Sara Tugman
Bais Chabad Torah Center
Presents
A MICHIGAN PREMIER of
i6
At:Ift
Startlingly
intimate!"
"Lucid, illuminating!"
"Entertaining LI
deeply moving!"
The
Lighter Side
-MICHAEL MEDVED, NY POST
-JANET MASLIN, NY TIMES
Playwright Rebecca Ritchie turns
tears to laughter in JETS premiere
of "The Shiva Queen."
-ELIE WIESEL
"For a confirmed secular pluralist
humanist socialist democratic
anti-theocratic Jew like me,
A Life Apart was revelatory,
exciting and hugely challenging.
It's a movie everyone should see."
SUZANNE CHESSLER
Special to The Jewish News
-TONY KUSHNER,
ANGELS IN AMERICA
A Film by
Menachem Dawn and Oren Rudaysky
Narrated by
Leonard Nimoy and Sarah Jessica Parker
Featuring
Pearl R. Gluck, Fiction & Poetry Editor, Response
A First Run Features Release
www.FirstRunFeatures.com
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strong sense of
humor fills writer
Rebecca Ritchie's
most recent play,
The Shiva Queen.
Ritchie describes her two-
act work, the next production
of the JewiSfi Ensemble.
Theatre. (JET), as a black
comedy that lets people laugh
at-themselves while experienc-
ing the satire and irony that
can unfold with each new
day.
The core humor is invested
in a character, Shirl Levine,
who earns a living by setting
up homes for shiva, the tradi-
tional week of mourning fol-
lowing a loved one's death. In
the process, Shirl does a little
Playwright Rebecca Ritchie: "I have to emphasize
matchmaking, particularly for
that the play is a comedy."
herself.
Based on encounters after
the death of the playwright's
have found it funny. I think it was
sister, The Shiva Queen leaves out the
cathartic for me."
tragedy of loss.
Ritchie is part of a family that has,
have to emphasize that the play
very large numbers of people with a
is a comedy and audiences react very
particular kind of cancer, giving her
well to it," said Ritchie, who intro-
firsthand knowledge of genetics in the
duced it during last season's staged
Jewish context and motivating her to
readings sponsored by JET. "It's not at
continue with genetic testing.
all an uncomfortable experience,
"I am very aware of the Jewish
although the events underlying it are
community's reaction to the news that
not comic.
there are mutations prevalent among
"My sister was an extraordinarily
us," said the playwright, a board
funny person, and all through her
member of the Jewish Family Servicc_ -_,
treatments [for cancer] she maintained
in Buffalo.
a marveloLis sense of humor. When
"There really is not very much any-
she died, I wrote this as though I were
body can do about it even if the muta-
talking to her, and I'm sure she would
tion pops up, and that underlies some
of
the action in The Shiva Queen."
Suzanne Chessler is a Farmington
Ritchie, 48, had a double, prophy-
Hills-based freelance writer.