What is Jewish community theater?

By Cindy Mindell

Before American Jews traveled to the big cities or the Catskills for entertainment, we enjoyed home-grown entertainment: at the synagogue, Purim shpiels, Chanukah plays, dinner-dances, and in-house musical groups; at the JCC, musical performances and community theater. Performers and audiences alike were hewn from the same communal cloth, and their interactions built and strengthened that small society.

Today, however, the “community” in community theater seems to have many definitions, touching on the make-up of cast and audience, as well as objectives, from sheer entertainment to community-building. Apart from local children’s theater programs — of which there are many — Jewish Connecticut boasts five community theater programs for adults, each defining itself somewhere along the spectrum of theater of, by, and for the people. With several productions coming up, the Ledger peeked behind the curtain to see what makes each company run.

Beyond the Pale in Wethersfield

“All good theater is community theater,” says Rabbi Seth Riemer, spiritual leader of Temple Beth Torah in Wethersfield and founder of Beyond the Pale Jewish Theater Experiment (BTPJTE), based at the synagogue. “A strong implication of the term ‘community theater’ is that it is for amateurs, and I embrace that designation happily. While I have professional aspirations, I believe that the rootedness of theater in the community and its problems – that is, in the common experience of humanity – is theater’s most vital attribute because it is something all people, whether professionals or not, can appreciate and connect with. There’s no room for snobbery in art that aspires to genuinely touch people’s lives.”

A scene from “Time Shared,” a comedy by Faye Sholiton, one of the six original plays that comprised The Temple Players’ “Tribal Humor 7.”

Riemer created Beyond the Pale as an experiment in human connection: “with the Jewish community in all its manifestations, as well as with pro-social elements in the wider Connecticut, American, and world community,” he says. “I seek, more specifically, to connect Jewish religious consciousness with secular pop culture.”

In that broader sense of the communal, BTPJTE’s mission statement offers a creative setting “where artists of all religious, cultural, and socio-economic backgrounds may explore Jewish themes, experiment freely and joyfully with them, perform and thrive.” Professionals and amateurs are welcome, though a limited budget does not guarantee remuneration.

The advantage of casting community members, Riemer says, is the built-in audience of relatives, friends, and colleagues. “Even in its grand, philosophical manifestations, theater is, when all’s said and done, a reflection of the day-to-day experiences of ordinary people,” he says.

In specifically Jewish terms, however, theater is still a largely untested medium. “Granted, there is a long tradition of popular entertainment in the Jewish world, but I believe that very little of that entertainment is connected to the most sublime elements of Jewish tradition,” Riemer says. “So, while I want to examine familiar Jewish themes through drama, I also want to work with my friends to create a new model of theater, one that is distinctively Jewish yet in an entirely original and perhaps unpredictable way: a way that, in Jewish terms, elevates popular taste without abandoning it.” Riemer, producer Rima Riedel, and other associates, seek material that is Jewish-themed, relatively unconventional, open to interpretation and even controversy, and potentially entertaining to a wide public.

A scene from The Temple Players’ August 2013 staged reading of “Chaim’s Love Song.”

The first step in this kind of ambitious community-building project, Riemer says, is to get people through the theater doors and give them an opportunity to be together to enjoy each other’s company “while celebrating our survival as a people.”

Next performance: “Prospero’s Island,” a musical drama of teenage concentration-camp prisoners presenting a musical version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, early May. Info: Rabbi Seth Riemer, sethriemer@aol.com.

Jewish themes on stage in Trumbull

The first Jewish theater group in the state was created in 1998 to stage a fundraiser at Temple Beth Sholom in Stratford.

“When we did our first show, I went in front of the board and said, ‘If I can make this last for five years, I’ll be really happy,’” recalls founder and artistic director Mark Lambeck. After two full-scale productions in 1999 and 2000, the Temple Players eventually settled into a more manageable annual summer staged reading, offering Jewish-themed short plays for Jewish and non-Jewish audiences from the Stratford area.

“I really wanted the Temple Players to be perceived as a community theater group, not as a synagogue activity, but a Jewish community theater that happened to be located at a synagogue,” Lambeck says. “There’s a place for amateur night at every synagogue, but we’re here to present under-exposed theater pieces that deal with issues that the Jewish community is concerned with: family strife, holidays, conversion, intermarriage, assimilation.”

A year ago, when Temple Beth Sholom merged with Congregation B’nai Torah in Trumbull, the Temple Players relocated as well, and is the only community theater in the town.

“It’s important for theater to serve the whole community, not just one special-interest group,” says Lambeck. “Even though it’s a Jewish theater group and we present works with Jewish themes and characters, it’s intended for a very diverse audience.”

For a Jewish audience, the play reflects an issue or character that can easily be identified with; non-Jews will get a glimpse into Jewish culture, habits, and way of life, he says. “All of our plays deal with the human condition, things people can identify with no matter what their religion. For non-Jews unfamiliar with Jewish culture, it might be eye-opening and educational: we may not celebrate Christmas or worship Jesus, but we’re just like you; we have families, we have concerns for the future, economic worries, as well as this additional culture that gives us a different perspective on things.”

Lambeck and his production team cast actors who have already appeared on stage, whether in high school, community theater, or a professional production.

“The plays we produce must have identifiable Jewish themes or characters, and that’s why you won’t see us doing Neil Simon; he’s Jewish but he doesn’t write Jewish characters,” Lambeck says. “When you see Felix Unger, for example, he may have a Jewish name and some mannerisms, but he never identifies as Jewish. On the other hand, we did Driving Miss Daisy, which touches on a lot of Jewish themes – intermarriage, family relationships, antisemitism, Jews struggling with identity in a very Christian society. For someone who thinks of Jews as New Yorkers, just hearing a character with a southern accent who identifies as Jewish is an education.”

Next performance: “Tribal Humor 8: The Best of Tribal Humor.” June dates TBA, Congregation B’nai Torah, 5700 Main St., Trumbull. Info: www.bnaitorahct.org, (203) 268-6940

Homespun theater in Stamford

A scene from the JCC Center Women’s production of “The Wizard of Oz.”

The iconic image of homespun theater made popular by Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney in “Babes in Arms” – “Hey! Let’s put on a show!” – lives on at the Stamford JCC. In addition to the O-la-mi summer camp’s “What a Production!” the Center Women stage an annual musical theater production as a fundraiser for special-needs and senior-adult programming.

In 2011, Center Women revived the long-dormant community theater program with an annual musical production. Auditions are open to all women in the Jewish community; many participants are members of the JCC and/or Center Women, and anyone who auditions is cast. “It is a wonderful way for the community to come together for a common and enjoyable endeavor,” says Nancy Schiffman, associate executive director of the JCC. “These women are extremely talented and have come to truly enjoy working with each other on this annual project, the result of which brings the entire community out and together.”

It was Kim Schweber, then-president of Center Women, who suggested and directed the first show, Free to Be You and Me. A former actress who earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in theater, Schweber says she “wanted to do something theatrical and fun that everyone could be a part of.”

But the show did much more, with four performances selling out, attended not only by cast members’ friends and family, but by the Jewish community at large. Schweber selected and directed the next two annual shows, which sold out every year and reached nearly 1,000 audience members.

A scene from the JCC Center Women’s production of “Free to Be You and Me.”

“The expectation was that 20 women, some of whom knew each other, some who had performed in high-school or college shows or liked to sing and act, would get together and put on a show and maybe some people would come,” says current Center Women president, Sheryl Young. But the production has become an effective fundraiser, with last year’s The Wizard of Oz netting $5,000, helped along by a popular pre-show character dinner with the actors for young families.

“The fundraiser part is secondary,” Young says. “The show started as a way for performers to find a community and ended up creating an extended community. The experience is also a bonding one for the actors, Young says, who hears the women calling themselves by their character names, even outside rehearsals.

This year’s production of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” is directed by Janice Steinberg, who is also theater director at Bi-Cultural Day School in Stamford.

“We want people to come to the JCC to have different experiences and feel good and have fun,” she says. “There have always been opportunities for kids’ classes, fitness, sports, and Jewish life and learning, and it’s great to also have theater program – something that appeals to a broad age range and that the whole community can enjoy.”

The model must be working: A month after the show, people are already asking Young what next year’s production will be.

Next performance: “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” Saturday, Jan. 25, 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, Jan. 26, 11 a.m. and 2:30 p.m., Stamford JCC, 1035 Newfield Ave., Stamford. info: www.stamfordjcc.org, (203) 322-7900

Theater for a new generation in New Haven

The newest kid on the block is JCC Theaterworks, the only professional Jewish theater in Connecticut founded by DeDe Jacobs-Komisar as “Jewish theater for a new generation.”

Housed at the Jewish Community Center of Greater New Haven, Theaterworks Theater is simply the stories a community tells to explore its identity. The mission of the New Haven JCC is “to facilitate total wellness through programs that stimulate mind, body and spirit.”

The company defines “community theater” as featuring members of the Greater New Haven community, primarily amateur actors and volunteers. But some productions, like the recent “He Who Laughs,” cast professional actors.

“Having community productions serves the mission of JCC Theaterworks by cultivating a love of Jewish theater in our community from the ground up – by engaging people in the fun and meaningful experience of making Jewish theater together,” Jacobs-Komisar says. “Community productions also let us do plays with bigger casts that we wouldn’t be able to afford if we were working with professional actors.”

Jacobs-Komisar says that a community production is not of a lower artistic quality. “It’s just an opportunity to involve people who love theater but have other day jobs,” she says. “The advantage is that the work is by the community, for the community. The challenge is that the skill and experience levels can be all over the board, so it is a true challenge – meaning exciting and powerful – for a director to bring everyone together to bring the show to life.”

The question “What is Jewish theater?” gets wide berth from Jacobs-Komisar, a Yale Drama School graduate who founded Jewish theater companies in Baltimore and Jerusalem. “Does it have to have Jewish characters and explicitly Jewish themes, or is it enough that it explores ideas relevant to our Jewish community?” she says. For example, the Jerusalem-based company staged Eve Ensler’s “A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer,” a work that addresses violence against women, and paired the play with a women’s self-defense workshop. “Nothing in the play was explicitly Jewish, but we used it as an opportunity to engage with this important issue affecting the Jerusalem community,” Jacobs-Komisar says.

Likewise, Theaterworks is intended as a place where actors find a home to explore Jewish culture in a creative environment and provide art for their community while having fun, she says. “We hope audiences find in our shows a unique and thought-provoking way of engaging with Jewish identity, and see themselves reflected somewhere on stage.”

Next performance: The Jewish Plays Project Second Annual Playwriting Contest: Sunday, Feb. 16, 7 p.m., JCC Vine Auditorium, 360 Amity Road, Woodbridge. Info: www.jccnh.org, (203) 387-2522.

Something new in West Hartford

A new Connecticut venue for Jewish community theater will take shape in May and June, when the Mandell JCC in West Hartford introduces J-Fest, a community-based festival of Jewish arts and entertainment, in partnership with the Suffolk Y JCC on Long Island and the JCC in Manhattan. JCC executive director David Jacobs says that the festival is being curated with a goal of presenting Jewish-themed shows with wide appeal and entertainment value. Watch the Ledger for an extensive feature story this spring. This is in addition to the Mandell JCC’s popular, 32-year-old youth theater program which stages three annual musical theater productions.