Dr. Ruth
06 Dec
Arts & Culture, Latest, Zoominars

Becoming Dr. Ruth with Ruth K. Westheimer and Tovah Feldshuh

Ruth K. Westheimer has led a remarkable life. Long before she became a world-famous sex therapist, she escaped the Holocaust on the Kindertransport to Switzerland and was a teenage sharpshooter in the Haganah. As a young woman she studied and taught at the university in Paris before making her way to the United States—and “becoming Dr Ruth.” She is in conversation about how to live life to the fullest with Tovah Feldshuh, the six-time Tony- and Emmy-nominated actor who plays her in the Off-Broadway show Becoming Dr Ruth. Westheimer and Feldshuh are joined by Moment editor-in-chief Nadine Epstein.

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17 Sep
Beshert, Latest

Beshert | Miracle on 44th Street

“Most nights, there was one stray ticket that theaters were happy to sell cheap to a college girl with a debit card and frizzy hair. Not the case at The St. James Theater on West 44th Street, home to The Producers. You couldn’t get this ticket at TKTS and it was years before you could buy resold tickets online. Night after night, The St. James was my first stop to see if there was a ticket for sale. And night after night, the same ticket lady would turn me away. Until now.”

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03 Jul
Arts & Culture, Latest

Twitter Explained | Should the Hype for Hamilton Be Real?

There’s no doubt that Hamilton will become part of larger conversations rethinking depictions of the founding fathers, right alongside the statues and history books that society is beginning to pick apart in an attempt to rectify America’s long history of racial injustices. But today, on what Twitter has ordained Hamilton Day, people seem to be taking a moment to just enjoy the show for it’s groundbreaking, once in a lifetime artfulness, appreciating how lucky we are to be alive right now. 

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09 Mar
Arts & Culture, Latest

Broadway Songwriting Team Celebrate 65 Years of Creative Friendship

“In the theater you are either Jewish, Italian or gay and I chose Jewish,” says Protestant-born lyricist Richard Maltby Jr. during a conference call that includes his long time Jewish collaborator, composer David Shire. “Musical theater is so profoundly Jewish—it’s like living in a Kibbutz—you can’t help becoming Jewish. Also, my wife is Jewish, my children are Jewish and we belong to a temple.”

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19 Dec
Arts & Culture, Latest

Maury Yeston Looks at the Past, Present and Future in an Off-Broadway Show

Looking back at his almost 40-year career as a multi-award winning musical theater composer-lyricist (Nine, Titanic, Grand Hotel, Death Takes a Holiday), Maury Yeston doesn’t want to single out his favorite production, but rather celebrate achieving his elusive goal: “living a life devoted to and occupied with composing music and lyrics,” he says. “I didn’t have to give up my dreams to go to medical school or law school.” Even in retrospect, Yeston marvels. And to commemorate his impressive contribution, Off-Broadway’s York Theatre Company is presenting a compilation of his songs, Anything Can Happen in the Theater, The Musical World of Maury Yeston (running through December 29th). Starring five versatile performers seamlessly slipping in and out of disparate characters from a range of his shows, the piece was conceived and directed by Tony Award-winning Gerard Alessandrini,...

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12 Jul
Arts & Culture, Latest

The (Soul) Doctor is In

The rabbi is dancing and singing, his congregation swooning, his synagogue…absent. We are watching an actor only pretend to be a rabbi and are sitting in the (not-so) holy confines of a Broadway theatre, watching a preview of the new musical Soul Doctor. The musical chronicles the life of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach (Eric Anderson), focusing on his active years as a “troubadour.”  The show also gives insight into the relationship between Carlebach and the famous jazz singer Nina Simone (Amber Iman), as friends who inspire one another. (The show doesn’t delve into real-life rumors of a romantic relationship). Born in Germany in 1925, Carlebach moved to America in the late 1930s to escape the Nazis. In the U.S., Carlebach excelled as a Torah scholar and was a member of the Lubavitch movement. Carlebach gave up the...

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03 May
Arts & Culture

The Jewish Side of "The Book of Mormon."

by Amanda Walgrove Joseph Smith first published The Book of Mormon in March 1830. About 180 years later, The Book of Mormon made its Broadway debut at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre. Tag-lined as "God's Favorite Musical," the hysterical satire is unsurprisingly offensive and appalling, but wrapped around a heartfelt and sympathetic tale. Written by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, along with Robert Lopez of the Tony award-winning and equally groundbreaking Avenue Q, this original musical tells the story of two young men sent to Africa on their Mormon mission. Thrown into a God-loathing culture plagued by AIDS, murder and maggots, Elder Price and Elder Cunningham easily demand sympathy as they naively travel through their own religiously fueled bildungsroman. Lopez, who studied religion at Yale with Harold Bloom, said that he quickly developed an interest...

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03 May
Arts & Culture

The Jewish Side of “The Book of Mormon.”

by Amanda Walgrove Joseph Smith first published The Book of Mormon in March 1830. About 180 years later, The Book of Mormon made its Broadway debut at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre. Tag-lined as "God's Favorite Musical," the hysterical satire is unsurprisingly offensive and appalling, but wrapped around a heartfelt and sympathetic tale. Written by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, along with Robert Lopez of the Tony award-winning and equally groundbreaking Avenue Q, this original musical tells the story of two young men sent to Africa on their Mormon mission. Thrown into a God-loathing culture plagued by AIDS, murder and maggots, Elder Price and Elder Cunningham easily demand sympathy as they naively travel through their own religiously fueled bildungsroman. Lopez, who studied religion at Yale with Harold Bloom, said that he quickly developed an interest...

Continue reading