimah,” Hebrew for “elevated place,” refers to the platform in an Ashkenazi synagogue where the Torah is read. (Some Sephardi congregations call that part of the sanctuary “tebah.”)
In Israel, the word is also used to refer to a theatrical stage. HaBimah (The Stage) is the country’s national theater company, founded as one of the first Hebrew-language theaters in Moscow in 1918 and transplanted to Tel Aviv in 1928.
For American Jews growing up in the post-Yiddish theater era, “Jewish theater” is commonly associated with “Fiddler on the Roof” or “The Diary of Anne Frank,” or  one of the numerous American Jewish playwrights who have made their mark on Broadway and in mainstream American theater.
But what’s been happening since Neil Simon and Wendy Wasserstein?

The Hebrew High School of New England’s production of “Once Upon An Island, Jr.” at the Hartford Stage last year

“There are a lot of Jews writing plays but there hasn’t been a clearinghouse or incubator to develop really great Jewish works,” says DeDe Jacobs-Komisar, cultural arts manager at the JCC of Greater New Haven and director of the new JCC Theaterworks. “The ‘60s and ‘70s were a really creative age in American theater. The National Endowment for the Arts was very generous in developing the works of risky,
off-the-wall Jewish artists. Wendy Wasserstein and Neil Simon wrote great things during that time. The Jewish Theatre of San Francisco came out of that period and did really different works, but it couldn’t sustain itself and closed in May. There are a lot of artists who would normally write plays but who transfer to film; Woody Allen is a good example. There are great Black plays coming out of the Penumbra Theatre in Minneapolis, but there was never really one place or one powerful theater organization dedicated to nurturing the work of Jewish playwrights. So where are the Jewish voices now?”
Some are on Broadway; “Bad Jews” by Joshua Harmon is among the most critically acclaimed plays of 2012. (New York Times theater reviewer Charles Isherwood posits the central discussion topic in his October 2012 write-up: “I suspect the question of who’s the good Jew and who’s the bad Jew — can a better Jew be a worse person? — might well be a question that a dozen Talmudic scholars could argue over for a good long time.” Discuss.

HHNE’s production of
“Once Upon An Island, Jr.”

Several JCCs across the country are home to theater companies, some of them professional. The New York-based Jewish Plays Project is a recent initiative whose mission is to put “bold, progressive Jewish conversations on world stages” and “to ignite an explosive engagement between cutting-edge Jewish theater artists and audiences by developing and advocating for a new generation of plays and musicals that embrace and investigate the intersection of Jewish identity and secular self.”
This year, via JCC Theaterworks, Jewish New Haven will be one of the communities throughout the country engaging in the selection of new Jewish voices.
“As with any other cultural medium, theater asks, ‘Why is it important to know ourselves?’” Jacobs-Komisar says. “Jewish theater represents stories of our own culture and community, as expressed by the writer, actors, and director. They are the stories that we tell ourselves and also present to a greater audience.”
JCC Theaterworks is the newest Jewish theater program in Connecticut, a state that boasts four such initiatives, not counting the drama programs at Hebrew High School of New England in West Hartford and the Jewish High School of Connecticut in Woodbridge.
The Ledger recently drew back the curtain on thespian endeavors in our communities, and also discovered new opportunities for actors and playwrights.

Jewish Arts Alive, Stamford
As a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces in the ‘60s, Tamar Gershberg wrote, produced, directed, and choreographed multi-media events that presented the history and special character of specific military units – among them, the Golani and tank brigades, and Givati Central Command.
Gershberg came to the U.S. to earn a degree at the Columbia University School of Dramatic Arts and the American Theater Wing. While a student, she acted with the Roundabout Theater and studied choreography with Jerome Robbins and La Mairie.
She settled in Stamford in the early ‘70s and was on the faculty of Bi-Cultural Day School, using drama as an educational tool. Among her projects were a Hebrew production of “Oklahoma!,” “Matayim,” which traced American Jewish history, and “The Vision of the Dry Bones” dance performance. She also served as principal of Congregation Agudath Sholom’s Hebrew school, where she infused the curriculum with arts-related programming.
Gershberg started Jewish Arts Alive (JAA) in 1993 to promote and explore Jewish heritage and folklore throughout greater Stamford through the arts, and to use the arts to build bridges between various communities through multi-cultural organizations.
The initiative received several grants from the City of Stamford and the State of Connecticut Commission on the Arts. The play, “Lifeforce,” Gershberg’s dramatization of her uncle’s Auschwitz memoir, was presented at Stamford High School in 2006 and won the State of Connecticut High School Drama Award and the “Remembering History Award,” created especially for the work. The play was also performed in Edinburgh, Scotland.
JAA is renewing its efforts after a five-year hiatus. On Jan. 19, Gershberg and a committee of community members and fellow artists will host a backer’s audition at the Stamford JCC, featuring 11 local actors in three vignettes written by Gershberg. The event is intended to attract new supporters from throughout Fairfield County.
“The aim now is to broaden the base of JAA’s operation and to become a voice in the community,” Gershberg says – “to engage in the ‘conversation,’ to speak the language of people in all its variety, and to build bridges to the communities around us. It will be Jewish but more than Jewish. We want to open it to all kinds of playwrights and build something that is original.”

JAA Backer’s Audition, Saturday, Jan. 19, 8 p.m., Stamford JCC, 1035 Newfield Ave., Stamford | Info: Doris Freundlich, dorisfreundlich@hotmail.com

The Temple Players,
 Congregation B’nai Torah, Trumbull

Tom Costaggini of Stamford and Andrea Garmun of Milford played battling relatives in
“Uncle Murray Goes to Miriam’s Wedding,” one of the comedies that made up “Tribal Humor 3” in the Temple Players’ 12th season in 2009.

The first theater in Connecticut established to explore Jewish themes and characters, The Temple Players began in 1998 at Temple Beth Sholom in Stratford as both a fundraising mechanism and a way to introduce issues of American Jewish life to a diverse audience. “One of the reasons we started was to engage people who have not had close relationships with Jews,” says artistic director Mark Lambeck. “It’s important to me as an artistic director to motivate non-Jews to come and learn about Jewish culture, to see that we care about family and spirituality, just like other communities.”
Now entering its 16th season, the company presents staged readings of established and new works in a cabaret-style setting, primarily during the summer.
“There is an array of theater groups throughout the country dedicated to the Irish, Hispanic, Black, and other ethnic or special-interest group experience,” says Lambeck. “While many synagogues and JCCs in Connecticut may produce plays, they often stage popular musicals and have ignored the wealth of lesser-known works that focus on various aspects of Jewish life.”
In 2012, when Temple Beth Sholom merged with Congregation B’nai Torah in Trumbull, The Temple Players relocated as well.
In addition to exposing mixed audiences to Jewish themes and characters, The Temple Players also produces works geared toward Jewish audiences. In November, to commemorate Kristallnacht the company presented a staged reading of “Remembrance,” four original one-act plays by Lambeck addressing the Holocaust.

The Temple Players will open its 2013 season with “Tribal Humor 7,” its annual festival of original comedic one-act plays with Jewish themes and/or characters. Scripts will be accepted from Jan. 2 through March 31.
Info: www.bnaitorahct.org/templeplayers

Beyond the Pale Theater Experiment,
Wethersfield
Rabbi Seth Riemer of Temple Beth Torah in Wethersfield launched Beyond the Pale Theater Experiment (BTP) in 2010 to merge his two scholarly and professional backgrounds.
“I want to do something that connects Jews with their theatrical instincts in a very direct way,” he told the Ledger at the time. “I don’t want it to be just theater with a Jewish flavor; I want it to be Jews acting out powerfully. I want it to be spiritually compelling. And I want it to be a space in which it is permissible to challenge and even offend audiences while exciting them and getting them to think. I want political theater. I want controversy and cultural transgression and a new Jewish aesthetic. I am really tired of the safe old formulaic schmaltz that passes itself off as Jewishly relevant theater. No more warmed-over Neil Simon and rehashed “Fiddler on the Roof.”  I should also mention that my conception of Jewish theater includes non-Jews whose life travels take them down some of the same roads as Jews themselves. “The idea is to try to bridge the Jewish religious and cultural world with the broader secular culture and to try to find some dialogue there. We are trying to appeal to both Jewish audiences and a wider audience and offer a challenging perspective on religion and secularity, always with much humor and joy.”
BTP staged Riemer’s “Converted Imperfect” and hosted “The Black-Jew Dialogues” in 2010.
Beyond The Pale Jewish Theater Experiment is on hiatus because of Riemer’s new teaching position at the Jewish High School of Connecticut in Woodbridge and ongoing rabbinic work at Temple Beth Torah. He is seeking original and dynamic material for possible production, “that has a Jewish angle and is at least slightly subversive in tone and provocative and thought-provoking in substance,” he says.

Info: Rabbi Seth Riemer, sethriemer@aol.com
 
JCC Theaterworks. 
Greater New Haven
JCC Theaterworks is the resident theater company of the Jewish Community Center of Greater New Haven and is dedicated to exploring Jewish identity and community through theater, and expanding the meaning of Jewish theater by cultivating new voices and ideas. Director DeDe Jacobs-Komisar co-founded Jewish Theatre Workshop of Baltimore before moving to New Haven to pursue a graduate degree at the Yale School of Drama.
“’Jewish theater’ is not necessarily a work with a Jewish theme or signifier, but rather addresses issues that can push the Jewish community to question and challenge ourselves, and create meaningful and open dialog,” says Jacobs-Komisar. “For example, I would produce ‘Doubt,’ even though it’s about the Catholic community, in order to encourage dialogue on sex abuse in closed religious communities. I would produce ‘Shakespeare’s R and J,’ which takes the text of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and stages it with four boys or four girls in a ‘50s-era boarding school. It addressed teen issues and homosexuality and growing up in a closed environment. Even though it’s not a Neil Simon or Wendy Wasserstein production, the work can encourage dialogue and move the issue forward.”
The 2013 inaugural season will bring several programs to Greater New Haven. In “Jew-ish: A One-Page Play Festival Exploring Jewish Identity and Community,” local actors present a series of short plays on the comedy and drama of being Jewish. The program is part of the Jan. 26 “Taste of Honey” adult-education program of the Center for Jewish Life and Learning of the JCC/Federation of Greater New Haven. At the “Community Purim Shpiel” in February, hosted by comedian Robin Fox, teams from New Haven-area synagogues and schools will compete to create original Purim shpiels. In March, JCC Theaterworks will take part in the Jewish Plays Project Annual Playwrighting Contest, where the audience will choose which new play will get a full New York workshop production at the 14th Street Y. In June, Yale School of Drama alumnus Reuven Russell will direct a drama featuring professional talent.
“My vision, and what attracts me to DeDe’s work, is that Jewish theater can encompass a universal vision not only applicable to Jews but to the whole world,” Russell says. “All good theater makes people feel and think. What I learned in my two years at Yale School of Drama is that most great theater is life-affirming. To me, ‘Jewish theater’ doesn’t necessarily have to be anything that is obviously Jewish. Jewish values are very much world values, in terms of life having value, doing good deeds, bringing goodness and light to the world. Those concepts are not solely Jewish, just as Torah is not only for the Jews but for the whole world. So the greatest Jewish theater I envision conveys universal themes.”
Russell will participate in two theatrical presentations during Taste of Honey, and hopes to direct a JCC Theaterworks play in the spring.
Over time, Jacobs-Komisar plans to develop JCC Theaterworks into a full-fledged company offering main-stage plays and second-stage cultural events, as well as year-round and summer programs for adults and children, and collaborative projects with schools throughout the state.

JCC Theaterworks, JCC of Greater New Haven, Woodbridge 
DeDe Jacobs-Komisar, JCC Cultural Arts Manager: (203) 387-2522, ext. 300 / dedek@jccnh.org

Hebrew High School of New England, West Hartford 
& Jewish High School of Connecticut, Woodbridge

HHNE’s production of
“Once Upon An Island, Jr.”

The two Connecticut Jewish high schools – Hebrew High School of New England (HHNE) in West Hartford and the Jewish High School of Connecticut (JHSC) in Woodbridge – both have drama programs.
“Drama is one of our most popular activities, and we have many talented actors and actresses,” says Rabbi Shimmy Trencher, HHNE dean of students. Last month, students performed “Once on This Island, Jr.” A spring performance is in the works.
For the last several years, HHNE ran its theater program in conjunction with Hartford Stage Company, but this year moved its performances to the Mandell JCC of Greater Hartford. Director Reuven Russell is a graduate of Yale School of Drama and artistic director of the Stern College Dramatics Society.
HHNE also has a long-running improv theater program (not offered this year) and a student group working on an independent
production that will be performed in the winter.
“At HHNE, I want to show how theater can nurture self-confidence and leadership,” Russell says. “I believe that leadership is not
for the top one percent but for the top 100 percent, and theater can be the vehicle.” Rather than conduct a traditional audition process, Russell will give roles to all students interested in being part of the school’s productions.
The Jewish High School of Connecticut launched its drama program this year, with the help of Rabbi Seth Riemer of Temple Beth Torah in Wethersfield and creator of Beyond the Pale Jewish Theater Experiment. JHSC’s first all-student production, “The Apple,” a one-act play by Jimmy Brunelle, was presented last month at the JCC of Greater New Haven.

Hebrew High School of New England: www.hhne.org 

Jewish High School of Connecticut: www.jhsct.org
HHNE photos are courtesy of Ryan Sindler/Ryan James Video & Photography