Arts & Culture | Theater

Matthew Lopez’s Ambivalent Seder

02/22/2011 | Ted Merwin | Special To The Jewish Week | Theater

Passover is, for many of us, an unequivocally joyful holiday. The tablecloth is set with fine china and sparkling silverware, the children are freshly scrubbed, and the seder rejuvenates us with its theme of freedom and rebirth.

Meyer Levin’s ‘Obsession’

02/15/2011 | Ted Merwin | Special To The Jewish Week | Theater

He was one of the leading literary lights of the 20th century, but it was another writer’s work that became the object of his obsession. Meyer Levin was a prolific Jewish writer who struggled fruitlessly for three decades to get the world to pay attention to his play about Anne Frank. Now, three decades after his death, Levin finally gets his due with two different plays about his quest on view simultaneously in New York.

Black And Jewish, Searching For Home

02/15/2011 | Theater

How are children affected by a parent’s racial and religious identities? In Lian Amaris’ new one-woman play, “Daddy’s Black and Jewish,” which premieres next week in the East Village, the performance artist reflects on her relationship with her adoptive father, the radical black intellectual Julius Lester, who converted to Judaism in 1982.

Freedom Seder?

02/01/2011 | Ted Merwin | Special To The Jewish Week | Theater

With its overarching message of freedom and redemption, Passover seems better suited to America than any other Jewish holiday. And one of the most striking aspects of Passover in this country is the appeal that it has for non-Jews, especially African-Americans

Judith Malina’s ‘Jewish Anarchist Play’

01/18/2011 | Lehman Weichselbaum | Special To The Jewish Week | Theater

It wasn’t Judith Malina who made one of the Bible’s most notorious villains into the unlikeliest hero of this theatrical season.

It was the Mishna.

All The Rabbinic World’s A Stage

01/12/2011 | Ted Merwin | Special To The Jewish Week | Theater

Theater and religion have overlapped since ancient Greek dramas were performed at religious festivals. For the Argentine Jewish director and playwright, Vivi Tellas, synagogue-going and theater-going are still flip sides of the same coin. In her new avant-garde play, “Rabbi Rabino,” two real-life Conservative rabbis from Queens, Hyman Levine and Moses Birnbaum, expose aspects of both their professional and personal lives. Erik Piepenburg of The New York Times Artsbeat blog called the show an “irreverent mini-variety show about Judaism and modern identity.”