Philly theater artists launch the Jewish Theatrical Resource Guide

Everyone in the meeting was shocked. Jews, especially observant Jews, take their sacred texts very seriously. A dropped prayer book is immediately picked up and kissed. No observant Jew, especially not a young man studying in a yeshiva, would voluntarily place a prayer book on the ground. Most any Jew in the audience, observant or not, would catch that error.

This type of mistake is one of the issues that AJT’s new Jewish Theatrical Resources: A Guide for Theaters Producing Jewish Work hopes to address. The free-to-download guide covers casting, marketing, community engagement, and more. It’s thorough, thoughtful, and comes from a “call-in” perspective, inviting non-Jewish directors, producers, fundraisers, and others to be partners and allies.

I spoke with Bernstein for BSR, along with David Winitsky (artistic director of the Jewish Plays Project), and dramaturg Alix Rosenfeld (also a BSR writer) about the guide’s creation and impact. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Ivey: Can you talk a bit about the origins of the Jewish Theatrical Resources and how it went from idea to reality?

Bernstein: This was something that I was interested in AJT producing since I joined the board around 2019. And then Ali Viterbi, a playwright currently based in Atlanta as well as a board member of AJT, volunteered to spearhead the project. She called actors, stage managers, dramaturgs, directors, producers, marketing people, casting directors—pretty much anybody who touches theater—and divided up the guide into sections and held conversations. Out of those conversations, she wrote the sections and passed them back and forth for editing.

Rosenfeld: I remember being in this room of dramaturgs with various different experiences [in theater], and of Jewishness. A lot of [the conversation] was like, "What were the best of your drama experiences that intersected with your Jewish identity? What were the worst?" Ali was really trying to tease out some of the commonalities that were coming up again and again.

Bernstein: Just about every section of the guide also has some version of the sentence: “Jews are not a monolith.”

Ivey: It also uses the quip about “two Jews, three opinions” a few times.

Winitsky:  The artistic director group was a mixed group: there were some Jewish artistic directors and some who were not. But yes, the comment about how Jews are not just one thing came up. There’s never been a moment when Jewishness was anything but an intersectional identity. You’ve never been just Jewish. You’re Jewish and whatever. We’re not all the same. That was not news to [the non-Jewish artistic directors]. This is something that they understood.

Ivey: The guide stresses the importance of hiring Jewish consultants, but as you mentioned, there’s such a broad range of opinions and experiences you could hire from. How do theater companies avoid hiring a consultant who just affirms their own preexisting opinions about Jews and Judaism?

Rosenfeld: The challenge is to make sure you’re going beyond the surface level and just ticking a box. Don’t just think dramaturgs are glorified Googlers or there to be your Jewish police. It’s really challenging your idea of—why are you bringing on this person? What are you trying to accomplish? It’s not just hiring the Jew whose opinions align with your preexisting opinions, but it’s really just asking yourself, what are you trying to do? If the “why” is just “I need a body that happens to be Jewish,” that’s maybe not the best “why.”

Bernstein: A lot of people think, I watched The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, or I’ve seen a Woody Allen movie; I know what Jews are. This resource guide is here to say, go a little deeper.

Ivey: The guide talks to artistic directors, dramaturgs, marketing teams, and more. Was there any particular population you were especially excited would have this resource?

Bernstein: One section I was  initially excited about was casting, because casting Jewish roles has become such a complicated issue. And then the section that I was surprised to be excited about was marketing.

The whole guide is really geared toward non-Jewish groups that are producing Jewish work. And I just loved the way that the marketing section was like, think before you automatically put a Star of David or barbed wire on your poster.

Winitsky: On the artistic director side, there was energy around asking, "Why are you doing this?" By the time you get to marketing conversations, casting conversations, production conversations, you have some ideas.

There’s a part of it where, from the artistic director’s side, they’re doing Jewish work because they know they have Jewish audiences, and they’re being responsive to their community. But [the guide is] asking them not to go away from that impulse, but dig a little deeper and be able to have these questions as a staff, as an organization, before everybody goes out and does their thing.

Rosenfeld: I was excited for directors. People often don’t know what a dramaturg even does. And then on a second layer: what does a Jewish dramaturg do for you? How can you best utilize this resource that you’ve hired?

Ivey: The guide also talks about working with Jewish artists, even suggesting accommodations around kosher diets and holiday observances. Some people might consider this overkill. What would you say to someone pushing back?

Winitsky: It makes me think of [disability]. We generally say we will make an accommodation for that.

[But also] the person who’s asking has to be aware that they’re asking for an accommodation. They’re asking something of the company or the production that other people are not asking. So, as long as the company is making a good faith effort—you know they’re not going to serve you a ham and cheese sandwich—they’re going to do something.  Are they gonna nail all the specifics of kashrut? Probably not, and I don’t think they should be expected to. But if they’ve made a good faith effort, then that’s what you want to see.

Rosenfeld: David, to your point, it’s an accommodation, but people don’t always understand that’s what’s being asked. This is what allows you to be able to collaborate with this person.

But  if the system is not set up for them to even offer those accommodations, that’s a larger problem.  Sometimes offering these accommodations is a larger resource question, and it’s something we should be talking about.

Bernstein:  And I think that the resource guide is set up for administrators to ask themselves that question.

Ivey: The guide also stresses the importance of having Jews in the room during these conversations, or during the rehearsal and production process. So does that mean that a theater in a less-Jewish area should just … not tell Jewish stories?

Bernstein:  I mean, we live in a global society now. I would encourage people to tell these stories. Come to AJT and say, “Hey, we are in the middle of nowhere, the nearest synagogue is 30 miles away, who can you connect us with?” And the beauty of this moment that we live in is that we can hop on a Zoom. And we can do this.