Reviews
The Magic Dreidels
“Has the timeless feel of the folk tale Eric Kimmel’s book is based upon – and gives youngsters of all backgrounds a lovely glimpse into the traditions of Hanukkah.” –Renee Valois, The St. Paul Pioneer Press
A Body of Water
“Jenna Zark, a playwright from Minneapolis and Chicago, has bothered to look somewhere new—or so old it’s new—for journeys by women we seldom get to know in the theater.” –Linda Winer, Newsday
“This is an unusual, provocative evening…the perceptive writing has been staged by Caroline Kava with the understated power that characterizes Zark’s picture of women searching, in a markedly different way, for a personal identity within their religious faith.”—Clive Barnes, New York Post
“In playwright Jenna Zark’s New York debut, a young Midwestern Jewish hairdresser, in marital and spiritual crisis, visits an Orthodox mikvah (or ritual bathhouse) and is counseled by a devout and apparently contented married woman whose belief in Jewish law leads to her own crisis. Zark has put theological matters to lively dramatic use.” –John Lahr, The New Yorker
“As written by Zark with humor and insight, and directed with zesty economy by Caroline Kava, Body of Water entertains with some odd and original women.” —Francine Russo, The Village Voice
“Zark draws the women with compassion and humor. This small play is as much about passionate love as it is about the need for rituals that give us a way to honor ourselves. And it’s about independence of spirit, the dignity that small, private acts… bring to ordinary lives.” –Jeremy Gerard, Variety
In Coya’s House
“In Coya’s House is the kind of play that perfectly fulfills the Great American History Theatre’s mission: It entertains, it illuminates, it educates and it makes you want to run to the library to learn more.” –Dominic Papatola, St. Paul Pioneer Press
Mother of Myriads (now The World to Come)
“In Jenna Zark’s exceptionally moving “Mother of Myriads” an Orthodox bride prepares to shave her head—a story of acceptance and tradition but not without inner turmoil.” –Backstage West
“It’s little wonder that the strongest pieces are about Jewish woman and their relationship with their hair, or as in the case of Jenna Zark’s “Mother of Myriads,” the impending loss of it through the traditional marriage ritual.”
–Jana J. Monji, L.A. Times
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