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]
Contents |
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 and the Executive Director is Edward Einhorn. 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]
The organization sponsors yearly conferences, which are at times accompanied by theater festivals. In 2007, the AJT had its first international conference, in Vienna. In 2009, the conference was held in New York, where it was hosted by Untitled Theater Company #61, which also produced a Festival of Jewish Theater and Ideas to coincide with the conference. In 2010, the conference and an accompanied festival, will be hosted by Habimah, in Tel Aviv.