What is the Jewish Plays Project?

The Jewish Plays Project is a home for bold, progressive Jewish voices as well as an innovator in online play readings, digital art and the meeting of Jewish cultural audiences and Jewish artists. We are home to the Jewish Playwriting Contest, currently an online digital home for award-winning playwrights and other theater artists.

The Jewish Plays Project identifies, develops, and presents new works of theater through one-of a kind explorations of contemporary Jewish identity between audiences, artists, and patrons .

The JPP’s innovative and competitive development vehicle invests emerging artists in their Jewish identity; engages Jewish communities in the vetting, selecting and championing of new voices; and secures mainstream production opportunities for the best new plays.

The JPP has featured some of the best artists working in New York, including writers David Hein and Irene Sankoff (Come from Away), Jonathan Caren (Rise on Netflix), and Lauren Yee (Cambodian Rock Band); directors Marc Bruni (Beautiful), Daniella Topol (Rattlestick Theater AD),, and Tamilla Woodard (Yale Drama School); and actors Andrew Polk (The Band’s Visit), Gus Birney (Dickinson won AppleTV+), Ronald Guttman (Mad Men, Hunters), Kirrilee Berger (Amazon’s Just Add Magic), and Obie and Drama Desk nominee Marcia Jean Kurtz.

Crucially - the JPP is effective. Of the 52 plays the JPP has actively developed, 30 have gone on to production in New York, London, Tel Aviv, and around the U.S. and Canada for more than 30,000 audience members.