Live Radio Play: Bar Mitzvah Boy
“BAR MITZVAH BOY,” POWERFUL, AWARD-WINNING PLAY at JC3
Canadian playwright Mark Leiren-Young’s Bar Mitzvah Boy won first prize in the Jewish Plays Project in 2017. His bittersweet seriocomedy tells the story of Joey Brant, a man in his sixties who works as a divorce lawyer, imbued with the cynicism that comes naturally to his profession. Joey had lost his faith at the age of twelve and never bar mitzvahed – a fact he has deliberately hidden from his grandson Ben. Now Ben is turning thirteen and is about to step up to the Torah, and Joey’s lie will be exposed. So Joey needs to have his long-delayed bar mitzvah, as soon as possible. Except not on a Friday, because that’s poker night.
Joey turns to a young woman rabbi at his former synagogue, the improbably named Michael Levitz-Sharon, to tutor him and conduct the ceremony. He soon discovers that Rabbi Michael is herself having a crisis of faith, for reasons far more consequential than Joey’s anxiety about being exposed as a liar. Her deeply religious eleven-year-old daughter Rachel has cancer, and is bravely hanging on in hopes of living until twelve, in time for her bat mitzvah. The stress of Rachel’s sickness is meanwhile destroying what is left of Michael’s marriage.
As Joey embarks on his crash bar mitzvah course, he and Michael share reflections on faith and family, and gradually bond in ways that take them both by surprise. To quote from the play’s book jacket, “this sentimental dramedy will charm anyone who has ever questioned why bad things happen to good people.”
Bar Mitzvah Boy will be presented at the Jewish Cultural Center (JC3) at 47 Calle La Moras, near the corner of Cinco de Mayo, on Wednesday, February 19, and Thursday, February 20. Puperformances are at 7pm. Tickets will soon become available via the Boleto City website. The format is radio play – a reading with sound effects performed before a live audience.
Steve Garfinkel is Joey Brant, and the role of Rabbi Michael will be enacted by Ansley Braverman, a talented relative newcomer to San Miguel. The director is Fredric Dannen, who last April directed Arthur Miller’s The Price at the Shelter Theater, also in the radio play format.
Donation: $250
Tickets are being sold through Boleto City. Please use the following link to Boleto City’s sales page to purchase tickets. PLEASE NOTE: JC3/CHESMA, A.C. members should call the JC3 at +52 415 185 9191 or email the JC3 at shalomsanmiguel@gmail.com to obtain a 20% discount code before ordering their tickets. This discount code should only be used for purchasing member’s tickets.
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