JEWISH PLAYS PROJECT Announces Finalists for Playwriting Contest

The Jewish Plays Project announced the seven finalists for the 11th National Jewish Playwriting Contest, chosen from over 250 submissions from 30 states and five countries.

"These plays are asking the key Jewish theater question of our time - what is the role of Jewish other-ness in a vastly changed and changing cultural landscape?" said Artistic Director David Winitsky. "From the fields of Iowa to backstage on Broadway, these fantastic writers are creating thrilling plays that should have long lives on the world's best stages."

The JPP has featured some of the best artists working in New York, including writers David Hein and Irene Sankoff (Come from Away), Jonathan Caren (Rise on Netflix), and Lauren Yee (Cambodian Rock Band); directors Marc Bruni (Beautiful), Daniella Topol (Rattlestick Theater AD), and Tamilla Woodard (David Geffen School of Drama at Yale); and actors Andrew Polk (The Band's Visit), Gus Birney (Dickinson on AppleTV+), Ronald Guttman (Mad Men, Hunters), Kirrilee Berger (Amazon's Just Add Magic), and Obie and Drama Desk nominee Marcia Jean Kurtz.

Contest Dramaturg Heather Helinsky and Associate Artistic Director Joshua Benghiat led the JPP's innovative selection process, with a panel of 87 members, including dramaturgs, writers, directors, designers, and actors from around the country, logging 1,000 hours of engaged reading and discussion.

The finalist plays' writers span the country, representing a diverse range of communities and experience, including current students and award-winning writers. The selected plays are:

• I Was A Stranger Too by Cynthia L. Cooper • New York, NY
  The stories of today's asylum seekers resonate with the Jewish past, and collide in shelters in Minnesota.
• Lily Ineffable by Audrey Lang • New York, NY
  When child performer Lily hesitates to tell her family about a trauma, she is visited by Lilith, a Judaic demon with very strong opinions.
• Madeleines by Bess Welden • Portland, ME
  Spiced with poetry, Yiddish, and Spanish, a family of Jewish women grapples with how to love each other through shared grief and the solace of baking.
• Say Goodbye by A.R. Cohen/Corwin • Tempe, AZ
  "He's alive, Mordie! He's alive!" In a European basement lab in 1956, Esthie has discovered something amazing. But will she use it to find peace... or feed her desire for revenge?
• Strawberries at the Datcha by Gena Treyvus • Chicago, IL
  Yelena's family immigrates from Belarus to a Russian-Jewish neighborhood in NYC. A play about assimilation and the things we gain and lose when leaving home.
• To Reach Across a River by Marshall Botvinick • Durham, NC
  Yehudis and her husband spend years struggling with infertility. After her marriage falls apart, she adopts a biracial girl, forever altering her relationship with her ultra-Orthodox community.
• Tree of Life by Victor Wishna • Leawood, KS
  A declining, small-town Iowa synagogue welcomes a surprising visitor, as the tale of its origins - and its Torah's mysterious past-unfolds contiguously, a century before.

The Contest process connects thousands of audience members across the country and in Israel with this new cohort of nascent plays. Eight organizations will host regional performances and panels in Houston, Charlotte, Chicago, Fairfax, Hartford, Silicon Valley, New York City and Tel Aviv. Once again, the VirtualJCC will host the National Finals, produced by Artistic Producer Will Steinberger, broadcasting free of charge to over 15,000 subscribers.

The JPP also recognized an additional 11 plays as Semi-Finalists:

• simply so much night by Nigel Berkeley
• Speak Freely by Andrea Fesit-Stein
• Esther and Vashti by Carolyn Gage
• These and Those by Ruth Geye
• Tamar (The Two-Gated City) by Emma Goldman-Sherman
• Female, Ashkenazi With A Sewing Machine by Jamie Greenblatt
• Berlindia! by Daniel Holzman
• Nights of Broken Glass by India Kotis
• Where the Lovelight Gleams by Kyle McCloskey
• L'Dor v'Dor by Lojo Simon
• The Secret Wisdom of Trees by Christine Toy Johnson
• A Pickle by Deborah Yarchun

The JPP also gave a set of 11 plays Honorable Mention. The full list of recognized plays can be found at jewishplaysproject.org/jpc-11-recognized-plays

Find full information about all the plays, including playwright contact information, at the JPP's website, jewishplaysproject.org. Interested producers, agents, and literary managers can email plays@jewishplaysproject.org.

"The Jewish Playwriting Contest offers something more powerful than exposure: it offers Jewish playwrights a spiritual community, where they can share work and exchange ideas," said Adi Eshman, 2019 Top 7 playwright and writer's assistant for HBO's Mosaic.

ABOUT THE NATIONAL JEWISH PLAYWRITING CONTEST

The Jewish Playwriting Contest seeks to discover, highlight, and nurture contemporary Jewish drama by engaging with artistic and Jewish communities throughout the English-speaking world. The Contest has received and vetted over 1,600 plays by 1,000 writers in 32 states and 9 countries. The JPP has actively developed 53 of those plays, 33 of which have gone on to production in cities across the globe, including New York, London, and Tel Aviv, playing for more than 30,000 audience members.

ABOUT THE JEWISH PLAYS PROJECT

The Jewish Plays Project, founded in 2011, identifies, develops, and presents new works of theater via one-of-a-kind explorations of contemporary Jewish identity between audiences, artists, and patrons. The JPP's innovative and competitive development process engages Jewish communities in the vetting, selecting, and championing of new voices and secures mainstream production opportunities for the best new plays. The JPP's signature method is Jewish Dramaturgy: matching the best minds in the Jewish community with the best 21st-Century Jewish plays.