Brenda Shoshanna

Author and Performer

Brenda Shoshanna, author and performer is an award winning playwright, former playwright in residence at The Jewish Repertory Theater in New York. She has been produced widely and is winner of Chilcote Award, Writer's Digest Award, and was finalist in Dorothy Silver Playwriting Contest, the Streisand Festival and Arnold Weissberger Award. She presently resides in Manhattan.

Her plays focus upon the spiritual as well as cultural aspects of Jewish life and explore the question of what it means to be a Jew. Ultimately, her work seeks to bring deeper understanding, acceptance and appreciation among all people.

Play Available

Jakeys Incredible Family Reunion
Jakey's Incredible Family Reunion is a comic, burlesque drama that takes place on the lower East Side in the 1940's during the depression. It is set in the small insurance office of Schwerz and Glipstein (Manny and Jakey), two older men, partners for years, who suddenly start receiving crank phone calls demanding that Jakey write an opera and put it in. Jakey, the practical partner, who believes the world is out to get him anyway, refuses to pay attention to this crazy request.

As the calls come more and more frequently, Manny and Jakey face both the loss of their business and sanity. Soon both Manny, and Vivien, the overly devoted secretary, beg Jakey to succumb. "What's in me to write an opera about?" cries Jakey. "Write it and see," Manny demands.

In the course of writing this opera, Jakey is forced to face all that he has hidden from, including the love of Vivien, and what happened in his crazy, estranged family. As the play proceeds, miraculous events finally take place until finally Jakey realizes who these callers are and what they really want from him.

The play has both real and surrealistic elements. Slides of scenes from the forties are intermittently shown in the background connecting the events in Jakey and Manny's lives with what is going on in the outside world.

Play had a staged reading at Jewish Repertory Theater, Ensemble Studio Theater, and Neighborhood Playhouse Professional Workshop.

Messiah
MESSIAH takes place in the home of a Hasidic Rabbi in Williamsburg, Brooklyn where homeless people and beggars have come to the neighborhood, bringing a sense of unpredictability and danger. As the play opens, not only the Rabbi, but the entire community are eagerly awaiting and expecting the coming of Messiah any day now.

We meet the Rabbi?s family, including the Mother, who is recovering from a high fever, the brother Yankel, who will not leave home, but stays all day praying, Hy, the renegade brother with odd views and Shayna the lively daughter who desperately tries to understand what God truly wants from them.

Suddenly, in the midst of a Sabbath meal, Fendelson, the vegetable store owner, bursts into the living room bringing sudden news from Israel that top Rabbis there believe the Messiah has arrived. We see the entire family and community react to this fantastic news. Filled with jubilation, everyone starts packing to leave for Israel except for Shayna and Hy.

As the play progresses and more startling events take place we watch the characters and their dreams unfold. Finally, at the end, in a total quandry, Shayna's life turns around when a homeless man comes to the door, begging for food and she lets him in. This play deals with the question of how we bring Messiah and where He may be now.

This play, directed by Edward M. Cohen, former associate director of The Jewish Repertory Theater was workshopped at the Jewish Reperetory Theater and Ensemble Studio Theater. It was warmly received.

Other plays which do not deal with Jewish themes are listed with a synopsis on www.brendashoshanna.com/playwright

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