Leipzig

As a special Bonus play, West Coast Jewish Theatre and The Group at Strasberg presented Leipzig, written by Wendy Graf and starring Salome Jens, Mimi Kennedy and Mitchell Ryan. Directed by Deborah La Vine, it played at the Lee Strasberg Institute's Marilyn Monroe Theatre, closing on December 10, 2006.

Featured in the cast were Shauna Bloom, Ryan Eggold, K.C. Marsh, and Paul Witten.

Wendy Graf is an award-winning writer who authored the first play in our 2005-06 season, Lessons (which starred Hal Linden and Mare Winningham).

Leipzig is a touching and hopeful story about a mother (Jens) and a daughter (Kennedy) who must unlock the secrets of the past in order to embrace the future. The LA TIMES said "Moving...the emotional anchor here is Jens' heartbreaking portrayal" of the mother."

The Lee Strasberg Institute is located at 7936 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood at Haworth, one block west of Fairfax.

Salome Jens has had a long and distinguished career on Broadway, at the Lincoln Center, and other major theatres including the Mark Taper Forum where she did Hamlet with Stacy Keach. She has appeared in many starring roles on TV, Movies of the Week and episodic series such as LA Law, Cagney and Lacy, Gunsmoke, Bonanza and Macgyver, to name just a few. She has had running parts in series such as Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman; Falcon Crest and Melrose Place. Some of her movie roles include Angel Baby; John Frankenheimer’s Seconds, with Rock Hudson; Me, Natalie; Just Between Friends; and Clan of the Cave Bear. Salome has performed her much acclaimed one woman evening of Anne Sexton's work, ...about Anne, in New York and San Francisco where she won The Critic's Award. She is the narrator of The Great War and the Shaping of the Twentieth Century, the much acclaimed eight hour series for PBS. For the past eight years she has been a Visiting Associate Professor in the theater department of U.C.L.A.

Mimi Kennedy is an accomplished performer in theatre, TV and Film. She is perhaps best known as Abby (Dharma’s hippie mother) on ABC’s now-syndicated sitcom Dharma & Greg. Her last appearance in a full production in LA was at the Mark Taper Forum in Jules Feiffer’s Grownups. Staged readings include a sold-out, one-night-only performance as Laura Bush in Tony Kushner’s Only We Who Guard The Mystery Shall Be Unhappy. She also played in The Vagina Monologues; Long Day’s Journey Into Night; How I Learned To Drive and The Sisters Rosenzweig. She was nominated by TV Critics as Best Supporting Dramatic Actress for her portrayal of Ruth Sloan in ABC’s post-WWII drama Homefront. Other series include Savannah; Three Girls Three; Stockard Channing in Just Friends; The Two Of Us; (with British comedian Peter Cook) and Spencer (with Chad Lowe). Films include Erin Brockovich; Buddy; Pump Up The Volume; and the soon-to-be-released Man In the Chair with Christopher Plummer.

Deborah La Vine has directed over 200 theater productions from Alaska to the East Coast. She has earned a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle nomination, NAACP Image Award citation and thirteen Drama-Logue awards for outstanding direction in a variety of theaters. Her most recent work is an acclaimed production of Night Of The Black Cat at the Edgemar Center for the Arts. Other work includes Napoli Millionaria for The Road Theater Company, earning Deborah the prestigious Ovation Award for Best Director plus multiple other awards. She directed the award winning production of A Streetcar Named Desire, performed in American Sign Language with voice interpretation at Deaf West Theater; the West Coast premieres of Kindertransport and A Shayna Maidel for The Tiffany Theaters; and Off The Map at the Mark Taper Forum New Works Festival. She has directed for many LA Theatres including The Odyssey Theater Ensemble, The Company of Angels, The Cast Theater, Theatre of N.O.T.E, and The Grove Shakespeare Festival. Deborah is a founding director of Edgemar Center for the Arts in Santa Monica. and Co-Chair of The Film Directing Program at California Institute for the Arts.