Holocaust Museum LA Partners With Jewish Plays Project To Host First Jewish Playwriting Contest

For the first time in its 14-year history, the international Jewish Playwriting Contest is holding an event in Los Angeles for audiences to help select the winner. In a partnership between the Jewish Plays Project and Holocaust Museum LA, the museum will host a live contest event Thursday, May 8, at 6:30 p.m. at which excerpts from three of the seven finalist plays will be performed as staged readings.

The Holocaust Museum LA event will showcase live, 20-minute excerpts from the nominated plays - "Provenance," "The World to Come" and Dybbuk Bat Mitzvah - each introduced by the playwright via video. Blending elements of a TED Talk, a staged reading, and "American Idol," the evening will conclude with an audience vote. The winning play will earn points that count toward the grand prize, to be awarded in New York on May 29.

"Provenance" by Jennifer Maisel is the story of a portrait, from its beginnings in the 1900s to its theft by the Nazis and its travels around the world. Maisel is a playwright and screenwriter whose work has been produced off-Broadway, in movies and on television.

"The World to Come" by Ali Viterbi is set in a Hebrew Home for the Aging at the end of the world. Viterbi, who has had work developed and/or commissioned by Geffen Playhouse, The Kennedy Center and La Jolla Playhouse, was the 2019 Jewish Playwriting Contest winner for her work, "In Every Generation."

"Dybbuk Bat Mitzvah" by Becca Schlossberg is a coming-of-age story with elements of Jewish folklore. Schlossberg is an award-winning, non-binary artist and performer whose work has been performed around the world.

Selected by a panel of over 40 Los Angeles arts luminaries, the seven finalists were chosen from over 355 submissions comprising 32 states and 8 countries. The winning play will receive a developmental workshop as part of the Festival of New Jewish Theater at the Berkshire Theatre Group on Labor Day weekend.

Actor, writer, and producer Lauren Schaffel is the executive producer of the event at the museum; and Jonah Platt, actor, performer, director and host of the popular podcast "Being Jewish" is honorary producer.

The Jewish Plays Project is holding similar contest readings in cities around the U.S., including Fairfax (VA), Palo Alto (CA), Hartford (CT) and Ra'anana, (ISR).

The Jewish Plays Project (JPP) seeks to discover, highlight and nurture contemporary Jewish drama by engaging with artistic and Jewish communities throughout the English-speaking world. In its 14-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 60 of those plays, 419 of which have gone on to production in cities across the globe, including New York, Los Angeles, London and Tel Aviv, playing for more than 130,000 audience members.