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ATJT was founded in 1978 by Corey Fischer, Albert Greenberg and Naomi Newman. In 1987, Helen Stoltzfus joined the ensemble. In 1998 Aaron Davidman joined and in 2001, Eric Rhys Miller became an associate artist. Karine Koret, who first apprenticed with the company in 1997  and acted in several productions in the 2003-04 season, will join TJT as an artist-in-residence for the 2004-05 season.

The company's longevity confirms the vitality of its work. That vitality comes, in no small measure, from TJT's willingness to take risks in both the form and content of the theatre it creates. TJT has created scores of  original works for the theatre. The sources for these works have ranged from the legends of the Hasidim to the assassination of Trotsky; from Yiddish poetry to the reclamation of women's wisdom; from the healing nature of storytelling to the challenge of interfaith marriage and from the politics of the Middle East to African-American/Jewish relations. ATJT does not deal with social or political issues in isolation. It searches for the living images that burn themselves into our consciousness. It recognizes that the roots of theatre lie in the realm of the mythic, the sacred and the communal; that theatre can be an instrument of healing for people and cultures.

ATJT has performed in over sixty cities world-wide, including Chicago, New York, Berlin, Oslo, Jerusalem and Whitesburg, Kentucky. Members of the ensemble also teach solo performance, improvisation and ensemble creation privately and through TJT's professional training programs. In addition, the company has produced a 4-part series for Public Radio International, entitled Heart of Wisdom: Audio Explorations in Jewish Culture.

The impulse to found the company grew out of a shared desire to create works of theatre that, while grounded in the specifics of the Jewish experience, would be accessible to audiences of diverse backgrounds. Fischer had been acting in film, television and theatre since 1968, just before founding TJT, he had been working in New York with Joseph Chaikin (the "Winter Project" of 1977 and 1978 and Chaikin's production of The Dybbuk at The Public Theater). Albert Greenberg, a singer and composer, had been increasingly drawn to experimental theatre as a more appropriate arena for his explorations in music and language. Naomi Newman, a classically trained singer with a strong background in Jewish culture, had been acting in Los Angeles theater and television while pursuing a second career in psychotherapy.

Forging a theatrical style that was influenced by the American avant-garde theatre of the 1960's, vaudeville, liturgy, and storytelling, and drawing on themes from Jewish history, legend, literature and folk tradition, the company developed three pieces that were co-written by Greenberg, Fischer and Newman, performed by Greenberg and Fischer and directed by Newman.

Between 1978 and 1982, TJT was based in Los Angeles where it performed at the L.A. Actors' Theatre (forerunner of the L.A. Theatre Center) and The Mark Taper Forum Laboratory and other venues. The company toured extensively to festivals, performing arts centers theatres and universities, including the New Theatre Festival in Baltimore, Theatre for the New City in New York and Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco.

In 1982, the company relocated to San Francisco, hired its first full-time managing director and embarked on its first tour abroad (Holland, Denmark and Israel). More U.S. touring followed as TJT sought the widest possible variety of audiences. The company performed in New York, Boston, Kentucky, Georgia, Maine, Utah, and California. In these years, the company formed an ongoing relationship with Roadside Theatre of Whitesburg Kentucky and The Junebug Theatre Project of New Orleans. This alliance contributed to the founding of An American Festival Project and, most recently, led to the collaboration between TJT and Junebug on Crossing the Broken Bridge.

In 1984, Naomi Newman joined the ensemble as a performer and, for the first time, the company collaborated with an outside director and a dramaturg (Michael Posnick and Susan Griffin, respectively). The piece that emerged in 1985, Berlin, Jerusalem and the Moon, was an examination of the condition of German Jewish intellectuals during the Weimar period juxtaposed with the American Jewish struggle for identity. Deepening the vocabulary that TJT had been developing, Berlin, Jerusalem and the Moon used masks and puppets, extended physical and vocal expression, extant and original music to create a work of enormous power and density that drew enthusiastic responses in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Oslo, Stockholm, Berlin, and Vienna.

In 1986, the company embarked on a new direction. Fischer and Newman each began developing solo works while Greenberg collaborated with guest artist Helen Stoltzfus on a work-in-progress. Out of this period of experimentation Snake Talk, Urgent Messages from the Mother, Newman's solo, emerged and became part of the company's permanent repertory.

In 1987, TJT had the good fortune to collaborate with director Joseph Chaikin and dramaturg Mira Rafalowicz during a six week "Special Project" supported by the National Endowment for the Arts. Although the results of this effort did not become part of the repertory, the experience of working with Chaikin and Rafalowicz marked the beginning of a period of artistic revitalization during which company members continued collaborating and studying with a wide range of theatre artists including director/dramaturgs Martha Boesing and Mark Samuels, the Roy Hart Theatre of France and Sweden 's Jordcirkus.

Other developments during this period including the addition of Helen Stoltzfus to the permanent ensemble, the production of Bruce Myers' two-actor version of The Dybbuk (the first time TJT worked with an extant script), the creation of Heart of the World in collaboration with Martha Boesing, and continued touring of the highly successful Snake Talk. Moreover, the company began forging alliances with several resident theatres around the country such as Chicago's Wisdom Bridge, The Eureka Theatre Company in San Francisco and The Group Theatre in Seattle.

In 1990 TJT became one of the first American theatres to tour post-Warsaw-pact Eastern Europe bringing Heart of the World- Greenberg and Stoltzfus’ exploration of intermarriage- and a revival of The Last Yiddish Poet, one of our earliest creations, to Bratislava and Prague in Czechoslovakia and to the Festival of Open Theatre in Wroclaw, Poland. Polish and Czech audiences and critics marveled at the sort of cultural pluralism that could give rise to a company like  Traveling Jewish Theatre. In a climate of growing divisiveness, the notion that cultural differences could be sources of celebration rather than enmity had an undeniably tonic value.

In 1991, the company entered the field of radio production. The California Humanities Council (with matching funds from The National Endowment for the Humanities) provided support for a series of sixty-minute programs on various aspects of Jewish culture explored in relationship to world culture. The series, Heart of Wisdom, been distributed by American Public Radio and broadcast on several hundred public radio stations across the country. All programs have been produced, written and narrated by ensemble members, in collaboration with independent radio producer, Claire Schoen.

During this same period, TJT founding member Naomi Newman and John O' Neal of the Junebug Theatre Project of New Orleans, began a long term collaboration with director Steven Kent on a piece exploring African-American/Jewish relations. The piece that evolved, Crossing the Broken Bridge, uses the lens of African-American/Jewish relations to examine the forces that divide and unite the human community. In several cities, such as Detroit and Los Angeles, the piece was co-produced by organizations in the African -American and Jewish communities who found themselves working together for the first time in many years. The piece had a double premiere at San Francisco's Life on the Water Theatre and at the Oakland Ensemble Theatre in June, 1993. And continues to tour extensively. Two solo works by Albert Greenberg (The Fatherless Sky) and Corey Fischer (Sometimes We Need a Story More Than Food), both directed by Helen Stoltzfus, were also completed between 1991 and 1993 and toured in the U.S. and in Europe.

In 1994, for the first time in its history, the company acquired its own theatre: a 2400 square foot space inside the artists’ cooperative, Project Artaud. The space opened with a seven-week run of The Last Yiddish Poet which sold out all performances.

In early 1994-95, TJT developed Trotsky and Frida, a new ensemble work, with guest director Mark Samuels, based on the meeting between Leon Trotsky and Frida Kahlo in Mexico in the 1940's. Trotsky played to full houses at The Center for The Arts in Yerba Buena Gardens, at Theatre Artaud and in our own theatre.

1996-97 saw the development and performance of two new works: Like a Mother Bear and Old Jewish and Queer along with a number a guest presentations and special events, including the first Summer Intensive Training in Ensemble Theatre Making. That initiateive has grown into ETOP, our Educational Outreach and Touring Program. Each year, young professional actors develop, under the direction of a company member, an original piece of theatre suitable for touring to a variety of "low-tech" venues like schools, synagogues and community centers.  This program gives young artists the opportunity to join a collaborative process that includes creating, revising and touring an original production. Since the program’s inception, two younger artists have become full company members.

After the 1997-98 season, which included the much praised revival of Dybbuk, (revived again in 2004) TJT ran a successful capital campaign and raised $750,000 for major renovations on its theatre. In the summer of 1998, a new entrance was created on Florida street, as well as a new lobby, a lift for wheelchair users and new dressing rooms. The space re-opened for the company's 20^th anniversary season (1998-99) with a new ensemble creation, Diamonds in the Dark, a music-theatre exploration of Yiddish poetry.

The company and its artists have received numerous awards including a lifetime achievement award from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture  and a Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays award for See Under: Love by Corey Fischer.  TJT’s production of  See Under: Love was named one of San Francisco’s ten best productions of 2001 by the San Francisco Chronicle and was nominated by the American Theatre Critics Association as one of the best American Plays of 2001. TJT’s 1985 play, Berlin, Jerusalem and the Moon, will be included in the first published anthology of American ensemble-created plays (TCG, 2004).

ATJT was one of eight American theatres to have been chosen to participate in the first cycle of TCG’s “New Generations” program, funded by the Doris Duke and Andrew W. Mellon Foundations.  The program, designed to mentor new leaders in the field, has made it possible for the company to gradually and organically bring one of its younger members into a position of leadership as several of the founding members begin to change their relationship with ATJT.  In July, 2002, Aaron Davidman, who had been working with the company for four years, became its Artistic Director. He works closely with Founding Member Corey Fischer, who remains active as a director, writer, actor and Associate Artistic Director and Founding Member Naomi Newman  who also advises, directs, performs, writes and initiates projects. Founding Member Albert Greenberg and Co-Artistic Director Helen Stotlzfus have gone on to work on projects of their own and retain the titles of Artists Emeriti.  Former apprentice Eric Rhys Miller has joined the company as Associate Artist.  In 2004, TJT once again received a "New Generations" grant; this time, Eric Rhys Miller will be mentored in collaborative ensemble creation by Naomi Newman.

In 2002, TJT created and presented an original family-oriented musical Chanukah play, Moonwatcher, which was extensively reworked  in 2003 and mounted at the ZEUM in San Francisco's Yerba Buena Gardens with the virtuostic San Francisco Klezmer Experience playing live for every performance. This new commitment to an annual celebration of family and community is another sign of the company's continuing evolution.

In 2003, the company began work on an ambitious international collaboration, The Middle East Project (working title) scheduled to open in spring, 2005.  To see past production's web pages, go to our archives directory

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