San Francisco Theater Will Close After 35 Years
A 35-year-old Jewish theater in San Francisco will close this year at the end of its new season.
The Jewish Theatre San Francisco, also known as A Traveling Jewish Theatre, had financial problems that were exacerbated by the global financial crisis.
“We lost over 50 percent of our funding all at once,” Executive Director Sara Schwartz Geller told the San Francisco Chronicle. She added that the decision to close was influenced as well by the question of “whether there is still need for a specifically Jewish theater in the Bay Area.”
The theater was founded as a touring ensemble with a collective leadership in 1978, premiering with a staging of “Coming From a Great Distance,” followed by “The Last Yiddish Poet.” Transitioning in the 1990s to a more traditional format, and settling into its own theater building, its debt grew to $400,000 by 2008.
The final season will include premieres of “In the Maze of Our Own Lives,” by theater co-founder Corey Fischer; “Wrestling Jerusalem,” a solo show by the theater’s former artistic director, Aaron Davidman, about a progressive Bay Area Jew in Israel; and readings of a work about Grace Paley by co-founder Naomi Newman.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
