Alliance for Jewish TheatrePlaywright
https://newplayexchange.org/users/4819/nalsey-tinberg
Nalsey Tinberg is the author of six full-length plays. Her latest play is THE PERFECT GAME. MISCONDUCT was part of the Long Beach Playhouse New Play Festival (April 2015) and a semi-finalist in the 2015 Eugene O’Neil Playwrights Conference. CAKEWALK was produced at Main Street Theater, Houston, Texas as part of the Main Stage Season in the fall of 2012. CAKEWALK was produced as a staged reading as part of the NY Chapter of the Television Academy’s play reading series hosted by Arlene Dahl in 2004, and at the Manhattan Theatre in 2005. The play was also named a second place winner in the eighth national readers theatre competition of The Open Book. As Christmas Babies, the play was produced at the Laurelgrove Theater in Los Angeles and well received during the spring of 2002. Her play MUSICAL CHAIRS was produced at the Stella Adler Theatre in December 2004. Bearing Witness was also produced at the Stella Adler in 1998 after first being given a workshop production at LATC (Los Angeles Theater Center) under the auspices of its writers’ group, Wordsmiths. BEARING WITNESS was also produced as a staged reading at the New Plays Festival at the Jewish Ensemble Theater in West Bloomfield, Michigan in April 2000. A TEACHABLE MOMENT was part of Theatre West’s New Play Reading Series (2010) and New Works Festival (2011).
Nalsey is a member of the Dramatists Guild, Alliance for Los Angeles Playwrights, and Theatre West.
Nalsey Tinberg is a graduate of UCLA and the University of Warwick where she received her Ph.D. in Mathematics. She is a professor emerita at Occidental College in Los Angeles.
PLAYS
THE PERFECT GAME
Drama (with humor) – 4 women, 2 men
Three generations of Jewish woman are affected by Sandy Koufax’s perfect game in 1965. While only witnessed by the Bubbe, two new generations try to apply lessons learned in an homage to the baseball icon and family hero. Sandy Cohen is a (newly widowed) physicist with two daughters who are trying to maneuver the Jewish dating scene when a young attractive academic joins Sandy’s department and upends their lives. A play about truth, Jewish identity, parenthood, dog owning, and baseball, and coming to terms that while life isn’t perfect, it can certainly still be amusing!
MISCONDUCT
Drama (with humor) – 6 women, 3 men
A small campus reels from the fallout over accusations of sexual assault. The politics and publicity takes its toll on everyone including the personal and professional lives of the faculty members who come to the aid of their students, the administrators who run the college, and the journalist covering the story. Misconduct is an honest and intimate portrait of the effects and repercussions on all involved with this timely and important subject.
CAKEWALK
Drama (with humor) – 2 women
This play is a tour-de-force for a mother and Holocaust refugee, Sprintze, and her only daughter, American-born Bersahla (Barrie). Barrie was born on Christmas Day in Seattle forty years ago, while Sprintze recalls awakening from typhoid fever in Poland on a Christmas night 70 years ago. Sprintze believes she survived the because of her special relationship to God, yet reveals that the Jews may have brought the Holocaust upon themselves because they were not “righteous enough.” That “bad things do not happen to good people” is concretely tested once her cherished daughter comes face to face with mortality because of her own cancer diagnosis. Both story-tellers in their own right, their deepest beliefs are questioned as the mother moves from refugee to survivor, from mother to skeptic, and the daughter from motherhood to cancer survivor. These two Christmas Babies take this ten year journey together with great humor, great dignity, and the proper amount of disrespect.
A TEACHABLE MOMENT
Drama (with humor) – 4 women, 2 men
This play explores politics at a small women’s college when a beloved processor, Benjamin Price, who has just won a Pulitzer Prize, may have fabricated his Viet Nam experience. This comedy of academic manners involves the first woman president, Elizabeth Greene, who must navigate college politics around the students, the professor, and the Board who just appointed her. The college, while serving as a metaphor for political life in general, exhibits Sayre’s third law of politics: Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low.
BEARING WITNESS
Drama (with humor) – 2 men, 2 women
Sarah Moss is the daughter of a Holocaust refugee. Her dominating mother has only asked one thing of her: get married and have children. Now in her late thirties, Sarah has married an up and coming lawyer, Mark, who declares that he is now ready for fatherhood. Unfortunately Sarah discovers she is unlikely to conceive without serious medical intervention. This play deals with how Sarah and her mother, and Sarah and her husband, deal with questions of fertility, family, and fidelity. As a child of s a survivor, Sarah must deal with the legacy of the second world war. This play deals with serious issues, but does so with humor, ultimately bonding mother and daughter.
MUSICAL CHAIRS
Drama (with humor) – 3 women, 1 man
Three women, Rose, Ellen, and Winnie (aged from their twenties to forties), meet in a breast cancer support group. They have little in common except for their need for companionship and their fear and hope for the future. The women struggle with their own mortality, their fears of recurrence, their appearance, their hair, their breasts, and their love and affection for each other. They meet regularly in a local restaurant where they make the acquaintance of Rick, their waiter, struggling to be a writer/poet. Rose, a lesbian, falls deeply for young Ellen, who falls for Rick. Meanwhile, Winnie, the third and most proper, reveals the most devastating secret. This ensemble piece is a deeply personal journey that 1 in 4 women face -Musical Chairs of who will live and who will not.
TEN MINUTE PLAYS
Back to the Barbizon – 6 Women
Letty, a Jewish artist, is surprised by her daughter with a reunion with “The Most Promising Women of America” whom Letty knew 50 years ago at the Barbizon Hotel for Women in NYC.
The Lawyers – 2 Men
Two lawyers celebrate one of their latest court victories in a local bar. Unfortunately, the client was guilty, which reminds this lawyer of mistakes he’s made in his own life.
Four Chairs – 3 Women, 1 Man
Three breast cancer support group members socialize to share their hopes and dreams. Unfortunately, one reveals a most devastating family secret. (developed into full-length play Musical Chairs)
Seeing is Believing – 2 Women, 1 Man
An old pair of glasses causes a woman to know the truth about the death of her beloved husband.
Long Island Ice Tea – (Comedy) 2 Women, 1 Man
An elderly Jewish mother and her homely daughter visit a bar which used to be their family’s tailor shop. They encounter a young Black man who appears to be the reincarnation of their late husband and father, and with hardly a word spoken amongst all of them.
Dummy in the Carpool Lane (Comedy) 2 Women, 1 Man
An older Jewish woman shleps her husband on the LA Freeways as she pursues her career as a private investigator. A young woman and her marital problems shines a light on the problems of the older couple leading to an optimistic future for all.
