Plays

April 25, 2023

7 Questions For Anna Ziegler

Sarah Groustra

JWA talks to playwright Anna Ziegler.

Topics: Theater, Poetry, Plays

Rain Pryor’s One-Woman Play “Fried Chicken and Latkes” Earns NAACP Theatre Award

February 21, 2005

On February 21, 2005, Jewish comedian, actress, singer, and writer Rain Pryor received an NAACP Theatre Award for her one-woman autobiographical play, “Fried Chicken and Latkes.” In the play, Pryor explores her experiences with racism growing up Black and Jewish in Beverly Hills, CA, as well as her complex relationship with her father, the late comedian Richard Pryor.

Aida Bortnik

Aída Bortnik was an Argentine journalist, dramaturge, and screenwriter who wrote the first Argentine screenplay nominated for an Academy Award (“The Truce,” 1974), an award she later won for best foreign film in 1986 (“The Official Story”). Bortnik was also the first Argentine to pen a screenplay that addressed the military dictatorship (1976-1983) and the first Latin American admitted as a permanent member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Ana Maria Shua posing reading her book, Hija

Ana María Shua

Ana María Shua is an Argentine writer and screen writer who is internationally known as a specialist in short stories, in particular micro fiction tales, which are stories of just two or three lines of extension. She is well known in the Hispanic world as the Queen of the Microstory and employs her writing to narrate various aspects of the Jewish experience.

Judith Katzir

Yehudit Katzir (b. 1963) is an Israeli author who emerged as a leading female voice in what had been a male-dominated literary field until the 1980s. Her novels and short stories are noted for their idiosyncratic and lyrical language, as well as their focus on female identity and treatment of taboo themes.

Joan Micklin Silver, 1935–2020

Abstract notions of feminism never interested Joan; specific women and their stories did. Yet without setting out to do so, Joan Silver influenced generations of women to come. She was a trail-blazer, a risk-taker, a champion of other women directors.

Tovah Feldshuh

Tovah Feldshuh set a record for the longest running one-woman show with her starring role in Golda’s Balcony, a Broadway play about Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.

Paula Vogel

Although she made her Broadway debut with Indecent in 2016, playwright Paula Vogel has long been hailed for her unflinching exploration of taboo topics, from the AIDS crisis to child abuse.

March 6, 2017

Women Of Influence: What Macbeth Taught Us About Women In Power

Tess Kelly

That Scottish Shakespearian tragedy, so shrouded in mystery that it is unlucky even to say its name, gave society new ideas about women that have stayed with us since 1606, when the play debuted in London.

Topics: Plays, Poetry

Playbill Image for Shades, a 2016 play by Paula J. Caplan

December 9, 2016

Shades and Stories: An Interview with Paula J. Caplan

Bella Book

The people who make stories a central focus of their life come in all genders, colors, creeds, and professions. JWA was lucky enough to speak with Paula J. Caplan, who first championed women’s stories as a clinical and research psychologist,and has now turned her attention, as a playwright, to the struggles that returning veterans face. Her newest play, Shades, is at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York until December 17th.

Topics: Plays

Lillian Mellen Genser

After the narrowly averted disaster of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Lillian Mellen Genser decided to train people to think differently about conflict from early childhood onward.

2015-2016 Rising Voices Fellow Eliana Gayle-Schneider

June 14, 2016

Why I Write

Eliana Gayle-Schneider

Two driving forces in my life are creativity and passion. These qualities have always gone hand in hand. As I have grown through the years, my love for writing and my passion for activism have blended into one tremendous, creative, passionate, one-act play.

Topics: LGBTQIA Rights, Protests, Family, Theater, Plays

Sarah Treem

Television writer Sarah Treem’s work with Hagai Levi, adapting In Treatment for an American audience, led to their collaboration on the Golden Globe-winning The Affair.

A Scene from the Play "dry bones rising"

June 8, 2015

An Interview with Playwright Celia Raker

Etta King Heisler

Over Boston’s long winter, I shared Shabbat dinner with a friend-of-a-friend who, unbeknownst to me, is a talented poet and playwright. In addition to winning a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship this spring, Cecelia Raker’s play dry bones rising made its first full-length, professional debut in May at the Venus Theatre in Laurel, MD.

Topics: Theater, Plays