Tap dancing klezmer, Ed Asner, 147 different films, Melanie Chartoff and Laraine Newman

By Keren Engelberg
Published on October 26, 2006

Hoof it downtown to the George and Skaye Aratani/Japan America Theatre this evening for Rhapsody in Taps' 25th Anniversary Concert.
Alexandra More's fabulous Celebrity Staged Play Readings series is back for another season with this weekend's "Benya the King," a comedy inspired by the story of Benya in Isaac Babel's "Tales of Odessa.
"Playwright Howard Barker's humanizing portrait of the biblical heroine Judith is produced at Theatre of NOTE starting this week. "Judith: A Parting from the Body," delves into the apocryphal story of the wealthy Hebrew widow who saved her people by bedding the enemy Assyrian general Holofernes and decapitating him.

Live From Hillel—It’s Laraine!

By Naomi Pfefferman
Published on January 23, 2003

Fans of the legendary first seasons of "Saturday Night Live" remember Laraine Newman sashaying with Gilda Radner in the hilarious faux commercial for "Jewess Jeans." They recall her Barbra Streisand impression and her angry beatnik character reciting bad poetry in nasal Brooklynese. But Newman, 50, will reveal one of her more serious roles when she's honored at Hillel at Pierce & Valley Colleges' Comedy Nite 2003 on Feb. 1: her involvement with the Jewish community. The granddaughter of an Arizona Jewish cattle rancher, Newman will describe how she grew up so assimilated that "all my Jewish friends went to Hess Kramer but I was shlepped off to Camp Trinity."