Two Plays Share More Than a Theater : ‘Call Waiting,’ ‘Awake and Sing!’ have a common bond in separate tales of Jewish mothers at the Odyssey.

The Jewish mother is alive and well and onstage in two independent theatrical incarnations--Dori Fram’s “Call Waiting” and Clifford Odets’ “Awake and Sing!”--running on the same stage on different nights at the Odyssey Theatre.

“Awake and Sing!” has been playing since August, with multiple extensions, and “Call Waiting,” which opened in November, is following suit.

The protagonist of Fram’s solo piece is Judy Baxter, a contemporary 40-ish matron who spends most of the show on her cordless phone in a series of humorous and often poignant conversations. Judy--played by Caroline Aaron, last seen at the Doolittle as Gorgeous in “The Sisters Rosensweig”--has a husband she suspects is cheating on her, a daughter who’s about to get married, a son who’s decided he’s moving home for a year, a strained relationship with her mother and sister and, not least, a debilitating, chronic bladder infection.

In “Awake and Sing!” Marilyn Fox plays 50-year-old Bessie Berger, unapologetically dominating and manipulating the lives of her father, children and meek husband in 1930s New York.

“Bessie is an archetypally controlling Jewish mother who works and slaves for her family--and uses that to evoke a lot of guilt, to use them and keep them close by and make sure her future is going to be secure,” says Fox, 38, describing her character with a fierce affection. “Everything she does is for the good of the family.”

Fox--who has no children in real life and stresses that her own mother was definitely not a role model for Bessie--has seen a strong audience response to her character.

“So many people have come up after the show and said, ‘You are my mother.’ Also, it’s a play about the time they were living in: about poverty and what lack of money does. I don’t think of it as a domestic drama--it’s a political drama. Being poor is a full-time job. Bessie has dressed and fed and taken care of a family; she’s keeping the ball in the air.”

In turn, Aaron, 39, sees Judy as perhaps a descendant of Bessie.

“The most obvious aspect of (Judy’s) Jewishness is that she’s first-generation American, the child of Holocaust survivors,” says the actress, whose own parents were from Lebanon and Alabama. “And out of that, the Jewish part, is a feeling of not being entitled to your pain. If you’re a child of Holocaust survivors and you’ve been shut down with a bladder infection, your pain doesn’t measure up against their pain. You can’t go to Mommy, who has a number on her arm, and say, ‘I don’t feel well.’ ”

Along with the physical pain are some real emotional hurdles. “If there’s a story in this, it’s that a woman goes from a state of paralysis and begins to walk,” Aaron says. “She wants to write something, to express herself--to do more than talk on the phone, live in her bed and be in pain. Some of the Jewish part of the character is not feeling entitled to yourself, your own life--that you don’t have to be defined by your husband or your children or your parents. Judy needs to tell her family off, take that space for herself and say, ‘This is who I am, and I need to be acknowledged.’ ”

Although both characters are ethnically specific, the actresses do not see that as a limitation.

“In one of his books, Peter Brook says, ‘What is truly personal is universal,’ and I think that’s true,” Aaron says. “A really specific circumstance doesn’t confine itself to being interesting only to the people it’s about; all different kinds of people can say, ‘I recognize that. I’ve felt that.’ Before we opened, a lot of people thought this was a ‘chick’ play. But men come and absolutely love it. It’s like they’re in the next stall listening. Hopefully, that’s the purpose of entertainment: to let us know what we all have in common, rather than ways that we’re separate and different.”

Which is why, Aaron believes, the subject of mothers hits such a powerful chord.

“Everyone is somebody’s child,” she says, “even if you never see them or talk to them. So when you come to a play about family--which (“Call Waiting”) is, even though I’m all by myself--it’s stuff everyone can identify with. And the part about pain is very real too. I lost my mother a year ago. She hadn’t been sick, but (it was) the kind of thing where your body breaks down and starts to betray you. It’s chronic pain, not life-threatening, but it takes your spirit away in teaspoonfuls.”

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Aaron, a native of Richmond, Va., moved to Washington in the 1970s for college and later became a member of the experimental Washington Theatre Lab.

“We were going to cause a revolution in theater, change the world,” she says wryly. “I wasn’t interested in New York theater--that was commercial, not for me. Well, I realized I wanted the smell of the greasepaint, the roar of the crowd; I wanted to wear lots of makeup and false eyelashes and be on Broadway.”

Her move to New York in 1980 netted her stage roles in “Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean” (which she later reprised on film), “The Iceman Cometh” and “Social Security.” She also appeared in the Mike Nichols films “Heartburn” and “Working Girl” and Woody Allen’s “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” “Alice” and “Husbands and Wives.” After the Los Angeles run of “Sisters Rosensweig” last summer, Aaron resettled in Hollywood with her husband, Jamie Foreman, and their son Ben, 5.

Fox (whose Austrian-born mother fled the Holocaust) was born and raised in Los Angeles. She fell in love with acting at age 15, when she saw a film performance of Laurence Olivier as Othello.

“I couldn’t speak for three days,” she recalls. “I wrote him a letter, and he wrote back.” She later met Olivier, and at age 21 headed off to London with a list of contacts provided by the actor.

Since 1983, Fox has taught acting with her life partner, actor Gar Campbell (best known for his work with the late Company Theatre). In 1985 she became a member of Pacific Resident Theatre Ensemble, where her credits include “The Romanoffs,” “The Beggar’s Opera,” “Camino Real” and “The Visit.” Last year she won an L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award for her direction of the company’s “Ondine.”

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Although both Fox and Aaron are Jewish, they definitely don’t make a point of playing Jewish characters.

“Not all Jews are alike, and not all Jewish characters are alike,” Aaron says firmly. “The way I work as an actor is: You start out with what you get for free--what you have in common with this person. You look for those contact points. It’s a comfort zone, a wonderful support. And then there’s the fork in the road: the specifics of this woman, as opposed to me. Those are the things I have to start building on.”

Fox agrees: “Certainly, most of the things you’ll do in film and television are stuff that’s pretty close to the vest. But I made my reputation as an actress doing transformative roles; people really think I’m 50 years old in this play.

“I think the job of acting is to transform myself--into an Italian, a hunchback, a person with one eye. I teach a class which I call Intuiting a Character. I believe that whatever you see in your imagination can become manifest in your whole body and face. I think that’s the reason people become actors. They put on a cape, and suddenly . . . they’re someone else.”*

* Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles. “Awake and Sing!,” Friday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 4 p.m.; through Jan. 29; $17.50-$22.50. “Call Waiting,” Monday-Tuesday, 8 p.m.; through Jan. 31; $17.50. (310) 477-2055.