Cary Gitter
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Playwright
Cary Gitter
The Shabbos goy
by Cary Gitter
Angie Mastrantoni has a lot going for her. A job at a hip Chelsea art gallery. A new one-bedroom on the Upper West Side. And, despite her concerned Nonna’s wishes, not much time or hope for relationships. But then her neighbor Seth knocks on her door. He’s a 32-year-old, divorced Orthodox Jew with a knish store on the Lower East Side. And he needs some help turning on his AC. He needs a "Shabbos goy," a non-Jew to help him with little tasks forbidden to Jews on the Sabbath. Could it be love? THE SHABBOS GOY is a contemporary romantic comedy with an old-fashioned heart—about the loneliness of big-city life, the surprise of encountering another culture, and the possibility of finding love next door.
“This is Cary’s second year in the Contest, and he’s back to win. This play will tickle your funny bone and tug at your heart, even as it asks important questions.”
Cary Gitter is a recent alumnus of the Ensemble Studio Theatre’s (EST’s) Obie Award-winning Youngblood playwrights' group in New York City. His play HOW MY GRANDPARENTS FELL IN LOVE was a NEW YORK TIMES Critic’s Pick as part of EST’s 36th Marathon of One-Act Plays and aired on the public radio show PLAYING ON AIR. He is the current recipient of a New Play Commission from the EST/Sloan Project for his science-based play THE HOLIEST PLACE IN THE WORLD and a commission from West of 10th theater company.
His full-length plays include OLD FUCKING FRIENDS (reading, EST), THE SHABBOS GOY (reading, New Jersey Repertory Company; reading, EST), AFTER DAD (workshop, Berkshire Playwrights Lab; workshop, West of 10th in conjunction with the Dramatists Guild Fund), MENORAH (finalist, SPACE on Ryder Farm Creative Residency; semifinalist, O’Neill Center’s National Playwrights Conference; top-10 finalist, Jewish Playwriting Contest; reading, West of 10th), YOUTH GROUP (reading, Wordsmyth Theater Company; reading, EST), THE SMELLY GIRL (reading, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park; winner, Chameleon Theatre Circle New Play Contest; finalist, NYU Steinhardt’s New Plays for Young Audiences), I FOUGHT NEW JERSEY (NYU’s John Golden Playwriting Prize), and HERSCHEL IN HISTORY (semifinalist, O’Neill Center’s National Playwrights Conference; honorable mention, Kennedy Center’s Rosa Parks Playwriting Award).
Gitter’s many short plays include MOLLY FINN R.I.P. WE LOVE YOU (finalist, Samuel French Short Play Festival) and have been presented by the Big Funk Company (Paris, France), the Boston Center for the Arts, Caps Lock Theatre, Columbia University’s Center for Palestine Studies, EST, the Flea Theater, the inspiraTO Festival (Toronto, Canada), the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, New Jersey Repertory Company, NYU, Roustabout Theatre Troupe, T. Schreiber Theatre, the Tank, and others.
His dramatic work has been published in THE BEST MEN'S STAGE MONOLOGUES 2018 and 2017 THEATRE BRUT FESTIVAL ANTHOLOGY (Smith and Kraus) as well as in INTERjacTIONS: MONOLOGUES FROM THE HEART OF HUMAN NATURE, VOLUME III (JAC Publishing). His fiction has appeared in Baphash Literary & Arts Quarterly, JewishFiction.net, NEWTOWN LITERARY, and the Jewish Literary Journal. He has been a mentor in PEN America’s Prison Writing Program and participated in Tofte Lake Center’s Emerging Artists Program and Theater Reconstruction Ensemble’s chemis|TRE workshop. He holds a BFA in dramatic writing and an MA in English and American literature from NYU.