Invective (or A Boil in Your Armpit)
The play consists of a series of traditional Yiddish invectives–some direct, some in translated English–comprising single words, phrases, or sentences. The interpretive subtext should reveal intra-group annoyances and intolerance, then an about-face shift and uniting of forces in the face of outside-group hostility, followed by a final reversion to universal everyday man-to-man competition and intolerance: all representing a show-and-tell encapsulation of post-Diaspora Jewish life and history in alien cultures. (This play has been commended by the Jewish Plays Project, July 2024)
Cast
YUSEF. A Chassidic senior-- bearded, wearing a black yarmulke, the traditional gartel, tzitzis and karpota and carrying a prayer book while reading and davening. HERB. A Reformed Jewish senior--wearing a blue yarmulke, dressed casually and wearing a Star of David on a gold neck chain. A MAN. An anonymous non-Jewish everyman with certain elitist tendencies and ethnic biases.
Authors
Carmine Giordano