Holocaust Museum LA and Jewish Plays Project to Host LA Jewish Playwriting Contest
Flatbush Lysistrata, A Play About a Baby Carrot, and This Place Stinks Compete at the Ebell of Los Angeles compete at The Ebell of Los Angeles.
In partnership with the Jewish Plays Project and The Ebell of Los Angeles, Holocaust Museum LA will present the second annual Los Angeles Jewish Playwriting Contest, a combination of "American Idol," a play reading and a Ted Talk Wednesday, May 13, at 7:00 p.m. at The Ebell.
This unique event will feature 20-minute excerpts from three plays, which are finalists in the national Jewish Playwriting Contest. Each play is introduced by a video from the playwright, and then the audience votes to select a winner.
The Los Angeles Jewish Playwriting Contest is executive produced by Lauren Schaffel and co-produced by Jeremy Aluma, Melanie Anthony, Matthew Bohrer, Rachel Berney Needleman, Emily Nash, and Jacob Surovsky with Jonah Platt as an honorary producer. Other community partners are The Braid, the Road Theatre Company and The Last Acting Studio. The evening will be directed by Illana Stein and Jeremy Aluma and hosted by Stein.
Over 50 Los Angeles community readers including actors, directors, community members, and theater lovers, met for several weeks to read, discuss, and narrow down the finalist plays for the LA contest:
· Flatbush Lysistrata by Lila Rachel Becker: Three Hasidic women gather at an axe-throwing parlor to plan a sex strike.
· A Play About a Baby Carrot by Juliet Roll: A grieving mother starts to see her child in an unexpected place in this absurdist comedy set over the seven days of shiva.
· This Place Stinks by Jacob Surovsky: Noah chooses to destroy his family to save the world. Noah will be played by Jonah Platt, actor, activist and creator and host of the podcast Being Jewish with Jonah Platt.
The results of the Los Angeles event will go towards selecting the national winner, which will be chosen at the National Finals at the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia on Monday, June 29 (Live Streaming of the Finals will be available to all LA Contest attendees).
The cast includes noted actor and podcast creator Jonah Platt, Ali Stoner, Rory Kulz, Lauren Schaffel, Daniel Lench, Laura Gardner, Emily Nash, Amir Levi, Beth Lane, Yahm Steinberg, and Allison Youngberg.
The Jewish Plays Project is holding similar contest readings in cities around the U.S. Canada and Israel, including Palo Alto, Houston, Philadelphia, Hartford, New York, Boston, Toronto and Ra'anana, Israel.
The Jewish Plays Project seeks to discover, highlight and nurture contemporary Jewish drama by engaging with artistic and Jewish communities throughout the English-speaking world. In its 15-year history, the JPP has received and vetted over 2,800 plays by 1,800 writers in 34 states and 10 countries. The Jewish Plays Project has actively developed 66 of those plays, 45 of which have gone on to productions in cities across the globe, including New York, Los Angeles, London and Tel Aviv, playing for more than 140,000 audience members. The 15th National Jewish Playwriting Contest is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.
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