Perfomances and Plays

It’s not easy sharing a stage with Phil Johnson, at least if you’re a phone. In “A Jewish Joke,” the actor and playwright manhandles and hollers at and clobbers an old rotary-dial number to within...

A new arrangement of a powerful composition conveying the horrors of war, written by a Toronto musician while he was interned in a displaced persons’ camp in 1946, will premiere at the Jewish Music...

Journalists writing about a play usually aren’t invited to see the actors perform until opening night. But 11 days before the Toronto premiere of Bad Jews, Joshua Harmon’s hit play, I arrive at the...

“There is nothing as whole as a broken heart.” — Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotsk Some types of pain never end. Sure, the sharp stab in the heart fades as life in all its complexity roars...

Jewish ballerina Samantha Hope Galler and Jewish singer Melissa Jacobson each star in ballet and cabaret shows taking place in the final week of December. Galler stars in the Miami City Ballet production of George...

San Francisco’s annual Jewish Christmas tradition, Kung Pao Kosher Comedy™, celebrates it 25th Anniversary this December 23–25. The legendary Jewish-comedy-on-Christmas-in-a-Chinese-restaurant extravaganza has been featuring famous Jewish comedians—including the late Henny Youngman and Shelley Berman—Chinese food,...

I recently sat down with Jacob Surovsky, a delightfully talented and innovative young man whom I know from the Guild of Puppetry. Jacob is bringing his fifth show to the San Diego Fringe Festival, Apron...

How fitting that the Actors’ Warehouse would select “Bad Jews” as the first offering in its classy new venue — a former church on Northeast First Street that has long since been repurposed from...

We generally view grief as a mitigating factor. Death is a harsh clarion signaling a divide between what was once vibrant and dynamic to something silenced and static. New Village Arts turns this concept...

There are Jewish comedians. And then there is Jewish comedy. The first-ever Chosen Comedy Festival, set for Aug. 16 in Brooklyn, N.Y., will bring both. “There’s so much about Jewish comedy that is talked about in...