A Showcase for Creativity

A new, more Jewish version of “Hamlet” and a play in the form of a game show that explores the unlikely relationship between philosophers Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger are among the works in an upcoming series of staged readings at the Skirball Cultural Center.

Called “American Jewish Women: Plays for the End of the Century,” the series begins Sunday at 2 p.m. with Jenna Zark’s “A Body of Water.”

All four plays are the work of American Jewish women, much of it new, according to Jan Lewis of the Jewish Women’s Theatre Project, organizer of the series.

Created in 1995 by Lewis and Karen Rushfield, the Jewish Women’s Theatre Project “seeks to produce plays that break down negative cultural stereotypes, promote positive role models and explore the enduring questions of Jewish identity,” Lewis says. The project also looks for plays “energized by ideas, provocative themes and contemporary forms.”

Literary manager and dramaturge at the Odyssey Theatre in West Los Angeles, Lewis is the project’s artistic director. Rushfield, a former executive director of Theatre L.A. and onetime drama critic for Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, is producing director.

“We found that there are a lot of women out there writing plays, good plays,” says Lewis, in explaining how the project was launched. Most of those plays were not being produced, however. “Women need a home for their work,” Lewis says. “They need encouragement.”

Although all four plays in the Skirball series deal with Jewish themes and feature a wide range of Jewish characters, “none of these plays speaks exclusively to a Jewish audience,” she says. “These plays speak to human concerns that are universal.”

Each reading will be followed by a question-and-answer session with the playwright.

As Lewis explains, the opening work--”A Body of Water”--is a trilogy of short plays, each of which has a Jewish ritual or institution involving water at its center.

These include tahara, the washing of the dead; the monthly purification of women at a mikveh, or ritual bath; and the symbolic casting off of sins into a body of water in the New Year rite known as tashlich.

As Lewis explains, “A Body of Water” was written by a prize-winning St. Paul, Minn., playwright who is also an observant Jew. Its three plays feature recurring characters and a recurrent question: “What is the significance of holding onto a ritual that is 4,000 years old? What can that possibly mean in contemporary life?”

A new comedy will continue the series July 27 at 4 p.m.

Titled “Tribal Tales of Clarice Cohen,” the play stars its author, Susan Merson, a Los Angeles-based actress and writer who was, for three years, the artistic director of the Streisand Festival for New Jewish Plays.

Commissioned for the series, “Tribal Tales” is, Lewis says, “a really nifty one-woman piece that explores the idea that love is always available to you.”

Inspired by an actual event--the murder of an elderly woman by her husband of many decades--the work allows Merson to play everyone from the elderly killer to the detective who falls in love with the title character, a self-styled “midlife chanteuse.”

Different characters offer different motives for the murder, “Rashomon”-style, Lewis explains, and the resulting play is “very funny with a lot of serious undertones.”

One of the most unusual plays in the series is “Felicity,” to be staged Aug. 3 at 1 p.m.

Written by Sharyn Abramhoff Shipley, who lives in the woods in Issaquah, Wash., “Felicity” is an imaginative reworking of “Hamlet” that incorporates Jewish themes and a woman’s point of view.

Like “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” Shipley’s play blends characters, action and language from Shakespeare’s incomparable play with newly invented scenes.

Written entirely in blank verse, “Felicity” features two new characters, in addition to the melancholy Dane, his dysfunctional family and the others that Shakespeare imagined. The additions are a woman cook and the title character, a young Jewish woman who witnesses the killing of King Hamlet and the subsequent slaying of her entire family.

Thanks to the cook, Lewis says, “it’s sort of the upstairs/downstairs version of ‘Hamlet.’ ”

Shipley submitted the play to the project with a note explaining, “My mother told me I have to send you this play.”

Lewis has worked closely with Shipley, whose mentor is “The Miracle Worker” playwright William Gibson, to ready the play for its premiere at the Skirball.

Lewis describes the play as a work of daring.

“Someone’s got to give this woman a chance!” she says of Shipley.

Equally daring is “The Last Game Show,” which closes the series Aug. 10 at 2 p.m.

Written by Lynne Kaufman of San Francisco, it takes us onto the set of a game show in purgatory. With the emcee and his beautiful assistant, Lanna, looking on, the Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt engages in a verbal contest with her former mentor and lover, Martin Heidegger.

How Arendt could fall in love--and stay in love--with a man, however brilliant, who became a Nazi is one of those puzzles that fiction may illuminate better than nonfiction. The play, Lewis says, “is quick-witted, funny, ironic and ultimately very moving.”

BE THERE

Play readings--The series will be held four consecutive Sundays, this weekend through Aug. 10, at Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles. General admission for each reading is $12. General admission for the entire series is $42. Tickets are available through Theatix (213) 466-1767. For more information, call the Skirball at (310) 440-4500.