"If not now, when?" This was once the question of the Jewish Talmudic sage Hillel. And Laurie Katz, a College senior, asked this question when she successfully applied to teh B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation to receive a grant to a Jewish theater company on campus. "When I returned to Penn from my summer in Israel and learned about...Jewish theater projects, I realized the tremendous need for an potential impact of, a high-quality Jewish theater company on Penn's campus," Katz said in her application for $2000 grant. With funding provided by the B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation Irving and Sarah Pitt Institute for Student Leadership's Campus Creativity Grant, Katz has turned her vision of the University of Pennsylvania Hillel Theater Company into a reality. The new theater group plans "to bring high quality Jewish drama to campus, and to make it on par with other artistic and theater grous," according to Hillel Assistant Director Sharon Stiefel. In the past, Stiefel said, Hillel has only performed dramatic productions for its own audiences. In part, this is because many Jewish performers are shomer shabbos - unable to perform or rehearse on the Jewish sabbath, from Friday night through Saturday night. The Hillel Theater Company, however, will accomodate these students' needs be neither rehearsing nor performing on the sabbath. "Now, we can share [this] creativity with the rest of campus," Stiefel said. One of the group's major goals, according to fellow coordinator and College junior Daphna Shapiro, is "to have a Jewish voice in the dramatic avenue of creative expression." The group plans to put on productions with Jewish content and characters, dealing with topics and issues of concern to Jewish community. For the first production, the group will perform Anski's play The Dybulk. According to Katz, the play is intense and deals with Jewish superstitions. "It's not very modern," Katz said, "but we prefered something innovative." The play will be performed during the Jewish holiday of Purim, on March 18, 19 and 21 in the Harold Prince Studio Theater of Annenberg Center. The group will be composed of any undergraduates, graduate students, faculty members and staff who wish to contribue their time to the project, whether they are Jewish or non-Jewish. All actors , however, will be students. While the group will be fundamentally student-run, the company has employed Deborah Block, a professional director, to assist with the production. The group plans to produce one drama piece per semester. Under consideration for the future are plays ranging from a Holocaust drama to a Neil Simon comedy. Auditions will be held this weekend on Friday, January 24 from 12 noon to 4 p.m. in room 304 of Houston Hall, and on Saturday, January 25 from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. in High Rise South. The founding members of the group are very excited about the upcoming production, as well as performances in years to come. "I hope that this will be an establishment that will keep going beyond this year, adding to the arts community on campus," Shapiro said.
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