A Play in Two Acts Based on Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer

Isaac Bashevis Singer (Author), Patricia Spaeth (Author)

This play adaption brings together some of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s most beloved stories for children in a two-act performance for the whole family. Stories featured in the play have been taken from the following works. Details have been changed to interweave the stories.

1) Zlateh The Goat and Other Stories (1966)
2) A Day of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing Up in Warsaw (1969)
3) The Fools of Chelm and their History (1973)
4) Naftali the Storyteller and His Horse Sus and Other Stories (1976)
5) The Power of Light – Eight Stories for Hanukkah (1980)
6) Stories for Children (1984)
7) More Stories From My Father’s Court (2000)

Based on Singer’s short story, “The Cafeteria”

Isaac Bashevis Singer (Author), Rhys Adrian (Author)

The Cafeteria first appeared in English in The New Yorker in 1968, this adaptation was written and produced for BBC2 Playhouse, airing on August 13, 1974. The script has been modified for this Playsmith edition to be performed as a one-act play on a bare stage with furniture and props. Minor edits have been made for the sake of live performance.

6 characters, doubling permitted

A play based on Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short story “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy”

by Isaac Bashevis Singer (Author), Emily Mann (Author)

A rabbi's daughter in 19th century Poland has studied the Torah and refuses to play the hausfrau role traditionally allotted to Jewish women. When her father dies, she disguises herself as a man and flees to another town where she continues her studies and becomes involved in an unusual romantic triangle.

"Delightful." - Newsweek

"Touching and deeply funny." - NBC

Adapted from the novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer

by Isaac Bashevis Singer (Author), Leah Napolin (Author)

Set in the 1950s on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, MESHUGAH is a tragicomic portrait of a community of recent Jewish émigrés living in the wake of the Holocaust. When Aaron Greidinger, a struggling novelist and advice columnist, falls in love with the beautiful mistress of a friend from his Warsaw past, dark secrets and bizarre twists threaten to break up the unusual romance. Emily Mann brings to swirling theatrical life Singer’s poignant love story of lost souls in a world gone meshugah.

“A Nobel–worthy combination of good-natured mockery and compassion.” —The New York Times.

“Here, at last, is a play that successfully translates Singer’s moody brilliance to the stage.” —Associated Press.

A play based on Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short story

by Isaac Bashevis Singer (Author), Eve Friedman (Author)

In a Polish Jewish village about a hundred years ago lives Teibele, a young attractive woman whose husband has deserted her and apparently disappeared. So Teibele can't remarry until he's legally declared dead. Enter the "demon" who's actually Alchonon, a woe begone, unemployed scholar despised by Teibele. But he knows of her fascination for biblical demons and their powers and devises an audacious plan to woo and win her in the dark. Thus he seduces the passionate Teibele and comes to adore her. But Alchonon wants to marry her and a domesticated demon would be too much for even guileless Teibele to accept. So Alchonon devises another scheme to make this come about but it wouldn't be fair to tell you the outcome.

"Rare theatrical magic ... moving and full of wonder" - N.Y. Daily News.

"Fabulous, erotic, funny, delightful, different and touching." - N.Y. Post.

"Wonderful, exceptional, delightfully imaginative, charming." - WCBS TV2.

A Play in Two Acts, Based on Isaac Bashevis Singer’s story, “Sam Palka and David Vishkover”

Written and adapted by the author

First published in Yiddish in Di goldene keyt in 1973 as “Eyn emese libe (One True Love),” and one year later in English in The New Yorkeras “Sam Palka and David Vishkover,” Singer’s story of a Park Avenue millionaire living a double life formed the basis for his original play, Old Love. Unlike the story, however, the play incorporates a variety of characters and social issues including art and literature, polyamory, sexual orientation, and generation gaps. The result is a multilayered dramatic work that questions what it means to be original.

“’Sam Palka and David Vishkover’ is one of the most provocative short fictions of the last decade. . . . In the illumination of the ordinary, in the acuity of his observations, Singer is sounding a theme that has not been heard in a hundred years.”
—TIME Magazine on the original story

by Isaac Bashevis Singer (Author), Joan Silver (Author)

A one-act play based on the story by Isaac Bashevis Singer, Adapted by Joan Silver

“The Shadow of a Crib” was collected in his 1961 collection The Spinoza of Market Street and Other Stories—this one-act adaptation brings the tragicomic irony of the shtetl to life. Staged in March 1966 by the Jewish Community Center of Cleveland’s Performing Arts Department, it was adapted by Joan Silver, produced by Mark Feder, and directed by Dorothy Silver. The play was originally staged with a one-act adaptation of “The Man Who Came Back” and has been edited to be performed either as an evening of two one-acts or on its own.

by Isaac Bashevis Singer (Author), Joan Silver (Author)

A one-act play based on the story by Isaac Bashevis Singer, Adapted by Joan Silver

“The Man Who Came Back” was collected in his 1961 collection The Spinoza of Market Street and Other Stories—this one-act adaptation brings the tragicomic irony of the shtetl to life. Staged in March 1966 by the Jewish Community Center of Cleveland’s Performing Arts Department, it was adapted by Joan Silver, produced by Mark Feder, and directed by Dorothy Silver. The play was originally staged with a one-act adaptation of “The Shadow of a Crib” and has been edited to be performed either as an evening of two one-acts or on its own.

by Isaac Bashevis Singer (Author), Roy Chen (Author)

Set in New York City in 1949, ENEMIES, A LOVE STORY tells the story of Herman Broder, a Holocaust survivor who was hidden in a hayloft and cared for by his Polish servant, Yadwiga during World War II. Now in America, Herman marries Yadwiga while engaging in an affair with Masha, another Holocaust survivor.

Herman poses as a traveling book salesman to Yadwiga while working as a ghostwriter for a corrupt rabbi. He is filled with constant paranoia and perpetual desperation, made more complicated when his first wife Tamara—who he believed had died in the Holocaust—turns out to have survived and makes her way to America to find him. Herman, drawn to each woman, marries Masha, lives with Tamara, and fathers a child with Yadwiga, until all length, the three women learn the truth about one another.

Each of the women proposes a solution to Herman’s dilemma. But there is no solution for him. Living in a web of lies, Herman continues tormented by both the past and the present.

By Isaac Bashevis Singer (Author)

Isaac Bashevis Singer’s The Mirror was written for the Yale Repertory Theater production in 1972-1973. Set in a shtetl in Poland, the play is based on Singer’s 1955 story of the same name, originally narrated by the demon. It deals with sexual fantasies born of denial, neglect, and repression, delving into the netherworld to discover that demons are not very different from human beings.

From the New York Times:

“The Mirror . . . is an erotic and moral fable dramatizing, among other things, the dangers of fulfilling daydreams. . . .The work is full of bizarre absurdities, magic potions, exorcisms and incantations but the author—with his tongue in cheek—never loses sight of humanity. This is Singer in a playful mood.

By Isaac Bashevis Singer (Author), Debra Caplan (Translator), David Stromberg (Translator)

Likely written in the 1950s, Sodom is an original play by the Polish-born Jewish-American laureate of the Nobel Prize for Literature. The play, based on the biblical tale of Lot and the destruction of Sodom, treats themes to which Singer returned over throughout his career such as corruption and repentance.

Sodom exhibits Singer's ability to move between comedy, political satire, and spiritual sentiment, all within a play that is loyal to its biblical sources. Portraying such canonical characters as Lot and Abraham, the play shifts from comedic dialogue, to critiques of totalitarianism, to expressions of awe and faith, capturing the fear and trembling of those who believe they have seen the great powers of the Abrahamic God.

The play is both a biblical comedy and a spiritual affirmation of the human need for the Divine.