‘Charming’ production about relationships is directed by Elyse Edelman
“Trayf” may mean “not kosher,” but in Milwaukee it’s the name of a play you might consider exceedingly fit for consumption – a sweet tale of two Orthodox young men out in the world, directed by Elyse Edelman for the Next Act Theatre.
Edelman came back home to Milwaukee, to be close to family and the local theater community, after traveling the country as a professional actor for 15 years. Now, she’s a rare Jewish professional actor and director in Wisconsin. She was recently promoted to the full-time position of associate artistic director at Next Act Theatre, and for “Trayf,” she’s the director and the person who helped bring it here.
“Trayf,” written by Lindsay Joelle of Arizona, is being performed at the Next Act Theatre in Milwaukee, Sept. 16-Oct. 4. The play tells the story of two Chabad 18-year-olds in 1991 New York City, in a Mitzvah Tank – an automobile as a platform to bring Judaism to Jews at a time of messianic fervor for the Rebbe. They encounter Jews whose experiences are outside their own. Drama ensues.
Edelman says questions emerge: “Is Jewish identity defined by observance? Is it defined by belief? Is it defined by birth?”
People from across the local Jewish community have consulted with Edelman on the play, including rabbis and community members who are more observant as well as those who are more Jewishly liberal. The local Jewish community, including Jody Hirsh, Milwaukee’s longtime Jewish arts maven, have assisted with advice on costuming and more.
“It’s almost like our community members are producing the play with us,” Edelman said.
“Some of these community members won’t be able to see the play. There’s a young woman in the play who sings at one point,” she said, referring to kol isha, the traditional Jewish law that can restrict men from listening to women sing, “but they’ve enjoyed reading it and contributing.”
Edelman said she knew the play was right when she read it as a potential for Next Act: “There are so many Jewish plays that I read, and I actually don’t want to work on, because I think now more than ever it’s so important to portray Jewish characters in a positive light …. I am less interested in seeing Jewish characters as a vehicle for a political argument, and I’m more interested in seeing Jewish characters with genuine affection.”
This play is not political, she said. It’s a play about people.
“They think everything is possible in the way that 18-year-olds do when they’re starting out in the world,” she said. “It’s charming. The play is charming.”
Here’s something you probably don’t see every day in 2026 America: Professional actor Lucas Prizant of Chicago walked into his audition for the play wearing his chai, ready to discuss what the material meant to him. He plays a key character.
Prizant interviewed with the Chronicle while playing Horatio in “Hamlet” for the Oak Park Festival Theater in Illinois.
He was also the Hamlet understudy, but for “Trayf,” his role is Jonathan, a young man who was raised Catholic but finds out his late father was Jewish. “The fact that he has lost his dad is the spur for all that he does throughout the play,” Prizant said.
“I have a a close friend of mine, who in the last six months moved to Israel, decided that he was not coming back to America, and married someone who he met three weeks before. I grew up with this person,” Prizant said. Like Prizant’s childhood friend who left, Jonathan is in search of something and is willing to subordinate his current life to the goal. Both Prizant’s friend and the character Prizant plays feel the pull to Jewish observance.
“(Jonathan) completely obliterates his life because he’s completely bought in to a doctrine that’s been expressed to him by two boys who haven’t even kissed a girl, haven’t even gone outside of the small confines of their world, and it is how I observe (my friend) that at worst he just blindly believes that other people know better for his life than he does, and at best he wants to be in a healthier male community than what we have here in America.”
“I’m deeply proud of him in a lot of ways, and obviously the adjustment is difficult,” Prizant said. The play is, in a way, helping Prizant work through it.
For the audience, it’s hoped the experience will also be personal, very real.
Edelman said this is the experience she’s aiming for you to feel: “I was represented with care, I saw myself on stage, and those people sitting next to me who are not Jewish had the same experience too. Saw themselves on stage as well.”
