Theater J 2023-2024 Season

FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

Dear Friends of Theater J,

I am elated to introduce you to the 2023-2024 Season at Theater J. The season reflects the richness of our mission. Plays that celebrate, explore, and struggle with the complexities and nuances of both the Jewish experience and the universal human condition. They illuminate and examine ethical questions of our time, inter-cultural experiences that parallel our own, and the changing landscape of Jewish identities.

The season has four world premieres, two East Coast premieres, tour de force performances, and a new adaptation of a beloved film reimagined for the stage with songs. The plays are bold and theatrical, intimate and personal, epic and imaginative.

This year we ask questions about identity and assimilation, how to define and redefine love, and what we can and cannot know. We search for family members, romance, faith, self-actualization, and renewal. We start around a dinner table and travel in time and place, from the late 19th Century in New York City’s Lower East Side to Stalinist Russia, Haifa, and Seoul, on trains, planes, and through the pages of comic books.

We welcome playwrights to Theater J, who write plays in dialogue with our current moment, whether looking at it through the lens of the past, the present, or an imaginative landscape; they are writing to connect with audiences in real time and space through the unique power of theater.

We invite you to laugh, be inspired, learn, question, and open your hearts and minds, and after many of the shows, we invite you to join us in conversation. This communal experience can only happen in a theater with live performances.

Theater J presents 7 plays, a family holiday program, and classes this year. And at the same time, we continue to invest in writers by developing new work through our Lab series. Our commissioning program seeds the work that will be in future seasons. As a subscriber, you will have the opportunity for a first look at these plays in development and get to know the artists and their creative processes.

With joy and anticipation, I am excited to see you this season!

Hayley Finn, Artistic Director

ABOUT THEATER J

Share Fund

The Shubert Foundation

Amy Weinberg and Norbert Hornstein

Theater J is supported in part by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, an agency supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Theater J and all of the programs of the Edlavitch DCJCC are made possible through the support of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington.

LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Our building sits on the traditional homeland of the Nacotchtank (Anacostan), farmers and traders who lived along the banks of the Anacostia River. Beginning in 1608, European settlers decimated the Nacotchtank with disease, warfare, and forced removal. By the 1700s, the survivors fled to join other tribes to the north, south, and west, including the Piscataway Peoples, who continue to steward these lands from generation to generation. We know this acknowledgement is only a small step towards justice, and we ask that all of us learn about the past and present, and invest in the future of our country’s Indigenous communities wherever we are.

by JENNY RACHEL WEINER

Directed by ELLIE HEYMAN

THE CHAMELEON

Nothing says Jewish Christmas more than Chinese takeout. The food tastes even better this year for actor Riz Golden-Kruger and her family – Riz finally got her big break, the starring role in a new superhero franchise, The Chameleon. But when news leaks that could threaten to ruin Riz’s career, she must decide to hide or fight for what’s right. Ignited by the fast-paced frenzy of social media, the play rampages through questions of identity, representation, and the complications of assimilation. The Chameleon is an outrageous, laugh-out-loud intergenerational world premiere.

HERE I AM:

A TRIPTYCH OF TOUR-DE-FORCE PERFORMANCES

NOVEMBER 14, 2023 – JANUARY 14, 2024

Join Theater J this winter as we present three distinct one-person plays back-toback that explore the complexity and nuances of the human experience. The Here I Am series includes a comedy about caregiving, an epic soul-searching quest, and an adoptee’s journey to find her birth mother.

WORLD PREMIERE

Written, directed, and performed by IRIS BAHR

NOV 14 – 22, 2023

A mother-daughter relationship unfolds in awardwinning comedian/actor Iris Bahr’s new autobiographical work. Despite the distance, a mother in Israel and daughter in Los Angeles connect via WhatsApp video daily. When her mother is confronted with an emergency, Iris must navigate the life-and-death situation through a screen. Days later, Iris finds herself relocating across the globe overnight to parent her parent. Straddling cultures, generations, and an ocean, See You Tomorrow is a surprising, funny, and poignant story about family, caregiving, guilt and what happens when memory and one’s history dissolves in an instant.

by MICHELE LOWE

Directed by

JOHANNA GRUENHUT

DEC 1 – 24, 2023

EAST COAST PREMIERE

Written

and performed

by SUN MEE CHOMET

Direction and dramaturgy

by ZARAAWAR

MOSES

How do you start over after everything you know has been erased? Michele Lowe’s Moses follows one man’s epic journey as he searches for forgiveness, a long-lost dream, and himself. A Theater J Vradenburg New Jewish Play Prize finalist, Moses is a world premiere about faith, love, and going it alone.

HOW TO BE A KOREAN WOMAN

How to Be a Korean Woman is a hilarious, heartfelt, and personal telling of Korean-American adoptee Sun Mee Chomet‘s search for her birth family in Seoul, South Korea. This poignant one-woman show — told from the perspective of an adult Jewish adoptee — uses text, music, and movement to explore themes of family, love, adulthood, and the universal longing to know one’s past. “As an actor, I often use my own history to strengthen or inform my characters,” says Chomet.

“Now, I’m doing this daunting thing of giving my whole life over. It’s daunting but rewarding to be so bare.” Chomet’s award-winning play has been presented to sold-out audiences in the United States and Seoul, South Korea.

by JONATHAN SPECTOR

Directed by HAYLEY FINN

JAN 31 – FEB 25,

2024

THIS MUCH I KNOW

Am I in charge of my choices? How could anyone think or do that? What is happiness? In the midst of a lecture, a psychology professor’s marriage fractures, sparking a theatrical study of three characters as they become entangled in a search for self-discovery. With inspiration from the research of Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, the characters search for answers in the science of decision-making. They learn that, in Kahneman’s words, thinking can be fast or slow, emotional or deliberate, drive-like and intuitive, or calculated. Part mystery, part love story, part philosophical quest, This Much I Know spins our axis of belief and understanding.

Winner of the 2023 Theatre Bay Area Will Glickman Award for best new play premiere.

A play with music by

SHARYN ROTHSTEIN

Based on the film by JOAN MICKLIN SILVER and the novella Yekl by

ABRAHAM CAHAN

With original music by JOEL

WAGGONER

MAR 27 – APR 21, 2024

The world premiere of Hester Street – the theatrical adaptation of the beloved 1975 film by Joan Micklin Silver – marks the largest production Theater J’s stage has seen in years. Hester Street depicts the uplifting journey of Gitl, a young Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe, who arrives with her son to meet her husband Jake in the tumult of the late-19th century Lower East Side. Separated from his wife and the provincial limitations of his upbringing, Jake has fully embraced his new American life—one that has little in common with Gitl’s old-time ways. Faced with the disintegration of her marriage in a world she can barely comprehend, Gitl must find her voice, protect her son, and redefine her identity.

A deeply moving new stage adaptation by Sharyn Rothstein, featuring songs by Broadway’s Joel Waggoner, assembling a nationally-renowned team of artists, and produced in association with New York-based producers Michael Rabinowitz and Ira Deutchman, Hester Street is an unforgettable show, awash in the humor, heartbreak, and hope essential to the Jewish immigrant experience.

by LAUREN YEE

Directed by

DAN ROTHENBERG

JUN 5 – 30,

2024

Magic and realism collide in this modern fable about learning to love. A young woman moves in with her boyfriend, and when she has trouble getting comfortable, her strange new home seems determined to help out, literally. The walls start to talk, words magically appear, and a golem with a taste for Cheetos gets into the action. A cross between a ghost story and a Yiddish fable, Lauren Yee’s moving and whimsical The Hatmaker’s Wife redefines home, family, and love.

FOR YOUNG AUDIENCES

FAMILY PROGRAMMING

Investing in children is investing in the future of humanity. Theater encourages empathy and imagination. It inspires laughter and intergenerational conversations and has the power to be transformative. Theater J recognizes that it has a part to play and is excited to launch programming for children and their families for the first time in its history.

TINY LIGHTS: TALES FOR CHANUKAH

Created by

AARON POSNER and ERIN WEAVER

Sunday, December 3 | 10:00 AM and 11:30 AM

Saturday, December 9 | 10:00 AM and 11:30 AM

Sunday, December 10 | 10:00 AM and 11:30 AM

There is nothing like a great story, well-told. Taking inspiration from the great Chanukah tales of master storyteller Issac Bashevis Singer, our theatrical storytellers will weave tales out of words, a few simple props, and theatrical devices—and then teach you and your young kids how to do the same!

Join us to celebrate the joy of Chanukah and the power of the imagination for an interactive event that includes hearing great stories—and then playing with how to do the same in your own home!

Learn more at theaterj.org/families

SCHOOL PROGRAMMING

In 2022, we were proud to have launched school-based programming to provide opportunities for cross-cultural education through free access to matinee performances for hundreds of local students paired with an enrichment workshop in the classroom with a Theater J teaching artist.

Theater J is adding additional weekday matinee performances for our 2023-2024 season so that more students can attend Theater J performances.

Give to support classes at theaterj.org/donate

School programming is made possible by leadership gifts from the Shapiro Family Foundation and the Share Fund.

Contact theaterj@theaterj.org to bring a classroom to Theater J.

WORK IN DEVELOPMENT

EXPANDING THE CANON

Our Expanding the Canon initiative addresses the need for more plays centering BIPOC Jewish narratives by commissioning seven diverse playwrights to develop new plays. During the three-year program, which kicked off in August 2022, the playwrights will collaborate with leading BIPOC scholars, conduct workshops, and share their work in a showcase. Not only will this program commission seven BIPOC artists to write original full-length plays, but it also will have positive consequences for years to come as Jews of Color will in turn have more representation on stage.

Expanding the Canon is made possible by a Signature Grant from the Covenant Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Jews of Color Initiative, Cheryl Gorelick, Patti and Mitchell Herman, Daniel Kaplan and Kay Richman, Evelyn Sandground and Bill Perkins, and Kathryn Veal.

YIDDISH THE TER L B

The Yiddish Theater Lab commissions and incubates new English-language works stemming from the Yiddish legacy, producing readings and workshops of new work, adaptations, and translations. The Yiddish Theater Lab has commissioned three artists to adapt Yiddish text into contemporary plays.

Made possible by support from The Marinus and Minna B. Koster Foundation, Natalie Wexler and James Feldman, and The Leshowitz Family Foundation, Terry Singer.

CREATIVE CONNECTIONS

More than any other art form, theater makes you, the audience, an active participant in the conjuring of imaginary worlds. You are part of the show, and we want to engage with you even deeper to understand our stories. So we’re embarking on a new program at Theater J: Creative Connections, a series of different kinds of conversations, everything from contextualizing a play in our world, to the nitty-gritty aspects of the creative process.

Come talk with local pillars of the community and the arts, including guest scholars, scientists, and rabbis. Sit down with the actors and discuss their process.

So settle into a seat, grab a drink, meet a friend, and let’s come together as a community to draw meaning and understanding from the amazing work on our stage.

ACCESSIBILITY

Theater J, as part of the Edlavitch DCJCC embraces inclusion in all its programs and activities. Theater J strives to make our productions accessible to all by providing the following to meet the accessibility needs of our patrons and to enhance their experience at the theater.

Accessible Seating: The Edlavitch DCJCC has ramp access from the Q Street entrance and all of our restrooms are ADA accessible. In the Goldman Theater, removable seats provide patrons with the opportunity to be seated with their companions while sitting in their wheelchair.

Assistive listening devices are free-of-charge and offered on a first-come, first-served basis at all performances.

Open Captioning is offered during one performance of each Theater J production.

Large print programs are available at our Ticket Office, located on the first floor.

SUBSCRIBER-EXCLUSIVE BENEFITS

DISCOUNTS

• Enjoy priority seating and up to 32% off regular ticket prices.

• 18% off concessions and merchandise.

• No handling fees. The price you see is the price you pay.

• Unlimited free exchanges and “missed show insurance”.

• Purchase additional tickets at 18% off full price.

Call or email to exchange your tickets. We request that you exchange at least 24 hours in advance, but if you can’t we’ll exchange your tickets even after your originally scheduled performance. (Upgrade charges apply when switching to a higher priced performance. Subject to availability. NO refunds.)

Subscribers will always get the lowest available rates on additional tickets. Log in to your subscription account to purchase online, and the discount will appear automatically at checkout.

• Discounts to our popular Classes for Theater Lovers!

• 15% discount on JxJ Year-Round and Festival passes. Call the boxoffice at 202.777.3210 or email boxoffice@jxjdc.org to purchase a pass.

REWARDS

• One free guest ticket for a special someone to accompany you to a show. To reserve your guest ticket (one free ticket per subscription), call or email with your guest’s name and email address, so that their ticket can be reserved under their name. Your guest must attend the same performance for which you use your subscription seat.

• “Encore Tickets”!

After you have seen the show, call or email to book another date for the same show, on us. (Free encore tickets can only be booked after you have attended the show, and in the same price tier as your subscription ticket. Subject to availability. Subscribers must show ID when picking up an “Encore” ticket.)

• Transfer seats for use by friends or relatives.

EXCLUSIVES

• Keep the same seats for all shows and consecutive seasons.

• Early invitations to subscriber only events and first notice of classes and other special programs.

HERE I AM: A TRIPTYCH OF TOUR-DE-FORCE PERFORMANCES

NOV 14, 2023 – JAN 14, 2024

SEE

YOU TOMORROW

written, directed, and performed by IRIS BAHR

NOV 14 – 22, 2023

MOSES

by MICHELE LOWE

Directed by JOHANNA GRUENHUT

DEC 1 – 24, 2023

HOW TO BE A KOREAN WOMAN

written and performed by SUN MEE CHOMET

Direction and dramaturgy by ZARAAWAR MISTRY

JAN 4 – 14, 2024

THIS MUCH I KNOW

by JONATHAN SPECTOR

directed by HAYLEY FINN

JAN 31 – FEB 25, 2024

HESTER STREET

a play with music by SHARYN ROTHSTEIN based on the film by JOAN MICKLIN SILVER and the novella Yekl by ABRAHAM CAHAN with original music by JOEL WAGGONER

MAR 27 – APR 21, 2024

by LAUREN YEE directed by DAN ROTHENBERG

5 – 30, 2024

Emily

Bini

Craig

Jennifer

Daniel

David

Hayley