AJT Regranting Program

CYCLE IS CURRENTLY OPEN

Applications Due March 25th, 2024

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Regranting Applications for our 2024 Cycle Are Being Accepted!

Applications Open March 1st. Final Deadline March 25th, 11:59 pm EST.
Click below to access our Powerpoint from our Regranting Q & A, and learn how to apply!

 

ABOUT

AJT provides support for new and innovative Jewish theatre by offering grants to theatre-makers/theatres to support new work in the field that has potential to reach audiences at either established Jewish theatres or theatres committed to shepherding their work.

We provide an open playground for artists to expand their capabilities and connect to a larger network to experience their work.

Look for information for the next application process in late Fall and early Winter. 

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2023 REGRANTING RECIPIENTS 

Hank Kimmel

Hank -- 2021 profile

May God Bless Her

A new 75-minute one-act play written by Hank Kimmel, directed by Mira Hirsch. 
Given the power of attorney, 20-year-old Hannah must decide whether to keep her ailing mother alive, as the three other characters (her distraught father, rookie hospital chaplain, and young doctor) pull her in differing ways.  The third part of a trilogy of short plays (The Chosen People) revolving around the concept of faith and fate.

 

Edward Einhorn’s Untitled Theater Company No. 61

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The Shylock and the Shakespeareans

An original dark comedy by Edward Einhorn taking The Merchant of Venice and reimagining it to tackle questions of antisemitism and racism. The Shylock is a Jewish man named Jacob, living in Venice and caught in a society where the perception of him as a money-grubber trumps reality. The Shakespeareans are a band of white supremacists, bumbling and comic yet lethally dangerous. The play also includes Black and Asian characters (and a Black Jewish character) to place antisemitism in a world of overlapping discrimination, where hatred towards one minority inevitably impacts another.

Harrison Bryan

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A Hanukkah Carol, or GELT TRIP! The Musical 

It's not just “A Christmas Carol for Jews” — it’s an irreverent and heartfelt musical comedy that celebrates being the best version of oneself in pursuit of making the world a kinder place. World Premiering in December 2023! For updates, tickets, and more: HarrisonBryan.com

 

 

 

Deborah Yarchun

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And You Shall Be A Blessing

A play with music that focuses on renowned Jewish singer/songwriter Debbie Friedman (1951-2011) — whom the New York Times called the Joan Baez of Jewish music — and her fight for acceptance as a female spiritual leader, as well as her struggle for self-acceptance. And You Shall Be A Blessing unfolds through a concert, rituals, and intimate scenes that explore Debbie’s life including her struggles with depression, her abusive upbringing, and her closeted sexuality. The play follows Debbie through her years-long, sometimes public, usually private, journey to carve out space for herself as a queer, feminist, proudly Jewish woman who didn’t fit within traditional Jewish spiritual circles.

Mindy Pfeffer

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How To Live

Mindy Pfeffer will travel to Krakow, Poland, in July 2023 to do a reading of her new play HOW TO LIVE at the Jewish Culture Festival, with American and Polish actors. Fact and fiction intertwine in this story of survival, forgiveness, and learning from the past to move into the future. Based on the life of Maria Pfeffer Orwid, a Jewish Polish psychiatrist who lived from 1930-2009.

 

 

 

 

Dylan Seders Hoffman

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Fear And Misery Of The Third Reich

GLYK, NYC's newest Yiddish theatre, plans to produce Brecht’s Fear and Misery of the Third Reich in an all-new Yiddish translation by collective members Dylan Seders Hoffman (2nd Year AJT Theatremacher) and Corbin Allardice (PhD Student in Jewish Language and Literature, Johns Hopkins University) in 2024. This will be the first public staging of the first translated playlet, “The Jewish Wife,” in a workshop production directed by Daria Kerschenbaum (DGSD '27) and starring Dylan Seders Hoffman. The playlet will be presented as part of an encore production of GLYK’s "Ekhte balebustes / Real Housewives of the Yiddish Stage" in August 2023.

Marc Frost

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My Uncle Sam

Based on a true story, Theater Unspeakable's founder Marc Frost uncovers the truth about his own relative Sam Barton in the show "My Uncle Sam". Born in Russia in 1891, Sami Silverstein joined a wave of turn-of-the-century Jewish immigrants who came to America seeking a better life. Growing up in Brooklyn, he took an interest in mechanics and became a test pilot during the early days of aviation. After a near-death experience, he returned to his love of building bicycles which eventually landed him on a vaudeville stage as Sam Barton of the Barton Bros. act. Marriage, family and an international career all come careening towards a spectacular yet tragic ending as he dies backstage at Radio City Music Hall in New York on the eve of World War II.

Joshua Daniel Hershfield

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RISE

A rock musical, written and composed by former AJT theatremacher Joshua Daniel Hershfield, about a group of Jewish women resistance fighters during the Holocaust who organize and wage an uprising against the Nazi regime. The show is based on real events and focuses on the Kashariyot, or couriers, Jewish women who disguised themselves as Aryan, snuck in and out of the ghettos, traveled through Nazi territory, and smuggled food, messages, and weapons to the underground resistance. RISE won the Israeli Bela Zarhi Prize, was a Eugene O’Neill NMTC finalist, was showcased by the Alliance for Jewish Theatre, and premiered last year at Rochester Center Stage where Broadway World called it “a daring and important new musical” with a “superb score.” More info can be found at https://www.risetherockmusical.com/

A.R. Cohen

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Next Year In Kraków!

A.R. is going to Poland to do research for a new play ("Next Year in Kraków!”) that will follow an American Jew who decides to return to Poland and reestablish her family shtetl - kind of like a reverse "Fiddler on the Roof.” Her research and play grapple with historical trauma head-on and explore modern-day Polish remembrance politics, how antisemitism has changed over time, Polish and Jewish guilt, Zionism, and the complexities of “returning.” To learn more and to support her project, visit: gofundme.com/f/next-year-in-krakow
 

Molly Heller

Molly Rose Heller

The Dybbuk

This musical piece is a queer, feminist re-imagining of S. Ansky's The Dybbuk: or Between Two Worlds exploring the haunting mysticism surrounding the complexity of non-male bodies, voices, and spirits as confined by a patriarchal tradition of hegemonic authority. The piece also explores the intersection of queerness and Judaism. The musical blends contemporary, feminist indie pop-rock with traditional klezmer music.

Shara Feit

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TBA

PAST RECIPIENTS

 

2023