Jewish summer camp theatre and Sondheim, the Talmudic scholar

Abstract

This article explores how Jewish American composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, in his musical theatre works, engaged in a distinctly Jewish lyrical style that resembles a Talmudic dialectic. The author argues that Sondheim’s argumentative, self-referential, quick-moving, pitter-patter lyrics and music, a writing style that values the performance of ambivalence and repeated questioning, resembles contemporary Jewish discourse as influenced by Talmudic dialogue. The author explores Sondheim’s work through a reflection of his experience piloting a new two-week musical theatre specialty programme at Ramah Darom, a Jewish summer camp in Clayton, Georgia, in July 2023. The programme, called Ramah Bamah (bamah is a Hebrew word that translates in this context to ‘stage’), aimed to teach campers valuable performance skills from professional theatre-makers, while simultaneously encouraging campers to explore their identities as Jewish artists. Ramah Bamah presented Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods JR. as its premiere production, as programme leaders used Jewish texts, thought and values to help campers connect emotionally and thematically to Sondheim’s play-text. This article considers the relationship between Jewish text study, Jewish education, storytelling, youth/amateur theatre-making and Stephen Sondheim.