Orthodox teenagers discover a book about Tantric sex. A drug addict falls off the wagon and finds God after being arrested and jailed. A Jewish college student moves from Venezuela to Houston and forms an unexpected friendship with a conservative Saudi woman.
Such stories by and about Jewish women from diverse communities are the focus of three original productions by Jewish Women’s Theatre coming to the Bay Area.
These intimate, salon-style shows play at Palo Alto’s Oshman Family JCC, which is hosting the L.A.-based group for the third year in a row. First is “Temptation,” on Monday, Feb. 1, followed by “Jacob’s Dilemma” on March 21 and “Chutzpah and Salsa” on
May 30. Theatergoers can see the plays, respectively, at a smaller San Francisco venue on Sunday, Jan. 31, March 21 and May 29.
“Jewish diversity is a really big topic of discussion, and at Jewish Women’s Theatre we try to include the stories of all Jews,” said artistic director Ronda Spinak, who co-founded the company in 2008.
Every year, Jewish Women’s Theatre creates three original productions, each about an hour, and performs them in private homes and other locations in Southern and Northern California. The shows, which center on a particular theme, include eight or nine stories collected from professional writers, newspaper articles, blogs and community members, which are interpreted by performers in a staged-reading format.
“Temptation” contains stories of women facing temptation in politics, love and belief; “Chutzpah and Salsa” focuses on Latina Jews. The pieces for “Jacob’s Dilemma” are reinterpreted Bible stories developed in collaboration with Rabbi Sandy Sasso, the first female rabbi ordained from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.
“We had been talking for three years about having a group of writers and artists meet with a rabbi and study Torah together,” Spinak said. “People would take themes, archetypes, ideas and create a contemporary show using some of the text as a basis for thought and theme.”
Spinak spends the year collecting suggestions for show themes, then works with the board of directors to narrow down each year’s new lineup. They look for a balance of lighter and more serious material, and also consider contemporary issues that resonate in the Jewish community — “topics that are being discussed in media or around dining room tables or Shabbat tables.”
Jewish Women’s Theatre has addressed Jewish diversity in past years, with shows about Persian Jews and Russian Jews. The upcoming “Chutzpah and Salsa” includes stories about Cuban, Chilean and Argentinean women; the stories are set both in Latin America and the United States. They capture a range of Latina Jewish experiences as well as issues of identity faced by immigrants and by Jews living in majority-Catholic countries.
“There are very different communities within the Latin American Jewish experience: Ashkenazi, Sephardic and Arab,” said Suzanna Kaplan, the company’s literary manager who grew up in Mexico City and produced “Chutzpah and Salsa.” Even within the United States, there are distinctive Latino Jewish communities. “If you go to San Diego, you will find a massive Mexican Jewish Ashkenazi community that could be transported to Poland,” she said.
In order to capture the breadth of this community, Kaplan talked to friends and scoured everything from trade publications to YouTube videos to find compelling stories. The shows regularly feature pieces by high-profile writers — “Chutzpah and Salsa” has a piece by Sonia Nazario, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of a refugee boy from Honduras trying to reach his mother in the United States. However, many of the contributors are not professional writers; producers may connect with them by phone and create a piece constructed from their stories.
“There’s a sense of it being authentic,” Spinak said. “It’s someone’s story being told, often for the first time.”
“Temptation,” 7:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 1 at Oshman Family JCC, 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto. $20-$30. www.paloaltojcc.org/events/jewish-womens-theatre-temptation-1. Also 4 p.m. Jan. 31 in San Francisco. Venue provided after ticket purchase. www.brownpapertickets.com/profile/417517