Ellen Schiff

AWAKE AND SINGING: SIX GREAT AMERICAN JEWISH PLAYS
The book has a lengthy introductory essay tracing the history of Jewish plays in English in America, differentiating them from the Yiddish theatre, and accounting for the individuals and the cultural and political forces that have influenced its growth and development. The crucial role of the AJT is, of course, included. Each of the plays is preceded by generous headnotes, situating the play in the dramatist's oeuvre and detailing the Jewish highlights of his/her canon. The plays are Elmer Rice's COUNSELLORATLAW, Clifford Odets's AWAKE AND SINGING, Sylvia Regan's MORNING STAR, Paddy Chayefsky's THE TENTH MAN, Herb Gardner's CONVERSATIONS WITH MY FATHER, and Arthur Miller's BROKEN GLASS. AWAKE AND SINGING; SIX GREAT AMERICAN JEWISH PLAYS is published by Applause Theatre Books.

The book is listed at $19.95 and can be ordered on line, where it is discounted, or purchased at bookstores.

AWAKE AND SINGING is my third anthology of American Jewish plays. A fourth collection, coedited with Michael Posnick, containing nine plays that have won the National Foundation for Jewish Culture's New Jewish Play commission and gone on to full production, will be published by the Univ. of Texas Press in 2005. Michael Posnick and I are currently editing an online revised, updated and expanded catalog of plays of Jewish interest. I am a longstanding and devoted member of the AJT.

NINE CONTEMPORARY JEWISH PLAYS,
edited by 'Ellen Schiff and Michael Posnick
Austin, TX: U. Texas Press, 2005.
Available through Amazon, Barnes and Nobel and bookstores.
This international collection brings together nine of the seventy-give plays that have won New Play Commissions in Jewish Theatre grant from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture and gone on to full productions. In addition to Motti Lerner's EXILE IN JERUSALEM, which was developed by the Jewish Ensemble Theatre of Detroit and starred AJT's own Evelyn Ohrbach, the book includes works by Ari Roth (another AJT star). as well as Marilyn Felt, Corey Fischer, Nora Glickman, Donald Margulies, Jeff Sweet, Elise Thoron. Theodore Bikel has contributed a foreward, Posnick and Schiff have each written introductory material and production photos accompany the plays.

Posnick and Schiff hope that the updated online catalog Plays of Jewish Interest will be ready for the NFJC to launch it in fall 2006. The editors are aware that the listings, while massive, are far from complete are relying on users, like AJT members, to supply missing information so that the resource can be as reliable,authoritative and current as it is possible to make it. The site will include information about submitting missing data.