The Santa Monica Playhouse Benefit Series presents..
Dress British Think Yiddish
Written & performed by Suzanne Levy, directed by Stacie Chaiken
Bangers and mash at school lunch, chopped liver with gribenes at home; morris dancing with jingling bells, the kazatzkah at family weddings; politely murmuring “biscuit anyone?” at work as a BBC producer, kvetching about cold kneidlach at Friday night family dinners. Writer/performer Suzanne Levy juggles the tsuris and joy of sparring identities in this funny, poignant solo play about growing up Jewish in the UK.
In her limited spare time from a demanding journalistic career, Suzanne has always written what she calls “vignettes”, scenes from her life, first in London and then in New York and Los Angeles, for her own amusement.
Settled in the US, she recalled life as a Jew in Britain, where she constantly and consciously navigated those two dueling identities, in stark contrast with the more integrated experience of most American Jews. At the encouragement of a friend, she started exploring the sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking moments that highlighted her split sense of self. Those moments became the play Dress British, Think Yiddish.
That same friend put her in touch with Stacie Chaiken, an acclaimed writer and performer of solo plays, who runs What’s the Story? LA, a workshop for “artists wrestling with personal story.” Stacie encouraged her to write even more honestly, relentlessly stripping things down to get to the messy heart of her feelings about it all. It was a difficult process, one which she resisted. But it gave her the confidence to create a solo show, with Stacie as director. With a post-covid realization that you do, truly, only live once, she's excited to be bringing it to the stage for the first time.
The title Dress British Think Yiddish comes from a slogan that was printed on buttons in the 1960’s.
In her limited spare time from a demanding journalistic career, Suzanne has always written what she calls “vignettes”, scenes from her life, first in London and then in New York and Los Angeles, for her own amusement.
Settled in the US, she recalled life as a Jew in Britain, where she constantly and consciously navigated those two dueling identities, in stark contrast with the more integrated experience of most American Jews. At the encouragement of a friend, she started exploring the sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking moments that highlighted her split sense of self. Those moments became the play Dress British, Think Yiddish.
That same friend put her in touch with Stacie Chaiken, an acclaimed writer and performer of solo plays, who runs What’s the Story? LA, a workshop for “artists wrestling with personal story.” Stacie encouraged her to write even more honestly, relentlessly stripping things down to get to the messy heart of her feelings about it all. It was a difficult process, one which she resisted. But it gave her the confidence to create a solo show, with Stacie as director. With a post-covid realization that you do, truly, only live once, she's excited to be bringing it to the stage for the first time.
The title Dress British Think Yiddish comes from a slogan that was printed on buttons in the 1960’s.
Credits:
Director: Stacie Chaiken Graphic design: Julia Holtzman Lighting design: Tess Holtzman Headshot: Robbie Staley
Director: Stacie Chaiken Graphic design: Julia Holtzman Lighting design: Tess Holtzman Headshot: Robbie Staley
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Suzanne Levy is an award-winning British-born journalist, now living in Los Angeles, who’s worked for the BBC, NPR, PBS and other three-letter organizations in the US and the UK. (She’s also worked for longer ones). As an actor, she performed at the Edinburgh festival and in community theater in London. One day she realized that while she was expert at telling other people’s stories, she’d never told her own. So she sat down and wrote her one-woman play about the identity-stretching experience of growing up Jewish in the UK. Yes, she likes bagels, lox, and a schmear of cream cheese. Yes, she likes tea. Sometimes she likes them together.
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Director Stacie Chaiken is the founder of What’s the Story? LA, a workshop for writers and performers making compelling stuff based on personal material. As a writer-performer, her solo play The Dig, death, Genesis + the double helix, about an archeologist digging in the Middle East, received the 2017 Los Angeles Stage Raw Theatre Award for Solo Performance. Other plays include Looking for Louie, about immigrant family secrets, and What She Left, based on World War Two partisan narratives. Her current project Terrain Vague [Empty Space] is a performance-excavation of one square block in Downtown Los Angeles. staciechaiken.com
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The Santa Monica Playhouse Benefit Series is an innovative program that presents extremely limited engagements of new and developing works by emerging and renowned local, national and international artists. Solo shows, concerts, spoken word and poetry nights, dance evenings, performance art and full productions, give voice to new material and artists who might otherwise not have a platform for their works.
Santa Monica Playhouse programs are supported in part by generous grants from the City of Santa Monica and the Santa Monica Arts Commission, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, and by Playhouse PALS.
Santa Monica Playhouse programs are supported in part by generous grants from the City of Santa Monica and the Santa Monica Arts Commission, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, and by Playhouse PALS.
Santa Monica Playhouse Reserves the Right to Cancel or Reschedule Performances Without Prior Notice.