Our Board and Advisors
WESTCOAST JEWISH
THEATRE BOARD OF DIRECTORS
FOUNDER
NAOMI KARZ JACOBS received her
M.A. from UCLA. She is the author of several plays produced in Los Angeles,
including What A Racquet and Next Year In Jerusalem, as well as
her memoir The Builder's Daughter. A native of Los Angeles, she spent many
years in Baltimore where she served on the boards of Jewish Education and the
Citizen's Committee for Recreation, and was President of the Baltimore
Hadassah. Back in Los Angeles, she has served on the board of the American
National Theatre Academy (West) and been active in a wide range of
organizations including The Dramatists' Guild, Alliance of Los Angeles
Playwrights, First Stage, Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop, Actors' Forum,
World Affairs Council, and the Sierra Club.
PRESIDENT EMERITUS
LESLIE
MARTINSON is a director of 98 movies and television series ranging
from Private
Benjamin, Diff'rent Strokes, Fantasy Island, Most
Wanted, Barnaby Jones, Love-American Style, Room 222, Mission Impossible,
Mister Roberts, the 1965 TV series Run for your Life, 77 Sunset Strip, the Roy
Rogers Show (14 episodes), Maverick and General ElectricTheatre
(TV series). Leslie is also an accomplished pianist and composer.
PRESIDENT
JACK
FINE is a prominent
attorney and Judge Pro Tem in Los Angeles, as well as an accomplished mediator
and arbitrator. His love for theatre has led him into several endeavors
including co-founding The Freeway Circuit, Inc. with Corey Allen, and serving
as a Producing Partner for L.A. TheatreWorks. He was
a founding member of the Los Angeles African American-Jewish Leadership
Council, and has served on a number of non-profit boards including the L.A.
Chapter of the American Jewish Committee, The Jewish Community Relations
Committee, and the Los Angeles Modern Dance and Ballet Company. He has also
served as National Vice President for the Coro Alumni. He has and A.B. and J.D.
from Stanford University.
RUTH
DAVIS is President of Ruth Alben
Speakers Service, a nationally known agency that schedules speakers and
entertainers. She is also an artist and singer, and performs regularly in the
Los Angeles area. In her home town of New Bedford,
Massachusetts, she performed in radio, TV, summer stock and nightclubs.
Immediately after graduating from Syracuse University, she became a producer
for CBS News in New York City. She hosted a radio show for WEVD there called Women
in the News. She currently serves on the Board of Governors of American
Film Institute Associates.
STEPHEN
FIFE is
an award-winning playwright, journalist, and book writer. His plays have been
produced in NYC at The Jewish Repertory Theatre, Playhouse 91, Primary Stages,
Circle Rep, La Mama, Theater for the New City, the Samuel Beckett Theater, and
in LA at a variety of different venues. His evening of
romantic comedies, This Is Not What I Ordered, is published by Samuel French.
His critically acclaimed memoir BEST REVENGE: How the Theater
Saved My Life and Has Been Killing Me Ever Since was published by Cune Press in 2004. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence
College and Columbia's School of the Arts, his writings on theater, film, and
art have appeared in The New York Times, New Republic, Village Voice, New York
Newsday, and many others.
RUTH
LANE FLINKMAN was born in the Bronx, New York, where she attended
Columbus High School and State University of N.Y. As a child performer, she
sang and danced on the Hearns'
Children's Hour, Major
Bowes and with Paul
Whiteman on TV. She also performed in regional theatre: Pirates of Penzance (Mabel), Dames At Sea
(Mona Kent), Cabaret
(Fraulein Schneider). She still performs for various charitable events as a
member of Larry Covin's entertainment group, and just
taped a show for Chinese TV. Ruthie has dedicated herself to community work
including roles as President of the Westside Lawyers' Wives, Keren and Ophira Groups of
Hadassah, the Women's Division of ARMDI. She is a board member of The Beverly
Hills Theatre Guild, Theatre 40, Ophira, American
Friends of Magen David Adom
(ARMDI), The Jazz Bakery. She and her late husband,
Stan Flinkman, are founders of American Friends of
Hebrew University, American Technion Society, and
American Associates, Ben Gurion University of the
Negev, of which Ruthie is Southwest Region Development Chair and National Board
member. She is also a founder of the Music Center Theatre Group.
PHYLLIS
FRIEDEL
is a character actress who was very active in Scottsdale Arizona before coming
to Los Angeles. She has been a major supporter of the Arizona Jewish Theater.
She is a life member of both The National Council of Jewish Women and Hadassah,
and served on the Board of the Federation of Greater Phoenix. When she and her
late husband lived in Omaha, Nebraska, they endowed the Friedel
Jewish Academy, a Jewish School for Kindergarten thru 6th Grade.
HERB ISAACS brings to the
WCJT an unusual combination of theatre savvy and professional and
organizational skills. He has been a longtime performer, writer, and director
in the Los Angeles area, and a highly regarded management consultant to
business, government and non-profits. In recent years he has focused on
directing a variety of new works, established plays and musical theatre
productions. He was Founding Board President of the Academy for New Musical
Theatre. He served on the board of Los Angeles Channel 36 where he created the
show Theatre Now. His director training was with Allison Liddi,
the Lincoln Center Theatre Directors Lab West, and the Ensemble Studio Theatre
Workshop.
SYLVIA
KREINER is a business woman with longterm experience as controller for a company with
cellular phone and music business lines. Her nonprofit activites
include volunteer work for Camp Ronald McDonald, and for Oasis, a senior
citizens center. She has also assisted the City of Hope with fundraising.
RUTH
LOW is
an interior designer. She is involved with several philanthropic endeavors
including Israel Bonds and Israel Tennis Centers, and is a member of Beth Am
and Hillcrest Country Club.
HANK ROSENFELD wrote plays
in NYC for the DaK, Bond Street and HEAP Theater
companies, touring with shows to Holland, Germany, Minneapolis and New Jersey.
His solo show Women are from Venice, Men are from Mar Vista
was performed in bookstores and theaters in L.A. His stories and commentaries
air on public radio shows like All
Things Considered and
Weekend America and his first book, written with Irving Brecher, will be published by Ben Yehuda
Press: Go For The Jocular! The Wicked Wit
of the West, Irving Brecher on feeding
the lions of film, radio, TV & vaudeville: Groucho
Garland, Berle, Burns, Benny and many more. He writes
for the Los Angeles Times, the Forward, the Jewish Journal, HeeB,
Moment and other magazines.
MURIEL
SCHOICHET has a Masters in Public Health. She is on the Board of the
West Hollywood Senior Citizens Programs and a former President of the American
Jewish Congress. She is very active in Democrats for Israel and politics in
general, and is involved with membership groups that interact at a high level
with elected officials.
MALACHI
THRONE is a traveling
player at heart through some sixty-two years of performing, starting at the
1939 World's Fair as a young singer. He continued to split his time between
academia and show biz, playing in summer and winter stock. Off Broadway he had
roles in the legendary productions of The Iceman Cometh, Threepenny
Opera, Rocket to the Moon and Machinal. On
Broadway he played in Beckett, The Girls Against the Boys, Lorenzo and
The
Legend of Lizzie. He has appeared on numerous live
television shows and soaps, such as The Defenders, Studio One, Robert Montgomery
Presents, Edge of Night and Search for Tomorrow. He
also co-starred with Robert Wagner in It Takes a Thief. His
voice has been heard on many commercials including Revlon, American Plastics,
Castrol, Jeep and Goodyear.
*********************
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
HOWARD TEICHMAN was born in Toronto, Canada
and emigrated to Chicago, Howard’s career in theatre
began at Second City as a writer/creator/performer of a World Premiere
children’s show called Commedia. He toiled many years in
the theatre to emerge in Los Angeles as a theatre director of note. In
2008 the Beverly Hills Outlook named him best director of Beverly Hills for his
critically acclaimed production of Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers.
Mr. Teichman also directed to critical acclaim
James Sherman’s From Door to Door at the Electric
Lodge in Venice, California. In 2007 he directed the big Theatre 40 hit, Daniel
Goldfarb’s Broadway hit Modern Orthodox, and was
nominated by the LA Weekly as Best Comedy Director. Prior to Modern Orthodox. Mr. Teichman also directed several other critically acclaimed
Theatre 40 productions including Richard Martin Hirsch’s Atonement,
Neil Simon’s Rumors, and Simcha,
which he wrote, directed, and played the starring role. His other
directing credits include Kaufman-Teichmann'sThe Solid Gold
Cadillac, Leon Katz’s The Three Cuckolds,
Oscar Wilde’s Salome (Garland Best Director’s
Nominee), Diana Amsterdam’s Fast Girls.
He adapted and created the French play by A.Dennery
and Eugene Corman, Orphans of the Storm which
became a movie starring Lillian and Dorothy Gish. He has also produced
Jeremy Lawrence’s Cabaret: Verboten for the Mark Taper Forum
at the Itchy Foot and was also part of the producing team for George C. Wolfe’s
Tony award winning production Jelly’s Last Jam. He is proud to
be one of the leaders of Theatre 40’s Writer’s Workshop. He produced along with
Hindi Brooks Shortages An Evening of Short Plays
where he directed Alice Lunsford’s Catch of the Day and also
produced Benchmarks, a
festival of Ten Minute Plays. Howard has directed numerous other plays at
different venues throughout the Los Angeles area. He is excited to be working
on his next production The Fugu Plan
based on a true story about how the Japanese government saved over six thousand
Jewish lives during World War II. Howard holds a B.A. and an M.F.A. from UCLA
in Theatre Arts.
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