New York Theatre Workshop

New York Theater Workshop will present three staged readings of Caryl Churchill's short play
Seven Jewish Children on March 25-27 at 7pm.

Each reading will be followed by a moderated discussion, with several notable authorities from both the Israeli/Jewish and Palestinian communities attending each performance to be a resource to the conversation. After the discussion, there will be a second reading of the 10-minute play.

Sam Gold will direct the reading, with casting to be announced shortly. Laura Flanders will be the moderator for the Wednesday March 25 th reading, Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon moderate the Thursday March 26 th reading and Mark Crispin Miller will moderate the Friday March 27 th reading.

As there has been a great deal of public discussion expressed about the play based either on reading it on the page, or merely hearsay, it is our intent to put the play where it belongs—on a stage and in the mouths of actors—so our community can encounter the play firsthand, and in a conducive environment for thoughtful and respectful discussion and consideration.

At the heart of New York Theatre Workshop's mission is the desire to present the work of artists whose visions
provoke, inspire and challenge us all. Caryl Churchill, one of the world's greatest living playwrights, has always been
an artist who has challenged us, and her short play SEVEN JEWISH CHILDREN is no exception. We have produced the work of Caryl Churchill for over the last eighteen years, and New York Theater Workshop and its audience have followed her wherever her fertile imagination has led us. She is an artist who has played indelible part in creating the New York Theatre Workshop. The journey we have taken with her has been, at times, joyful and affirming, at others, terrifying and bleak. What remains constant in her work is the unblinking eye she casts on the human soul, cataloguing its every waking thought and desire. In SEVEN JEWISH CHILDREN, Caryl addresses a deeply complicated conflict in a way that we hope the theater can uniquely address by engendering a dialogue on the most pressing issues facing society. We aim to present this work in a format that invites and encourages public discourse about the myriad of issues surrounding it.

The Cast (in alphabetical order):
Jon Robin Baitz
George Bartineff
Aya Cash
Michael Cristofer
Laura Esterman
Ebon Moss-Bachrach
Lola Pashalinski

After each night's discussion we will have an actor read the play again.
Here's who will be reading each night:
Wednesday – André Gregory
Thursday – Lisa Kron
Friday – Kathleen Chalfant and Wallace Shawn

MODERATOR BIOS

	Laura Flanders is the host of GRITtv on Free Speech TV, as well as the host of RadioNation. Flanders is also the author of BlueGrit: True Democrats Take Back Politics from the Politicians and Bushwomen: Tales of a Cynical Species. She wrote on Hillary Clinton in The Contenders and edited The W Effect: Sexual Politics in the Age of Bush.
	Tony Kushner 's plays include A Bright Room Called Day; Angels In America, Parts One and Two; Slavs!; Homebody/Kabul; and Caroline, or Change, a musical with composer Jeanine Tesori. He has written adaptations of Corneille's The Illusion, S.Y. Ansky's The Dybbuk, and Brecht's The Good Person of Sezuan and Mother Courage and Her Children; as well as English-language libretti for the operas Brundibar by Hans Krasa, and The Comedy on the Bridge by Bohuslav Martinu. He wrote the screenplays for Mike Nichols' film version of Angels In America and for Steven Spielberg's film, Munich . Recent books include Brundibar, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak; The Art of Maurice Sendak, 1980 to the Present; and Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, co-edited with Alisa Solomon.
	Alisa Solomon teaches at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where she directs the MA concentration in Arts and Culture. A long-time dramaturg, theater critic and political and cultural journalist, she has written, among other places, for The New York Times, The Nation, GuardianAmerica.com, WNYC radio, The Forward, American Theater, nextbook.org, and the Village Voice, where she was on the staff for 21 years, covering theater and such areas as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, US immigration policy, and women’s sports. A contributing editor to the weekly radio program, Beyond the Pale: Jewish Politics and Culture (WBAI), she is also the author of Re-Dressing the Canon: Essays on Theater and Gender (winner of the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism), and co-editor (with Tony Kushner) of Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
	Mark Crispin Miller is a Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. He is the author of several books, including Boxed In:The Culture of TV; The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder; Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney’s New World Order and Fooled Again: The Real Case for Electoral Reform. He is also the editor of Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008. His essays and articles have appeared in many journals, magazines and newspapers throughout the nation and the world, and he has given countless interviews worldwide.

SOME THOUGHTS FOR THE AUDIENCE
SEEING “SEVEN JEWISH CHILDREN”
By Kenneth Stern
Director on Antisemitism and Extremism, American Jewish Committee

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