BREAKING NEWS

San Francisco Jewish theater company to close

A 35-year-old Jewish theater company in San Francisco will close this year at the end of its new season.
The Jewish Theatre San Francisco, also known as A Traveling Jewish Theatre, had financial problems that were exacerbated by the global financial crisis.
"We lost over 50 percent of our funding all at once," Executive Director Sara Schwartz Geller told the San Francisco Chronicle. She added that the decision to close was influenced as well by the question of "whether there is still need for a specifically Jewish theater in the Bay Area."
The company was founded as a touring ensemble with a collective leadership in 1978, premiering with a staging of "Coming From a Great Distance," followed by "The Last Yiddish Poet." Transitioning in the 1990s to a more traditional format, and settling into its own theater building, its debt grew to $400,000 by 2008.