Greg Lipper on the Expanded Return of CELEBRATING JEWISH PLAYS at Shakespeare & Company

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The Shakespeare & Company trustee discusses an expanded second edition of the staged-reading weekend, now featuring poetry, chamber music, and speakers/

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Shakespeare & Company welcomes back CELEBRATING JEWISH PLAYS this October 9 through 11, featuring three staged readings over three days during the holiday weekend, with live poetry, speakers, musical performances, and more added to this year's expanded event. Following a successful inaugural weekend in 2025, the celebration includes readings of Amy Herzog 's AFTER THE REVOLUTION, Joshua Harmon 's BAD JEWS, and Arthur Miller 's BROKEN GLASS, alongside a Knosh and Knowledge discussion of Israeli theater and a new chamber music and poetry event. The weekend is presented in partnership with the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires.

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Chairing the planning committee is Greg Lipper, a member of Shakespeare & Company's Board of Trustees who brings 30 years of global operations, continuous improvement, and consulting experience to the role. Currently GM and Partner of Business Operations, Trust & Safety at Microsoft, Lipper has served on the Shakespeare & Company board for eight years and chairs its Investment Committee. He and his wife Kate moved from Boston to Great Barrington in 2021.

BroadwayWorld spoke with Lipper about expanding the weekend beyond staged readings, the collaboration with the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires, and why gathering the community around theatre feels especially meaningful right now.

What inspired the addition of poetry, music, and speakers to this year's weekend, beyond the staged readings?

Last year was our inaugural year, and we repeated what worked and improved on that. We decided early on that an engaging speaker is a great way to kick off the weekend, and so we partnered with Jewish Federation of the Berkshires to bring their Knosh & Knowledge series to our campus. From a short list of potential speakers, we selected Michal Peles-Almagor, a brilliant academic who will be speaking about the role of theater in Israel from 1948 to the present. We are fortunate to have Owen Lewis on our Committee this year. Owen is a poet and is connected with classical musicians through his daughter, Victoria Lewis, a violinist and Assistant Concertmaster for the orchestra of the Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv. Shakespeare & Company is always looking for ways to bring more people onto our campus. Poetry and a string trio are in keeping with our explicit aim to embrace the core values of Shakespeare's work: collaboration, commitment to language, visceral experience, and classical ideals expressed with physical prowess and an embodied contemporary voice.

How did you go about selecting this year's plays, AFTER THE REVOLUTION, BAD JEWS, and BROKEN GLASS, and what themes connect them?

The selection of all of our titles for the season is done through an extensive series of conversations. The play choices for this festival came from a committee formed specifically for the festival, and followed a number of robust and engaging conversations about why these plays will resonate for our time and our community.

As Committee Chair, what does your role involve in shaping the CELEBRATING JEWISH PLAYS weekend?

I am fortunate to have an outstanding 11-person committee made up of Board, Staff, and community members. A big part of my role has been partnering early and often with Jewish Federation of the Berkshires, and ensuring the committee has thoughtful discussions on all the key aspects of bringing this event to fruition: play selection, speaker selection, timetable, ticket pricing tiers, marketing, fundraising. The committee has been meeting bi-weekly for six months to ensure we put on a wonderful program.

What has your experience been like collaborating with the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires on this event?

Dara Kaufman and Daveen Litwin are simply fabulous. They have their finger on the pulse of the community here, and with their wisdom and experience, we shaped our program to ensure it aligns with the interests of the community. Every step of the way, we checked in with them, and the result has been a vibrant, diverse program that both our organizations are genuinely excited about.

How does your professional background in operations and continuous improvement inform the way you approach organizing an event like this?

My background comes to bear in three ways. One, I am a practitioner of kaizen, or continuous improvement, and so I urged all of us to think out of the box and not just repeat what we did last year. Two, I am a planner, and I worry about all the things that can go wrong, so we had detailed plans, and we also had a strong oversight function with respect to our planning. Three, one approach to my leadership style is to bring together diverse voices and give them space to air their views. There are no bad ideas, especially in the early stages of brainstorming and ideation. Through healthy dialogue and debate, we arrived at what I think were optimal decisions on so many fronts. And I guess there is a fourth dimension: I am a reliable schlepper, so I hauled boxes of flyer inserts for the Jewish Voice, I put up flyers around town, and connected with local synagogues.

What drew you to get involved with CELEBRATING JEWISH PLAYS in the first place?

I have been on the Board of Shakespeare & Company for eight years, and during that time I have been on different committees. This program gave me an opportunity to contribute to the company in a way that ties directly to my deep commitment to Judaism. Since the Yiddish theater movement exploded in Eastern Europe in the late 19th century, the theater has been a dynamic space for Jews to debate modernization, process historical trauma, keep native languages alive, and pass down cultural memory.

What do you think Arthur Miller 's BROKEN GLASS will bring to audiences as the closing piece of the weekend?

BROKEN GLASS brings all the richness of language and complexity of his characters to the forefront in this delicate and mysterious later play. We wanted to conclude the weekend with it, as both a cautionary tale regarding the volatility of the world, and because Miller was and continues to be a titan of the American theatre. It seemed fitting to punctuate the end of the festival with the heft that his work brings to the proceedings.

How does living in the Berkshires and being part of this community shape your vision for events like CELEBRATING JEWISH PLAYS?

These are difficult times for our Jewish community. I just love the notion of bringing together the community in a non-political way, to be moved emotionally by theater. Last year we experienced such an outpouring of energy and passion from our patrons, and we hope to bring that same enthusiasm and communal connection back again this year.

CELEBRATING JEWISH PLAYS runs October 9 through 11, 2026 at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, MA, in partnership with the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires. Tickets and multi-show weekend passes are available now. For more information, visit shakespeare.org or call the box office at 413.637.3353.

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/boston/article/Interview-Committee-Chair-Greg-Lipper-On-the-Return-of-CELEBRATING-JEWISH-PLAYS-at-Shakespeare-Company-20261002)._