New Jewish Theatre & Mustard Seed Theatre Announce Mini-Potok Festival

The New Jewish Theatre will join forces with Mustard Seed Theatre in October to produce a "Mini-Potok Festival" with each company producing a dramatic adaptation of one of the novels of Chaim Potok. NJT will open the Festival on October 6 with My Name is Asher Lev and Mustard Seed will open The Chosen on October 22.

Both plays were adapted by Aaron Posner and each premiered at the Arden Theatre in Philadelphia where he was co-founder and Artistic Director. He is currently the Artistic Director of the Two Rivers Theatre Company in New Jersey. For The Chosen (produced by NJT in 2002), Chaim Potok worked in collaboration with Posner during the adaptation process in 1999. Potok died in 2002 just a few months before NJT opened their production of the work. Potok's widow, Adena, served as artistic consultant during the adaptation process of My Name is Asher Lev. Adena Potok will be on hand for both productions on the overlapping weekend of the two to speak to audiences after select performances. She will speak after a student matinee on Asher Lev on Friday morning, October 22 and then travel to Mustard Seed Theatre to speak after the opening night performance of The Chosen. Saturday, she will speak after the 8 PM performance of Asher Lev at New Jewish Theatre.

Both plays are coming of age stories and deal with the conflicts and tensions between the traditions and strictures of the Hasidic Jewish community and modern American life. In The Chosen, the struggles and conflicts are external through the unlikely friendship between two teenage boys from very different Jewish backgrounds, while in Asher Lev, the struggle is an internal one for the title character born with a prodigious gift for painting who must confront his own ties to his tradition and family in order to follow his artistic passion and vision.

Deanna Jent, who directed NJT's 2002 production of The Chosen, will direct both productions of the Festival.

For further information on My Name is Asher Lev, call 314-442-3283 or www.newjewishtheatre.org.

For information on The Chosen, call 314-719-8060 or www.mustardseedtheatre.com.