Celebrating Jewish Plays at Tina Packer Playhouse

Shakespeare & Company welcomes back Celebrating Jewish Plays

October 9-11 at the Tina Packer Playhouse & Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre

Shakespeare & Company welcomes back Celebrating Jewish Plays, featuring three readings presented over three evenings during the holiday weekend. Live poetry, speakers, musical performances, and more have been added to this year’s celebration. Also new this year: Multi-show Weekend Passes are now available, allowing patrons to choose their seats early at reduced convenience fees to see all three readings. Seats must be chosen at the time of purchase; for more information, call the Box Office at 413.637.3353.

Friday, October 9, 2 pm

After the Revolution by Amy Herzog

Emma Joseph proudly carries the torch of her family’s Marxist tradition, devoting her life to the memory of her blacklisted grandfather—until a shocking historical truth forces the entire family to confront questions of honesty and allegiance they thought long resolved. After the Revolution is a bold and moving portrait of an American family thrown into an intergenerational tailspin, forced to reconcile a thorny and delicate legacy.

Saturday, October 10, 7 pm
Bad Jews by Joshua Harmon
The night after their grandfather’s funeral, three cousins engage in a verbal—and sometimes physical—battle. In one corner is Daphna Feygenbaum, a self-proclaimed “Real Jew,” volatile and unbending. In the other is her equally stubborn cousin Liam, a secular and entitled young man with his non-Jewish girlfriend, Melody, in tow. When Liam stakes claim to their grandfather’s Chai necklace, a vicious and hilarious brawl over family, faith, and legacy ensues.

Sunday, October 11, 4 pm

Broken Glass by Arthur Miller

Set in 1938, the play centers on Sylvia Gellburg, whose sudden and mysterious paralysis sets the story in motion. When her husband, Phillip, and doctor, Dr. Hyman, find no physical cause for her condition, they are forced to probe into her psyche — slowly peeling away the layers of each character’s life in this stunning exploration of what it means to be American and Jewish on the eve of World War II.

Sunday, October 11, 2 pm
Many Jewish Voices — for String Trio and a Trio of Poets by Owen Lewis

Many Jewish Voices is a work for string trio and a trio of poets in three movements: Introduction, Remembering, October 7th, Final Prayers. It weaves the poetry of three poets from Western Massachusetts with selections from the chamber music repertoire of Jewish composers including Gideon Klein, Mieczysaw Weinberg, Darius Milhaud, and Ernest Bloch.

The poetry is primarily drawn from the most recent works of the poets: Richard Michelson’s Sleeping As Fast As I Can (2023); Lesléa Newman’s The Last Flame (2026); and Owen Lewis’s A Prayer of Six Wings (2025). The poets are all members of the Western Mass Chapter of Yetzirah, a national organization of Jewish poets. The poets have received many awards. Michelson and Newman are also known as author’s of children’s literature.

The trio by Gideon Klein was completed in 1944 in Terezin, two months before he was murdered in Fürstengrube, a subcamp of Auschwitz at the age of 25. He was from Prague, and this is his last work. The trio (op.48) Mieczysaw Weinberg was composed in 1947. Weinberg was from Poland, but continued to compose in Moscow until his death in 1996. The trio by Darius Milhaud (op 274) was composed in 1947. Milhaud, from Marseille, escaped to the U.S. during the Nazi era, but returned to France. The work by Ernst Bloch is a transcription of the final movement of his Scenes from Jewish Life, composed in 1924.

The musicians are members of the Sherman Chamber Ensemble under the direction of cellist Eliot Bailen. Victoria Lewis, violinist, often performs with the ensemble, is the Assistant Concertmaster of the Israeli Symphony Orchestra/Rishon Lezion, the orchestra of the Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv.

Tickets are $30-$100 and on sale now at shakespeare.org, or by calling the box office at 413.637.3353.