My Family - The Jewish Immigrants - An Anthology of Plays

A series of memory plays that form a portrait gallery of Beims parents, aunts and uncles, sister, and cousins. The portraits are unsparingly honest in their kitchen-sink realism - reminiscent of the first-generation immigrants evoked in Ruth Gay's Unfinished People - yet they are more than sociological types, these they are real, suffering people

Five of the plays deal with a Jewish family that immigrated from Poland to America during the twenties. The sixth play deals with a little know Jewish hero who tried to alert the world to what was happening to the Jews in Europe during World War II ...

A Love Story- M5,F3

Set after World War I, this presents a poignant correspondence between a young woman in a small Polish town and a middle aged married man in Prague. The man had befriended the girl when she was sent to Prague with her young siblings in tow to escape the approaching enemy. The young woman is on the threshold of life and the man is in his twilight years. In these heartfelt letters they exchange their struggles, hopes and dreams. The story ends with the man's death and the birth of the birth of the young woman's child. A life cycle completed

A Walk Among the Flowers - M3,F4

A middle-aged writer, in the present, visits in memory his Jewish immigrant family in Newark, New Jersey during the thirties. The conflicts, the passions, the frustrations the hopes and dreams of the parents, aunts and uncles, all unique and memorable characters are both amusing and touching in this Checkovian play

By the Waters of Babylon - M3,F2

The author's uncle, a Jewish immigrant from Poland, arrives in America in the early twenties after an adventurous life in Palestine. Lost and confused he marries on the rebound, fathers a son as neurotic as himself and succeeds in alienating everyone except his sister whom he adores. The author paints a compassionate and poignant portrait of an irascible, frustrating man who antagonized everyone and lived a life of bitterness and frustration. Tragic, funy, memorable and somehow uplifting

A Rose of Sharon - M5,F2

Frieda, a religious Jewish immigrant, is violently upset when her daughter announces that she plans to marry a Protestant. Scarred by her anti-Semitic encounters in Poland the mother fights desperately to save her daughter from what she believes to be a terrible fate. The daughter, on the other hand, fights to achieve her own identity. A compassionate and poignant story

My Dinner with Mark - M2

The author visits his cousin, a Jewish immigrant, and is held spellbound by the story of his relative's initiation into the American business world a nd the harrowing tale of how he, as a child, along with his mother and little sister, spent four years hiding out in Poland to escape the Nazis during World War II. This amazing true story has been recorded by the Steven Spielberg archives

Zygielbaum's Journey - M8,F3

The true story of Arthur Zygielbaum, a Jewish labor leader during World War II. He fled Poland and tried to alert the world to what was happening to the Jews in Europe. This is a harrowing, ironic and towering drama of an unknown and unheralded man of great compassion and integrity. His deeply moving journey through life is filled with suspense and heroic conflict

Beim is the author of over 50 full-length plays, which have been performed all over the world. He is also a distinguished stage actor who has appeared in Broadway productions like Inherit the Wind and Off-Broadway alongside Morgan Freeman at the New York Public Theatre
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