Full Casting Set for Jewish Plays Project's Open Festival 2015

Jewish Plays Project (JPP), a development organization committed to putting bold, progressive Jewish conversations on world stages, continues its annual Open: Festival of play readings and workshops at the 14th Street Y including four new full-length plays and one new musical by Margot Connolly, Sarah Gancher, Gary Jaffe, David Hein & Irene Sankoff, and Sam Lahne.

Every June since 2012, the JPP comes to the 14th Street Y to showcase some the most exciting, most daring, most Jewy new plays we can find to the New York theater community. Open: Festival of New Jewish Theater has featured 27 plays, 11 of which have gone on to production in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Tel Aviv, Detroit and other cities. Each show receives casting and production advice, 29 hours of rehearsal, dramaturgical support, and will participate in the JPP's new initiative: Jewish Dramaturgy. We bring in a leader from the Jewish community to participate in rehearsals, and offer insight and expertise from the Jewish perspective - historical, textual, cultural, or personal.

Performances will be Friday, June 26th through Monday, June 29 with Friday through Monday night performances at 7pm and Saturday, Sunday, and Monday matinees at 2p. Tickets are free ($18 suggested donation) and available at the door (however Mitzvah admission is by invitation only). The Theater at the 14th Street Y is located at 344 E 14th Street in New York, NY. For more information, visit http://www.jewishplaysproject.org/.

Not Open For Review

Reading Schedule:

Mitzvah (presentation by invitation only)
by David Hein and Irene Sankoff
Directed by Marc Bruni
Featuring Jodi Beckwith, Adam Dorfman, David Hein, Philip Hoffman, & Irene Sankoff

Friday, June 26 and Saturday June 27 at 7pm

The writers of NYMF smash My Mother's Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding and the director of Carol King's Beautiful on Broadway dig deep into this new musical about a family coping with having an autistic son - and a mother who fights to give him a Bar Mitzvah.

#julys

By Sam Lahne
Directed by Jessi Hill

Featuring J. Clint Allen, Michael Braun, Polly Lee, Allyson Morgan, & Jonathan Randell Silver

Saturday, June 27 at 2pm

An off-kilter farce that examines anti-Semitism, identity, and the internet through the eyes of a troubled 16-year-old who builds a community through an anti-Semitic conspiracy website/social forum, but finds his life spiraling out of control as his offline and online worlds converge.

The Place We Built

By Sarah Gancher

Directed by Ben Kamine

Featuring Clea Alsip, Dominique Brillon, Ella Dershowitz, Michael Hinkle, Lindsley Howard, Alex Hurt, Mark Junek, Rory Kulz, Jo Mei, Tara Pacheco, & Andrea Syglowski

Sunday, June 28 at 2pm

Budapest, Hungary at the turn of the millennium. Resurgent Jewish life among the young bohemians. Ritual. Dancing. Mistakes.

Belfast Kind
by Margot Connolly
Directed by David Winitsky

Featuring Kirrilee Berger, Matthew Boston, Helen Coxe, Anne Gibbons-Brown, Betsy Hogg, Jake Horowitz, & Schuyler Press

Sunday, June 28 and Monday, June 29 at 7pm

The Winner of the 2015 Jewish Playwriting Contest takes us to Northern Ireland in 1983 as 12-year old Tzippy struggles through her Bat Mitzvah.

Diaspora
by Gary Jaffe

Directed by Blaze Teicher

Featuring Karen Alvarado, Crystal Arnette, Varin Ayala, Noelle Franco, Deb Margolin, & Andrew Rincon

Monday, June 29 at 2pm

Two sisters, half-Mexican, half-Jewish, grapple with love and faith on the edge of the Texas desert. How do we manufacture our identities?

Playwright Bios:

Margot Connolly is a playwright originally from Pleasantville, NY. Currently based in Brooklyn, her plays include Belfast Kind, 1 John 4:20, Quiz Out, the Twins, and Keys. Her work has been produced and developed through the Playwrights Center, the Berkshire Fringe Festival, Ugly Rhino, Midtown International Theater Festival, Village Playwrights, the Bad Theater Festival, and the 2015 Frigid Fringe Festival. She was a 2010 - 2011 Core Apprentice at the Playwrights Center and has interned for New Dramatists, New Georges, and the Debate Society. She received her BA from Bennington College, where she studied drama and playwriting, and will begin pursuing her MFA in Playwriting at the University of Iowa in the fall.

Sarah Gancher's plays have been produced or developed at institutions such as London's National Theatre, Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre, Budapest's Quarter6Quarter7 Festival, PS122, Ars Nova, New York Stage and Film, The Women's Project, and NYC SummerStage, among others. The Place We Built is part of her 7th cycle of plays about Budapest's historically Jewish Seventh District. She frequently partners with devising ensembles such as NYC's The TEAM (dir. Rachel Chavkin), Colorado's Telluride Theatre, Portland's Hand2Mouth, and Blue Man Group. She collaborated with The TEAM on Mission Drift, which toured three continents, ending at London's National Theatre. Recently: Time Warner Fellow at The Women's Project, member of I73 and Ars Nova Play Group. Current Playwrights' Realm Writing Fellow. MFA: NYU.

David Hein and Irene Sankoff are a Canadian husband-and-wife writing team. Their first show, My Mother's Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding (based on David's mother's true story) was the hit of the Toronto Fringe Festival and was picked up by Mirvish Productions, the largest Canadian theatre producer, for an extended run. It went on to win "Outstanding New Musical" and "Best Book" at the New York Musical Theatre Festival and has now played and won awards across North America, with Sankoff and Hein performing in most productions. Their second show, Come >From Away, was developed at Goodspeed Musicals' Festival of New Artists and the Canadian Music Theatre Project - and it was the hit of the 2013 NAMT Festival of New Works. It will receive a world premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego this June, followed by a co-production at Seattle Repertory Theatre in November, with direction by Chris Ashley and choreography by Kelly Devine. Mitzvah is their third musical and was developed at the Finger Lakes Musical Theatre Festival. Sankoff and Hein are the recipients of a Bryden "Ones-to-Watch" award, a Playwrights Guild of Canada award, and several ASCAP Plus awards.

Gary Jaffe is a director, playwright, proud Austin native, and the Artistic Director of Tutto Theatre Company. His theatre work in Austin began when Capital T Theatre selected him as their 2011 "New Directions" Director, and he drirected Mickle Maher's Spirits to Enforce, which went on to win the Austin Critics' Table Award for Outstanding Production of a Drama. At Tutto Theatre Company he directed playwright Leegrid Stevens' THE DUDLEYS!: A Family Game, which swept the 2011 B. Iden Payne Awards, winning Best Production of a Comedy, Best Director and 6 others. Graduate, Yale University.

Sam Lahne's plays include #julys, Water Bound, I Meant to Build a House, and Magicicada. His plays have been produced or developed by the University of Iowa, Endstation Theatre Company, Studio Trim Tab/University of Cincinnati, Forum Theatre, Rorschach Theater, The Amoralists, Red Bull Theatre, and the Experimental Theatre of Vassar College. Sam was an Endstation Theatre Company/Blue Ridge Summer Theatre Festival resident playwright and a winner of the Red Bull Theater Short Play Competition. He also translates works of drama, fiction and poetry from Italian. He received his BA from Vassar College and is a MFA candidate at the University of Iowa Playwrights Workshop.

About:

The Jewish Plays Project, headed by founder David Winitsky, puts bold, progressive Jewish conversations on world stages. The JPP's innovative and competitive development vehicle invests emerging artists in their Jewish identity; engages Jewish communities in the vetting, selecting and championing of new voices; and secures mainstream production opportunities for the best new plays. A revolution is underway in Jewish culture. In music, in books, in film, artists are creating amazing new pathways to Jewish identity. We believe that it is time for theater to join the movement.

The 14th Street Y serves over 10,000 East Village residents each year with a variety of community programs. The 14th Street Y is proud to be a part of Educational Alliance, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with a 125-year history of serving New Yorkers downtown.

The Theater at the 14th Street Y is a center for experimental theater, dance, and multi-disciplinary arts wherein the many faces of a vibrant community center in the East Village meet.

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