INTERVIEW: Finding connections across faiths in ‘The Sabbath Girl’
Photo: From left, Angelina Fiordellisi and Lauren Annunziata star in The Sabbath Girl at 59E59 Theaters. Photo courtesy of Carol Rosegg / Provided by 59E59.
Writer Cary Gitter’s new play, The Sabbath Girl, looks at a budding relationship between two people from different cultural backgrounds and faith communities. The romantic comedy, which began while Gitter was at Ensemble Studio Theatre, comes to New York City’s 59E59 Theaters in a production by Penguin Rep Theatre in Stony Point, New York.
“I wrote this play initially a couple years ago in the summer of 2017, and I was at the time a member of the Youngblood playwrights group at the Ensemble Studio Theatre, which is a collective for emerging playwrights under 30,” Gitter said in a recent phone interview. “So I had a small reading of the play at EST at that time, and then about a year later, in the summer of 2018, we did a reading of it at New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch. And an actor who was in that reading had worked up at Penguin Rep in Stony Point and said, ‘Hey, I think Joe Brancato who runs Penguin might like this play. Do you mind if I send it to him?’ So this actor sent Joe the play, and Joe contacted me.”
Gitter, who also wrote the play How My Grandparents Fell in Love, was familiar with Penguin because the writer grew up in Bergen County, New Jersey, not far from Stony Point.
“So over the course of a few months we did a few private readings with Joe, and he decided to do it,” Gitter remembers. “So we debuted the play last summer up at Penguin and had a very successful run and decided to bring it to the city, so that’s how we got to where we are now.”
The play surrounds the story of Angie, who is living quite the New York City life. She has a hip job at an art gallery and a new apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, according to press notes. Her neighbor is Seth, a divorced Orthodox Jew with a knish store on the Lower East Side. The two begin a relationship, finding connections and romance in their lives.
The story of Angie and Seth has changed quite a lot since those early days in the development process.
“I wrote a whole new draft after I met Joe and we started talking about the play,” Gitter said. “And then over the course of rehearsals last summer, we really overhauled the script and did a ton of rewriting and reworking up until our first performance at Penguin. Now the way Joe approaches things is that it’s always alive and open to change, so even though we’ve already mounted the production and it’s gone well, we’re sort of approaching it with fresh eyes even now. So we’re still working on the script and everything, but it’s quite a bit different than it was at the very start.”
Gitter said the play has some autobiographical elements, but it’s mostly fictional. For example, he grew up with a father who was Jewish and a mother who was Italian, so he had relatives from different heritages on either side of his family.
“My mother eventually converted just because she ended up falling in love with Judaism,” he said. “Those dual influences in terms of my own background informed the play, even though it’s not directly autobiographical, and also it’s a very New York story. So the experience of being in New York, seeing different kinds of people interact and cross-pollinate and unlikely connections form, that was a big influence.”
Even though the play might appear to dive into serious issues of connectivity across cultures and religions, at its heart The Sabbath Girl is a romantic comedy with plenty of laughs.
“It’s a comedy for sure,” Gitter said. “It’s got a sort of warm, light-hearted spirit, but it also deals with some dramatic things. The main male character, Seth, is Orthodox and kind of going through a crisis of faith, and it also deals with the difficulties of two people from very different worlds trying to navigate that. So it tackles some real things, but certainly with a comedic, romantic spirit for sure. It’s got a Nora Ephron vibe with a New York sensibility.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Sabbath Girl, written by Cary Gitter, is now playing 59E59 Theaters in New York City. The Penguin Rep Theatre production is directed by Joe Brancato. Click here for more information and tickets.
