Fully staged productions of two short contemporary comedies by Bruce J. Bloom: “Daniel Ortega and Those Yom Kippur Blues” and “The Last Request of Eddie Carmichael/Cohen.”

by Bruce J. Bloom
Arthur Kleinman is looking for his lost faith in a Latino saloon, where he finds it’s easier to sin than he ever expected. Luis Valencia is his guide, but where to, heaven or hell?

by Bruce J. Bloom
On his deathbed Eddie Carmichael announces he’s Jewish, not Catholic, and that his real name is Cohen. As his dying wish he asks a Rabbi to marry him and Esther Goldman, a Jewish woman he met in the nursing home. Sister Veronica keeps insisting that Eddie is Catholic and delusional. Is he telling the truth? Is he lying? Or is he just plain crazy?

based on a play by Celeste Raspanti
Directed by Sharon Ohrenstein
We are partnering with the Holocaust Education Program at Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee for an exciting new adventure. Families will be welcomed along with our regular audiences to experience a one-hour adaptation of the powerful play based on a book of artwork created by the children at the Terezin Concentration Camp during WWII. One of the survivors, Raja, tells the true story of giving the children hope when there was little reason for hope, creating a world of laughter, flowers and butterflies behind the barbed wire. For the children, butterflies became a symbol of defiance, making it possible for them to live and play happily while waiting to be transported.

A traveling version of this production will be offered in partnership with The Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee to area high schools for Holocaust Education Week in November 2025.

Charles Troy squeezes these twists and turns into one packed program – the whole megillah – punctuated by klezmer music that mirrors the soul of a vibrant but distant era. Charles is an acclaimed musical theatre historian and graphic designer who has created over 60 multimedia presentations and has appeared before countless local and national audiences. He has given his programs in Sarasota for the last ten years, but never before presented “The Whole Megillah” here. This is his first presentation for Sarasota Jewish Theatre.

by Clark Young and Derek Goldman
Directed by Gus Kaikkonen
In a virtuoso performance, SJT favorite Michael Raver portrays the Polish World War II hero and Holocaust witness Jan Karski, who risked his life to carry his report of the Warsaw ghetto from war-torn Poland to the Allied Nations and the Oval Office, only to be met with inaction and disbelief. This story of moral courage and individual responsibility is a cautionary tale about the dangers of complacency and the ways in which a self-described “ordinary little man” can become a true hero.

by Charles Busch
Directed by Gus Kaikkonen
An uproarious, intelligently funny and satirically relevant comedy which ran for 777 performances on Broadway. When Marcia Taub, a middle-aged Upper West Side doctor’s wife who is devoted to mornings at the Whitney, afternoons at MOMA, and evenings at BAM, plunges into a mid-life crisis, the only thing that shakes her out of her lethargy is the reappearance of a fabulous, fascinating and somewhat mysterious childhood friend.

by David Gow
Directed by Diane Cepeda
SJT is repeating a play that was presented over Zoom in our first season in the midst of the pandemic. We believe that this play is so timely and important that it should be presented to a wider audience. When a white supremacist brutally attacks an immigrant and is assigned a Jewish public defender, both men’s lives are changed forever. Cherry Docs is even more relevant today than it was six years ago, raising issues about immigration, antisemitism and the law that are as immediate as today’s news.