Association for Jewish Theatre
The Association for Jewish Theatre is an American cultural organization dedicated to helping its members produce “plays relevant to Jewish life and values.”[1] The Association holds an annual conference. [2] Members include theaters, Artistic Directors of theaters, solo performers, and playwrights, devoted to Jewish content. [3]
Organization
The Association held its first general meeting and first annual Jewish Theatre Festival at Marymount Manhattan College in June, 1980.[4] Norman Fedder and Steven Reisner are credited with being the prime movers behind the founding of the AJT.
Currently, the President of the AJT is David Chack.[clarification needed] The association sees itself as part of the ethnic theater movement, inspired especially by the black and Latino theatre movements. [5]
According to the New York Times, the Association had “more than a score of members representing theater groups in the United States and Canada, from Phoenix, Ariz., to Winnipeg, Manitoba” by 1989 and was held to exemplify the “comeback” of explicitly Jewish theater in America. [6]
Festival and conferences
The organization sponsors yearly conferences, which are at times accompanied by theater festivals.
Recent conferences:
- 2007 -- Vienna (AJT's first international conference)
- 2009 -- New York (hosted by Untitled Theater Company 61, which also produced the coincident Festival of Jewish Theater and Ideas)
- 2010 -- Chicago
- 2012 -- Los Angeles
- 2013 -- Minneapolis
External links
- The Official Web Site
- Festival of Jewish Theater and Ideas
- All About Jewish Theater, a web site devoted to chronicling Jewish theater and co-sponsor of the 2010 AJT conference
- Foundation for Jewish Culture
Notes
- ↑ http://www.afjt.com/bylaws.htm
- ↑ http://www.afjt.com/upcoming.htm
- ↑ http://www.afjt.com/theatres.htm
- ↑ http://www.afjt.com/about.htm
- ↑ "Jewish Theatre Festival 1980," by Tina Margolis and Susan Weinacht, The Drama Review: TDR, Vol. 24, No. 3, Jewish Theatre Issue (Sep., 1980), pp. 93-95
- ↑ “Jewish Theater Is Making a Comeback, by Richard Shepard, March 24, 1989, New York Times
