Scholar in Residence

Rebecca is a playwright, actress, and cantor; she is also a scholar and performer of European-Jewish cabaret.  Her two-person show Kleynkunst!, produced off-Broadway in December 2007, proved a box office and critical success. The New York Times calls Kleynkunst!: “illuminating, ultimately touching …. Across an emotional spectrum from saucy irreverence, high spirits and nostalgia to the bitterest despair and back to hope....Ms. Fletcher delivers a richly rounded and eventually heartbreaking performance...”  In 2008 Rebecca spent time in Israel on a Confidence Foundation grant in order to research Tel Aviv’s 1930’s cabaret culture.  On a grant from Theater Communications Group, Rebecca then traveled to Warsaw in 2009, where she did further research into Warsaw’s cabarets and presented performances and master-classes at the State Yiddish Theater. Cities of Light, her one woman show celebrating the cabarets of 1930’s Berlin, Paris, Warsaw and Tel Aviv, first premiered in 2009 as part of New York City’s Festival of Jewish Theater and Ideas.  In November 2011, the Piven Theatre in Chicago produced a theatrical run of Cities, to box office and critical acclaim. The show has also been presented internationally at such venues as at London’s Jewish Museum, La Vieille Grille theater in Paris, and the Martef Theatre in Jerusalem. In December 2009 Rebecca’s new musical Nightingale had a developmental workshop produced by the West Coast Jewish Theater; a second reading was produced by the Emerging Artists Theater in New York City (5.11).  In November 2012, Rebecca and collaborator Noemi Schlosser will be premiering The Money Show in Paris, under the auspices of a grant from the European Association for Jewish Culture. Rebecca holds a Masters degree in sacred music; she honed her skills as a playwright at the School for Visual Theater (Jerusalem) and under the mentorship of playwright Karen Hartman (NYC). Rebecca has trained as an actor with the SITI Company, as well as at the William Esper studios, the Actors Center, and various centers of Michael Chekhov technique. She is a frequent scholar-in-residence at synagogues across the country and an invited teacher at academic institutions and other adult centers of learning around the world. Rebecca is an adjust faculty member of the Academy for Jewish Religion in Riverdale. She serves as vice president of the Association for Jewish Theater and is a proud member of Kabarett Kollektif, Dramatists Guild, ROI, the Cantors Assembly and the American Conference of Cantors.  

• European Jewish Cabaret 1900-1939 -- Berlin, Paris, Warsaw, Moscow, Vienna
• Performance as Resistance: Theater and Cabaret During the Holocaust
• Jewish Theater: Roots and Branches
• Jewish Berlin: the Jewish Cabaret Years OR Yiddish Warsaw: the Cabaret Years
• Sand and Stars: a History of Tel Aviv through its Cabarets