Joan Ross Sorkin

Playwright

As a playwright, I look for compelling themes with universal messages. As a Jewish playwright, I find very often that search brings me to subjects that connect me to my Jewish heritage. Hence, I have started to develop a personal canon of work that comes under the rubric of "Jewish Theater." This body of work includes two full-length plays, The Dane in Brooklyn and The Sacrifice, and a collection of five one-act plays comprising a full evening of theater entitled, Jewish Time (see descriptions below).

Play Roster

The Dane in Brooklyn
A "re-imagining" of Shakespeare's Hamlet set in a Jewish family in Brooklyn, 1969 against the backdrop of the Vietnam War.

Harry Schotenfeld, a twenty-three year old Vietnam War reporter, returns home to find his mother sitting shiva for his father and his uncle has moved in and is now part of the furniture. Harry must not only cope with his grief over his father's death, but must also deal with his mother's troubling affair. When Harry's mentally handicapped younger brother, the spitting image of their father, claims that their uncle poisoned their father at the family-owned deli, Harry's melancholy turns to rage and a thirst for revenge. Harry locks horns with his uncle to force him to admit his guilt, and at the same time presses his mother to end her affair. But racked by his own guilt for not preventing his father's death, and careening between impulsiveness and indecision, Harry's sanity is put in issue. As Harry becomes more and more obsessed with proving his uncle's murderous deed, Harry's quest turns inward as he ponders the imponderables of life and death with memories of the horrors of ‘Nam coloring his thoughts and actions. Throughout his journey, Harry's two high school buddies, his druggie girlfriend and her busybody mother and nerdy brother become players as well as pawns in his increasingly self-absorbed search for the truth about his father and the meaning of life in a world turned upside-down. At the end of the play, in one last desperate effort to avenge his father's death, Harry meets a tragic end. Although his death makes his life all the more noble, it also makes clear that like Everyman, Harry's struggle with personal loss in a time of war and domestic upheaval is driven by an overwhelming need for approval from his family and from those he loved. [8 in cast: 5M,3F]

The Sacrifice
A contemporary version of the Binding of Isaac which explores man's priorities in matters of love, family, friendship, and faith.

The play revolves around the life of headstrong Claudia Hubbard-Thorne, a rising playwright, her collaboration with her cocky co-writer and part-time dance instructor, Peter Clark, and her rocky marriage to Richard Thorne, a Wall Street metals trader. When the two playwrights begin writing a new play, a modern-day version of the biblical tale, The Binding of Isaac, with Richard as the inspiration for their leading character, they come to loggerheads as they unwittingly embark upon their own harrowing journey up Mount Moriah to confront the Abrahams in their own lives and the sacrifices demanded by them. The play that they are writing is dramatized in cross-cut sequences throughout the main play, and Claudia, Peter, and Richard play all the roles in the play-within-the-play. This play-within-the-play depicts an ego-driven Wall Street metals trader who takes his unhappy teenage son on a weekend climbing trip, and serves both as a metaphor for parents "sacrificing" children and a mirror reflecting the scarred emotional landscape that stretches across Claudia and Peter's personal lives. The havoc wrought in writing and reenacting a play that cuts so close to the bone also contributes to the fragility of the collaboration itself. But by suffering the pain of the creative process and its attendant fall-out, Claudia and Peter are finally able to move beyond their pasts and toward a brighter future together. [3 in cast: 2M;1F]

Jewish Time
Five one-acts that explore the Jewish experience. (Plays can be mounted together with the same ensemble cast or mounted individually in a festival with work of other playwrights.)

Going Too Far
Inspired by the story of Rachel Corrie, this drama tells the story of a Jewish family in Cincinnati who upon learning from the nightly news that an unidentified American girl has been killed by Israeli bulldozers while protesting the demolition of a terrorist's family home in the West Bank, worries that the girl may be their daughter. [1M, 3F, child (M)]

Tainted
In this drama a German ex-pat living in suburban Connecticut is forced to reveal to his Jewish girlfriend his family's involvement in the Holocaust when he tries to donate his valuable art collection to a Berlin museum and is refused. [1M, 1F]

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
This contemporary comedy is about a neurotic twenty-something who thinks his girlfriend has broken up with him because he is Jewish. [1M,1F]

Food for Thought
This Holocaust drama depicts how three American GI's trapped in a foxhole and four Jewish women imprisoned in a concentration camp try to survive by recalling memories of food. [3M, 4F]

Shades of Gray
In this drama a German ex-pat living in suburban Connecticut is forced to reveal to his Jewish girlfriend his family's involvement in the Holocaust when he tries to donate his valuable art collection to a Berlin museum and is refused. [1M, 1F]


Although the work mentioned above has special resonance with Jewish audiences, several of my other "non-Jewish" works deserve special attention:

(mis)UNDERSTANDING MAMMY: The Hattie McDaniel Story
A one-woman play with music about the controversial life of Hattie McDaniel. The play depicts the highs and lows of Hattie's life and her attempt to vindicate herself in the face of the unrelenting Hollywood campaign against Mammyism led by Walter White of the NAACP. Play ran Off-Broadway for a four-week limited run in Feb/March, 2007 (Emerging Artists Theatre Company). Drama Desk nomination for Capathia Jenkins in the role of Hattie (Outstanding Solo Performance). [1F]

Broadwayworld.com: "McDaniel's remarkable life, career and controversy are examined in the fascinating new play by Joan Ross Sorkin. The script is impressively worthy of its material, and manages to avoid the traps that so often plague one-person shows. Even more impressive is how the play manages to be fresh, vibrant and vital...It might easily have fallen from drama to lecture, but Sorkin's script is rife with conflict, and her McDaniel, as portrayed by star-in-the-making Capathia Jenkins is intense and passionate. Jenkins is a veritable volcano of energy. And when she explodes, raging like Lear on the heath, she perfectly punctuates each emotional moment, setting us up for the next stretch of the roller-coaster ride...a tour-de-force performance."

Isabelle and The Pretty-Ugly Spell
An original upside-down Cinderella musical fairy tale.

This family musical tells the story of a scatterbrained fairy godmother who goofs when she puts a spell on a kingdom and has only three days to make things right. Music and Lyrics by Steven Fisher, Book by Joan Ross Sorkin and Steven Fisher. 2005 New York Musical Theatre Festival (Outstanding New Family Oriented Musical (TalkinBroadway); Winner of the 2005 National Children's Theater Award (Actors' Playhouse at The Miracle Theatre, Coral Gables FL); developed at BMI, ASCAP, The York Theatre and Summer Stage (Upper Darby, PA-commission). [4M, 3F]
The New York Times: "A nearly perfect pastry of a show...that rare achievement, matched only by the likes of ‘Shrek' or ‘Aladdin. The book by Steven Fisher and Joan Ross Sorkin is consistently witty and well drawn.'"

Strange Fruit
A new American opera based on the novel by Lillian Smith whose title was inspired by the Billie Holiday song.

This tragic opera about a secret interracial love affair in Georgia, 1920 is a tale of race, passion, betrayal, murder, and revenge, but above all, depicts human frailty that afflicts both sides of the racial divide. The opera's score, infused with blues, jazz and gospel, builds on the traditions of popular American music of the period. Music by Chandler Carter, Libretto by Joan Ross Sorkin. World Premiere: Long Leaf Opera, Chapel Hill, NC (2007); Showcased at New York City Opera (2003); Finalist, O'Neil Music Theater Conference (2004). [9M,5F + chorus]

Classical Voice of North Carolina: "Masterful work...so beautifully sung...that it brought tears to my eyes."

Indyweek.com: "It takes a very long time for art to process history, and when an artwork comes along that makes a righteous step down that path toward understanding, it is very exciting."

News & Observer: " ‘Strange Fruit' will easily bear repeated exposure."

Hiccup and A Wink
A full-length suspense drama about a dysfunctional couple living in a trailer in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The play deals with the contemporary social issues of domestic violence, child abuse and paternity.

The play explores the turmoil of co-dependency between a glue-sniffing, over-the-hill manicurist and her alcoholic, PTS-afflicted Vietnam-vet husband. (PTS: post-traumatic stress syndrome.) Their dysfunctional relationship is further challenged when an abused teenage girl, seeking her birth mother, comes into their lives, first by letter, then as a run-away on their doorstep. All hell breaks loose after the girl's adopted father arrives to stir up their already fiery cauldron, and only their improbable love can help them survive the horrors wrought by the two intruders. This play is not your typical drama about a girl's search for her birth mother. Not only is the story told from the viewpoint of the natural mother who has plenty of baggage and secrets to hide, but unlike many of these tales, there is no ultimate reconciliation between mother and daughter. Because the characters are by nature complex and none totally virtuous, truth-telling (or lying, as the case may be) informs much of the action and leads to the surprising and disturbing ending of the play. Readings and workshops by Emerging Artists Theater Company (NYC); Fleetwood Stage (New Rochelle, NY) and Innovative Stages (Bronxville, NY). [2M, 2F]

Back to Top