Guest Panelists:

Harry Bernstein (Historian)
Barbara Bick (Author Culture & Politics: Notes from a Conference)
Michael Kazin (Professor of History, Georgetown University)
Leo Ribuffo (Professor of Government, Georgetown University)
Jerrold & Leona Schecter (Authors of Sacred Secrets: How Soviet Intelligence Operations Changed American History, An American Family in Moscow)
Jules Feiffer (Pulitzer-Prize and Oscar-winning cartoonist, playwright and screenwriter)
Tom Toles (Washington Post editorial cartoonist Tom Toles Cartoonists)
Will Eisner (Acclaimed American comics writer, artist and entrepreneur)
Daniel Schorr (Senior News Analyst, National Public Radio; Emmy-Award-winning television journalist)

The Tatooed Girl, a world premiere by Joyce Carol Oates

“Exploration of Class in America”
“Discovering the Many Voices of Joyce Carol Oates”
“Denial’s Hold on the Fringes of America: A Review of Holocaust Denial and Revisionist History”

Guest Panelists:

David K. Shipler (Pulitzer-Prize winning author of Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land and The Washington Poor: Invisible in America)
Deborah Shipler (Clinical Social Worker/Editor)
Faye Moskowitz (Professor of English, Georgetown University)
Patricia Griffith (Professor, George Washington University and Former President of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation)
Susan Willens (Assistant Professor, George Washington University)
Susan Shreve (Author and Professor at George Mason University, Former President of PEN/Faulkner Foundation)
Dr. Richard Breitman (Professor of History, American University)
 

Hannah & Martin, a new play by Kate Fodor

“Tainted Genius: Forgiving Ethical Lapses”

“Thinking for Action: A Lost Art (Examining Arendt and Heidegger Contributions to How We Think and How We Think About Thinking)”
“Difficult Choices: Humanity In the Wake of Violence”
 

Guest Panelists:

Kate Fodor (Playwright)

Jermey B. Cohen (Director)

Elizabeth Minnich (Former Student of Hannah Arendt)

Dr. Kathleen B. Jones (Author)

Dr. Joan Ringelhem (Holocaust Museum)

Dr. Robert Gerald Livingston (Senior Visiting Fellow at the German Historical Institute)
 
 
2005-2006      

The Disputation by Hyam Maccoby

“A Conversation with Theodore Bikel”
“Interfaith Friction and Healing in a Post-9/11 World”
“Christians, Muslims and Jews in Medieval Spain”
“Historical Flashpoints of Theological Conflict”
                       

Guest Panelists:

Deborah Tannen (Author and Linguist)
Dr. Akbar Ahmed (Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University)

Rabbi Leila Gal Berner

The Dybbuk, a new adaptation based on the play by S. Anski

“Creating Theater J and Synetic Theater’s Dyybuk”
“Kabbalah-The Pop Revival”
“Jews of Georgia”
“Folklore: They Dybbuk in Different Cultures”
                       

Guest Panelists:

Paata Tsikurishvili (Director / Co-Adapter)

Hannah Hessel (Co-Adapter)

Ori Soltis (Professor, Georgetown University)

Miriam Issacs

Ilana Harlow

Bal Masque, a world premiere by Richard Greenberg

“The Art and Design of Bal Masque”“The Party of the Century (Journalist Deborah Davis looks at the events leading to Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball and the cult of celebrity that permeated the times)”
“Capote and the Abuse of Personal Power”
“Capote -- Breaking the Mold”
“The World of Richard Greenberg – From Broadway to Theater”
                       

Guest Panelists:

Deborah Davis (Journalist and author of The Party of the Century)

Dr. Beatrice Smirnow (Washington Psychoanalytic Institute)

 
  
2006-2007      

Picasso’s Closet, a world premiere by Ariel Dorfman

“Interview with Playwright and Author Ariel Dorfman”
“Artists and Repression in Times of Terror: A Discussion of the Realities and Choices Faced by Artists, Jews, French Citizens and Others under Nazi Occupation”
“To Live or Die in Occupied France”
“Picasso – Can a Bad Man be a Good Artist?”
                       

Guest Panelists:

E. Ethelbert Miller (Literary Activist & Board Chair, Institute for Policy Studies)

Don Russell, Executive Director of Provisions Library

The Honorable Jean-David Levitte (Ambassador of France)

Renee Poznanski (Professor, Ben Gurion University)

Severin Hochberg (Historian, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum)

Either/Or, a world premiere by Thomas Keneally

“Discussion with Either/Or playwright Thomas Keneally”
“The Merchant of Venice in Hitler’s Germany: Nazi Uses of Shylock’s Drama”
“Whistle Blowing in the Dark: Attempts at Redemptive Acts in Eras of Horrifying Repression”
“Church, Society and Individual Choice in Nazi Germany: The Religious and Social Setting for the “New Germans” of the 1930s”
 

Guest Panelists:

Katerin Sieg (Assistant Professor of German Studies, Georgetown University)

Dr. Bernd Schaeffer (German Historical Institute)

Victoria Barnett (Director of Church Relations at U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Author of Bystanders: Conscience and Complicity during the Holocaust)

Pangs of the Messiah, the English-language world premiere by Motti Lerner

“Zealotry, Jerusalem and the Legacy of the Settler’s Movement: Can There be a Shared Holy City for All Three Abrahamic Faiths?”
“What Jews Say About Arabs and What Arabs Say About Jews: The Subtext of Living Together and Apart”

Guest Panelists:

Motti Lerner (Playwright of Pangs of the Messiah)

Philip Farah (Washington Interfaith Alliance for Middle East Peace)

Jim Vitarello (President, Sharing Jerusalem USA)

Paul Sham (Middle East Institute)

Ghaith Al-Omari (Senior Fellow, New America Foundation; Lead Palestenian Drafter, Geneva Initiative)

Ron Dermer (Minsiter for Economic Affairs (Embassy of Israel)

 Andy Shallal (Busboys and Poets Restaurant Owner, Peace Café Co-Founder)
 
 
2007-2008             

Speed the Plow by David Mamet

“Women on Mamet: The Case For and Against”
“Local Producers and Their Hollywood War Stories,”
“The End of the World as We Know It: Mamet on the Apocalypse (a panel focusing on the current nexus of culture and dire environmental warnings as it explores the fictional book being optioned for film in Speed)”
“The Wicked Son: Mamet on Jewish Self-Identity and Anti-Semitism”
“Hollywood, the Jews, and Power: A Continuing Conversation”
 

Guest Panelists:

Dan Glickman (Chairman & CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America)

Louis Stroller (Producer of Scarface)

Marilyn and Hal Weiner (Producer of Family Business, The Imagemaker, and K2)

The Price by Arthur Miller

“Miller’s Evolving Politics: What’s He Saying in The Price?”
“The Price in the Pantheon: Arthur Miller, August Wilson – Comparing Their Greatest Works”
“America’s Aging Crisis: Elder Care Abuse and the Politics of Neglect”
“Judging an Artist’s Work in the Wake of Stunning Revelations”
“Siblings and the Aging Parent”
 

Guest Panelists:

Mark Bly (Dramaturg, Arena Stage)

Dr. David Scharff  (Washington Psychoanalytic Society)

Myrna L. Fawcett (National Academy of Elder Lawyers, Georegtown Law)

Paula Veiner McMartin, LGSW, (ESMCares Care Manager)

Murray Horowitz (Director of American Film Institute’s American Silver

Theater and Cultural Center)

Irene Rosenberg Wurtzel (Playwright/teacher/Theater J Coucil Co-Chair)

Dr. David E. Scharff (Co-director of the International Psychotherapy Institute,

Vice-President of the International Association for Couple and Family

Psychoanalysis, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown 

University and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences)