Minnestota Jewish Theatre Announces Line-up For 15th Season, Opens 10/24

Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company will open its 15th anniversary season on October 24, 2009. For the past 14 years the Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company (MJTC) has been igniting your mind by touching your heart with acclaimed regional premiere productions such as Old Wicked Songs, The Magic Dreidels, Rose, Family Secrets, Miklat, Women Before a Glass, Parade, and 2.5 Minute Ride. In our 15th anniversary season, 2009-2010, we continue the tradition of excellence and thought provoking theater.

The 2009-2010 will open with the regional premiere of Moonlight and Magnolias by Ron Hutchinson, running October 24 - November 15, 2009. Moonlight and Magnolias is a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Gone with the Wind! When legendary producer David O. Selznick decides that the screenplay is not working, he stops filming, yanks director Vic Fleming from the set of The Wizard of Oz, brings in screenwriter Ben Hecht, and locks himself with these two men behind closed doors for five days to rewrite the screenplay on a diet of bananas and peanuts. This nearly unbelievable farce reveals the making of one of the most successful and beloved films of all time.

Moonlight and Magnolias will be followed by the remounting of last season's holiday hit Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins by Shari Aronson, based on the book by Eric A. Kimmel. Hershel of Ostropol has been walking long and hard with growing anticipation for the Hanukkah holiday. Tired and hungry, he imagines the smell of latkes and the bright lights of the menorah. But when Hershel arrives in Helmsbergville, the village is silent. Goblins have been preventing Hanukkah in Helmsbergville for years. Can this visitor help bring Hanukkah back? Enlisted by the townspeople, Hershel agrees to spend eight nights in the old synagogue to try to defeat the goblins. Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins will run December 3 - 22, 2009.

MJTC continues the season with the regional premiere of A Report on the Banality of Love by Mario Diament. This production explores the relationship and personal evolutions of Martin Heidegger, one of the most influential German philosophers of the 20th century, and Hannah Arendt, one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century. The play is an incisive look at their lives and the Nazi rise to power. A Report on the Banality of Love will run March 6 - 28, 2010.

The season will end with Women's Minyan by Israeli playwright Naomi Ragen, running April 17 through May 9, 2010. Women's Minyan tells a true story of domestic abuse. When Chana Sheinhoff, an Orthodox mother of 12, is granted a divorce but prevented from seeing her children, she goes back to court and is successful in having them agree to review her request to remove the children from their father's custody. Now, she must convince the women of her community to allow her to see her children after two years.

Season passbook subscriptions are now on sale for $50 - $72. MJTC does offer full-time student season passbooks! For $36.00, a full-time student will be able to see our three mainstage shows any performance day of the week! Season passbooks may be purchased by calling 651-647-4315 or e-mailing info@mnjewishtheatre.org. Box office hours are Monday through Friday 9am - 5:30pm.

Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company is a non-profit organization now in its 15th year of presenting professional productions rooted in the Jewish experience but illuminating The Common humanity among us all. The audience for MJTC is almost equally divided between Jews and non-Jews. For further information about MJTC, call 651-647-4315 or visit our website at www.mnjewishtheatre.org; or join our Facebook family at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Saint-Paul-MN/Minnesota-Jewish-Theatre-Company/44432069548.