S4E12 Best of: When Does an Artist Become Jewish First? (W/ Andrea Stolowitz)

This is a re-release of Season 3, Episode 36.

In this conversation with playwright Andrea Stolowitz, I found myself moving back and forth with her between cities, art forms, and identities. We begin with the contrast between New York and Portland—how New York's sheer density of artistic life (and vastly stronger funding) can make theater feel culturally central, while Portland as a City has to keep stretching to match the artistic talent here.  We talk about what it means to make live theater now, when audiences are trained toward screens and when nonprofit theaters are financially squeezed into taking fewer risks. Andrea describes theater as an "artisanal bread" enterprise—inefficient, expensive, and irreplaceably real—especially in an age when people are increasingly unsure what's authentic.

We talk about The Berlin Diaries, where she uses her great-grandfather's 1939 diary and a journey to Berlin to ask a blunt, painful question: how much of her family's dysfunction is Holocaust inheritance, and how much is ordinary human messiness. What emerges is not just trauma, but the power of omission—the knowledge that never got passed down, the silences that shape identity as much as the facts that are spoken.

We end in the present: the constraints and anxieties around representation, the way scarcity turns "radical hospitality" into competition, and how post–Oct. 7 realities have pushed Andrea to put Jewishness closer to the center of her work—and to confront the fact that sometimes, making art means you can't just compile voices; you have to own an argument. Enjoy the conversation.

The Art/Lab Podcast: Conversations About Jewish Arts and Culture is conceived of and created by Rabbi Josh Rose, and is a program of Art/Lab: Innovating Jewish Arts and Culture.

Links:

Art/Lab: artlabpdx.org

Andrea's website: https://andreastolowitz.com/

Berlin Diaries Audio Drama: https://vimeo.com/1164043554?fl=pl&fe=sh

Abbey Theatre: https://www.abbeytheatre.ie

Sabbath Queen:https://www.sabbathqueen.com

Numbered Be Our Days: https://www.cyclonerep.com/numbered-be-our-days