Theatre professor wins national playwriting competition

In January, theatre historian Dr. Jennifer Wise’s play The Girl Rabbi of the Golden West was announced the winner of the 2013 Canadian Jewish Playwriting Competition by the Miles Nadal Centre in Toronto. Her play depicts the amazing true story of how, in 1895, in Victoria, Miss Ray Frank became the first woman to serve as rabbi for an orthodox synagogue throughout the High Holidays. Commissioned as part of Congregation Emanu-El’s 150th anniversary celebrations, the play was performed last spring to a packed audience in the very building where the historic events occurred. The play will be presented in Toronto next Fall at the 2014 Between Stages series with the original director, Liza Balkan. Wise is the author of The Moons of Jupiter (2009), Dionysus Writes (Cornell 1998), and co-editor of The Broadview Anthology of Drama. Her translation of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (Methuen 2013) was chosen by Brecht’s heirs as the first new English version of this play in almost 40 years.