A small bird – thought to be extinct — cried plaintively on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. By sheer miraculous coincidence, a wildlife biologist wandering in the woods caught the call, recorded it, and played it back for the bird to hear.
The bird responded joyously, calling and calling and calling a mating call, but the joyous song soon faded. There was no response.
It was the song of the last Kauaʻi ʻōʻō, finally declared extinct last year.
“The Last Yiddish Speaker,” InterAct Theatre Company’s current production, was inspired by the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō’s story, playwright Deborah Zoe Laufer said.
The play, written more than a year before the latest situation in Israel and Gaza, closes April 21.
“The bird was calling for an answer that would never come,” Laufer said. “I found that painful and moving.”
Of course, as the play’s title suggests, there is so much more.
“I was really deeply disturbed by the January 6 insurrection,” Laufer said, remembering her horror as rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol. “I thought, `is this the end? Is our democracy completely ended?’”
“Now I’m completely unnerved by what might happen in this election.”
With January 6 fresh in her mind, Laufer began to write “The Last Yiddish Speaker” about a post-election dystopian America, run by white Christian nationalists who persecute the nation’s Jews. A father and daughter survive one round of attacks and flee to upstate New York (where Laufer lives), passing as Christians.
Their tenuous tranquility is threatened when an ancient Jewish woman is deposited on their door. Will they save her or themselves? Will the woman become the last Yiddish speaker?
“I wanted to write about the insurrection, the rise of antisemitism, and the death of all these species,” she said. “What if the insurrection had been successful and it was a white Christian nationalist country, and everyone had been disappeared or fled?”
The show’s director, Seth Rozin, said in a press release that when he first read Laufer’s play a year ago, he found it to be “an incredibly moving and human story set against a terrifying backdrop, as it imagines an America that is only a successful insurrection and a slippery slope away from descending into a white supremacist autocracy.”
“Now, months into Israel’s war with Hamas, with antisemitism sharply rising, and democracy teetering on the edge, the play feels absolutely urgent,” he said.
Rozin, who is InterAct’s founder and artistic director, describes the work as “a cautionary tale for our time, filled with warmth, humor and humanity.”
Laufer grew up in a small town in upstate New York where she was the only Jewish kid on the school bus. Some of her classmates, she said, thought she grew [devil’s] horns at night. Her father fought in World War II “and like many others came back damaged and very, very paranoid. He raised us to believe we were threatened. I had good reason to feel afraid.”
“I have a lot of friends who have been raised among a lot of Jews and never think it could happen here,” Laufer said, describing them as too complacent. “That almost makes me more afraid, so I say, pay attention.’”
Laufer’s oeuvre skews funny, and these days, she is broadening her scope to create her own stand-up comedy routines, usually Jewish-themed. “I’d love to have a one-woman show,” she said.
“`The Last Yiddish Speaker,’” a finalist for this year’s Jewish Play Project contest, gets a lot of laughs every night which is very comforting because it’s very heavy,” she said.
“I usually write hopeful plays, but I can’t really call this a hopeful play,” she said. “I guess it’s a warning shot” aimed at motivating the audience to action.
“I’d like them to vote,” she said. People say, ‘it’s a choice between the lesser of two evils.’ It’s not. It’s a choice between evil versus decency.”
Her play was already in workshops when Hamas fighters attacked Israel on Oct. 7, unlocking strong emotions on every side.
“My heart is broken about what is happening. It’s broken in a million different ways,” Laufer said. “I wish they could get rid of [Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, I wish the hostages would be returned. I wish people weren’t despising Jews because of what is happening in Israel, and I wish all those people weren’t having their lives destroyed in Gaza. There’s not one good thing to say about it.”
“History rewrites my plays faster than I can,” she said.
InterAct is presenting “The Last Yiddish Speaker” as part of a season of works by all-female playwrights.
Laufer will be at the theater for a post-show talkback after the Saturday, April 13 for the 2 p.m. matinee. Other weekend post-matinee talkbacks include Penn professor Ian Lustick, an expert on Middle East politics, on April 14; actor Stephanie Satie (who plays the elderly Jewish woman) on April 20; and on April 21, Mike Brewer, an engagement manager for Tribe 12, which connects people in their 20s and 30s to Philadelphia’s Jewish community. Director Seth Rozin facilitates post-show discussions on April 17 and 18.
“The Last Yiddish Speaker,” InterAct Theatre Co., through April 21, Drake Theatre, 302 S. Hicks St., Phila. 215-568-8079
Four other theater groups are also presenting Jewish-themed plays this spring.
- “The Lehman Brothers,” about the history of a Jewish business family, closes April 14 at the Arden Theatre Co., 40 N. 2d St., Phila. 215-922-1122.
- Players Club of Swarthmore offers the beloved story of “The Diary of Anne Frank” April 19 through May 4, in Swarthmore at 614 Fairview Rd. 610-328-4271.
- Curio Theatre Co. presents a klezmer musical, “Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story,” April 24 through May 11 at Calvary Community Center, 4740 Baltimore Ave., Phila. 215-921-8243.
- Sholem Asch’s “The Dead Man,” about a vision of hope, will be performed by Theatre Ariel at 8 p.m. on May 18 at Temple Beth Am Israel, 1301 Hagys Ford Rd., Penn Valley and at 1 p.m. May 19 in Philadelphia’s West Mount Airy neighborhood (location available to ticket buyers). 610-667-9230.
