Philadelphia to Host National Jewish Playwriting Contest Finals

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Theatre Ariel will oversee performances at the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History.

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The Jewish Plays Project and the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History will bring the Finals of the National Jewish Playwriting Contest to Philadelphia for the first time on Monday, June 29 at 7 pm. Thanks to a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts , tickets are free to the public and may be reserved now.

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The JPP, the nation's most influential development company for new Jewish plays, is proud to be partnering with the Weitzman, the Kaiserman JCC , Tribe 12 , Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel and Society Hill Synagogue to present its signature event on Independence Mall during the celebrations for the 250th anniversary of our country.

Theatre Ariel , Philadelphia's only professional theatre dedicated to telling stories of the Jewish experience, is partnering with JPP to oversee casting and performances of excerpts from plays.

"Right now, we need positive and complex Jewish stories out in front of as audience members as we can," said Mr. Winitsky, "and these stunning new plays already making a difference. Now we need everyone to come out and help us choose which ones are the most important and the most compelling."

This one-of-a-kind event is a combination of a TED Talk, a play reading and American Idol. Artistic Director David Winitsky will speak on the state of new Jewish drama, three plays are introduced by a video from the playwright, 20-minute excerpts are read by a group of stellar Philadelphia actors, and then the audience gets to vote on the National Winner.

The National Finals are the culmination of a 10-city, 1,000 audience member process which the JPP calls Artistic Democracy. The finalists for the National Jewish Playwriting Contest were selected from over 355 submissions from 32 states and 8 countries by ppanels of arts and Jewish luminaries in New York, Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, Boston, Hartford, Tel Aviv, Houston, Philadelphia and Toronto.

A grieving mother, over the 7 days of shiva, starts to see her child in a baby carrot.

Leah, Gali, and Shoshi gather at an axe-throwing parlor to plan a sex strike. They kibbitz, they scheme, they hurl axes. Also, there are a lot of interesting birds. A play about fundamentalism: what draws us to it and how women carve spaces for themselves within it.

After October 7, a reservist assigned to identify the dead begins to write-quietly, obsessively-amid silence, violence, and routine. His documentation becomes an attempt to understand what it means to name the dead and remain among the living.

The winning play will be presented in a workshop reading at the Festival of New Jewish Plays in New York this fall. Past finalists and winners have gone on to be produced Off-Broadway, and at Atlantic (NYC), the Geffen (LA), the Alliance (Atlanta), Berkeley Rep (CA), and at dozens of theaters in the U.S., Israel, Canada and Mexico, playing for more than 140,000 audience members.

"Jewish playwrights have helped shape modern theater as we know it, and the Jewish Plays Project has been championing the next chapter of Jewish theater for years." said Mr. Samuels . "Hosting the National Playwriting Finals at The Weitzman during the height of Philadelphia's semiquin celebration is a powerful reminder that the Museum is a place where Jewish history is preserved AND cultivated. We couldn't be more excited."

The Jewish Playwriting Contest seeks to discover, highlight, and nurture contemporary Jewish drama by engaging with artistic and Jewish communities throughout the English-speaking world. The Contest has received and vetted over 2,800 plays by 1,800 writers in 34 states and 10 countries. The JPP 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 100,000 audience members.

The Jewish Plays Project, founded in 2011, identifies, develops, and presents new works of theater via one-of-a-kind explorations of contemporary Jewish identity between audiences, artists, and patrons. The JPP's innovative and competitive development process engages Jewish communities in the vetting, selecting, and championing of new voices and secures mainstream production opportunities for the best new pla

The JPP has featured some of the best artists working in New York, including writers David Hein and Irene Sankoff (Come from Away), Robert Askins (Hand to God), and Lauren Yee (Cambodian Rock Band); directors Marc Bruni (Beautiful), Stephen (A Strange Loop), and Tamilla Woodard (Yale School of Drama); and actors Joshua Malina (The West Wing, Billions), Ronald Guttman (Mad Men, Homeland), Alysia Reiner (Orange is the New Black), and Obie and Drama Desk nominee Marcia Jean Kurtz .

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/philadelphia/article/National-Jewish-Playwriting-Contest-Finals-to-Make-Philadelphia-Debut-20260603)._