By Debra Rich Gettleman

You know that hilarious story about the two interns at a Jewish publication struggling with their latest assignment: how to rebrand Zionism as progressive, #girlboss, and Gen Z via Instagram?  

No? Well, I guess you don’t know about Jewish Plays Project (JPP) then. JPP is the nation’s leading development house for contemporary Jewish theatre. It’s an innovative organization that holds annual competitions that challenge emerging playwrights to explore their own Jewish voice and their community identity. They also have built in an engagement strategy that includes Jewish communities in the vetting, selection, and championing of these new plays. Oh, and did I mention that they’ve developed 55 plays so far, and of those, 36 have been fully produced in NY, London, Tel Aviv, Canada and the US and performed in front of over 100,000 audience members. How cool is that?

That story I mentioned above is the theme of ZIONISTA RISING, by Alexa Derman, and it’s won the 12th Annual Jewish Playwriting Contest. “The play,” described as, “A hilarious, sharp-witted play about the American Jewish obsession with Israel,” was selected from six finalists. And unlike most playwriting competitions, which use a cadre of theatre elitists as judges, JPP self describes as, “A radical experiment in artistic democracy and collective action.” It takes people like you and me to make it work. This year’s selection team included over 500 audience members in 9 cities in the U.S. and Israel, including Silicon Valley, Boston, Houston, Charlotte, Chicago, Fairfax, Hartford, Tel Aviv, and New York City.

ZIONISTA RISING, according to the JPP website, “Tackles one of the most critical Jewish conversations today - how to navigate the 21st Century relationship to Zionism - not to the actual, existing, complex State of Israel, but to the longstanding, intellectually fraught, and constantly shifting idea of Zionism.” And here’s the thing, it’s hysterical to boot.

As a theatre artist and playwright myself, I believe the best way to open minds and conversations is through humor, and Alexa Derman knows just how to do that.

I spoke with JPP’s Founder and Executive Artistic Director, David Winitsky about how JPP started and his plans for the future.

Debra Gettleman (DG)

You know I’m a big fan of JPP. I follow you, get your newsletters, and I’d love to hear about JPP’s origin story.

David Winitsky (DW)

I’m what you’d call a “late-in-life” Jew. I grew up in suburban Philadelphia, where they coined the term “JAP.” The Jewish life that was going on when I was a kid, was about who had the best drugs and the nicest car. And so, I had my Bar Mitzvah and I was out.

DG

And now you’re heading one of the leading Jewish storytelling organizations in the country. How did that happen?

DW

Flash forward many years. I met my wife. We got married. We have kids. And I find myself connected to this cycle of Jewish life again. And the Jewish conversation that I come back to, is talking about social justice, and economic justice, and racial justice, and new approaches to the Middle East. And I’m thinking, well, this the same thing that’s happening in my theatrical life. Why are these two things not happening at the same time?

 

DG

And your answer to that question

DW

What I found is that in 2011, there was a really great hunger within the artistic community. We’ve been telling the same Jewish stories over and over again in the theatre. If some theatre is going to produce a Jewish play, it’s going to be “Fiddler” or “Anne Frank,” or another Holocaust play, or maybe Neil Simon. That’s not who we are anymore. That’s very mid-20th century and we need to update the conversation. That’s really been our defining mission: to identify, develop, and advocate for 21st century Jewish people.

DG

It’s funny. That’s exactly what we are doing with Jewish Life Now. We’re a very different kind of contemporary Jewish lifestyle magazine. Our motto is “Your tribe with a new vibe.”

Now, I know a lot about you and your credentials are mind blowing. You’re a Storahtelling/LabShul Maven, a 2014-17 UpStart National Fellow, a 2013 LABA Artist Fellow, and a 2011 PresenTense New York City Fellow. And you’re currently a Fellow at UJA’s Institute for Jewish Executive Leadership at Columbia Business School. But how did your career in theatre start? Were you ever an actor?

DW

Not really.  My background is that I was a math major at Cornell. I had been involved in performance mostly as a musician. I was in band courses all through high school and college and I was pretty good at it. But my senior year of college, a friend of mine asked me to direct something for his theatre company at Cornell, and I was like, “Sure. I’ll give it a try.”  The first time I sat in a director’s chair, it was like, “Oh. This is right. This is what I’m interested in.

DG

Ok, so you founded JPP in 2011?

DW

Right. I was playing around with the idea for this company, and I realized that at that time, Jewish theatre companies, standalone producing companies, were going out of business. Two major NY companies, American Jewish Theatre and Jewish Rep had gone out of business before that. Around the country, these companies were all going out of business. So, I was like, “I probably should pay attention to this. Like, this is probably a bad way to go.” Then I read this very interesting study. It found that Jews wanted to see Jewish culture in non-Jewish venues and non-Jewish culture in Jewish venues. They wanted to see their big Jewish play at the big regional theatre in their city, and they wanted to see the gospel church at their synagogue. 

DRG

Fascinating.

DW

It’s totally fascinating. Our goal here is to identify the right material, this new kind of theatre, this theatre that was bringing the contemporary Jewish conversation onto the stage and get that to the best producers. 

DG

Do you have plans to extend into film or television?

DW

It’s definitely something that I’ve been playing with. There is the same need in other media as well, the need to create a better pipeline for this kind of material. In these 13 years, we’ve really honed a set of guidelines and ways of thinking about what it means to be a 21st century Jewish play or a Jewish story. What that actually looks like.

DG 

And how did the playwriting competition come to be.

DW

Well, I realized we don’t need to produce the work ourselves. The win for us is when a play of ours gets produced, wherever the right venue for it is. I wanted to set up the company to be a pipeline, a source of material for producers. At the same time, a colleague of mine at the local JCC asked if I’d be interested in doing something with new playwrights, maybe a contest.

That was the birth of the Jewish playwriting contest. And it’s been a ten-fold success and our signature ever since.

DG

How many submissions to you get annually for the contest?

DW

W’e’re up to about 300 submissions a year.

DG

Impressive. And then you narrow them down and invite us regular folks to weigh in to select the winning play? And that’s what you mean by artistic democracy. But does the buck stop with you?

DW

Eventually, somebody needs to make a decision.   We have an artistic panel of about 80 readers around the country and the world. And then we have a very well-developed community process that brings us to 8 or 9 cities every year, with somewhere between five hundred and six hundred people responding on the community level. My staff and I ultimately have to make the decision of which six plays we are going to work on. But we’re going to do that by taking extremely seriously the input, voices, and passions of these communities we’re working with. 

DG

How can a group become one of your reading communities?

DW

If you can get ten people together, we can make it happen.

DG

It’s a really novel concept.

DW 

Yes, and the core part of it, the thing that I think is so, so Jewish about what we do, is that it is not just enough that one person reads a play and has a response. It’s one person reads a play and argues it out with another person. It’s partner learning, right?

DG

Like a chavurah?

DW

Exactly. 

If you’re interested in becoming a part of the JPP process, it’s as easy as getting together a group of ten readers in your community. JPP connects you with the year’s Jewish Playwriting Contest finalist plays. You and your chavurah read, discuss, and evaluate the plays and determine their relevance and importance to contemporary Jewish ideas. Then you vote on the top three plays for your region.

Then attend the national celebration in June with your community to see videos of the top three plays chosen nationally and find out the winner.

If you love stories, art, and entertainment, this is a perfect way to get involved in a process of storytelling that brings together theatre artists and community members to engage in thoughtful conversation about your personal and community relationship to the contemporary Jewish experience.

You can read more about JPP here.