Video: Tommy Dorfman Unpacks the Poetic and Poignant BECOMING EVE

It's been just weeks since Tommy Dorfman concluded her Broadway debut run in Romeo + Juliet, and in no time at all, she's back onstage- off-Broadway this time. Dorman is playing 'Chava' in Emil Weinstein's Becoming Eve, which is based on the memoir by Abby Chava Stein.

"I had such a deep connection with Emil's writing. I feel like it's so poetic and it made so much sense to me and my body," Dorfman told BroadwayWold's Richard Ridge. "I find that if I can memorize something quickly, it's the right thing for me. Even if I don't always get the job, it's a clear indicator that there's something connecting that's deeper than I even have time to process."

In the play, it's a week before the High Holidays, and three rabbis find themselves in a room fighting to save a family by building a bridge between orthodoxy and modernity. One of these rabbis is Chava, the child of a dynastic Hasidic rabbinical family and destined to become a leader of the next generation before the revelation of her trans identity clashed explosively with the strictly gendered world in which she was raised. As we jump through memory—and wrestle with theology—truths and secrets emerge that ensure no one will read the old stories the same way again. 

"I was excited about going from Romeo + Juliet, where I was playing a man and a woman, to then play a trans woman who is Jewish and has a completely different experience that  have," Dorfman added. "But there's also so many similarities and emotional truths that connect me to Abby. I'm inspired by her story."

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