“She has beautiful eyes, this woman. And a beautiful face. And she is all day and all night in my thoughts. When I see the sun, I see her. When I see the moon, I see her, I hear her voice in the wind.”

So says Young Ansky in Chaim Potok’s original play, Out of the Depths. Based on the life of Solomon Rappaport (S. Ansky), the play begins in 1920 in a Warsaw rehearsal room where the Vilna Troupe are rehearsing Ansky’s The Dybbuk. Potok transports the audience to various times and locations in Ansky’s life, and against a backdrop of war and revolution, shows us how Ansky’s own life evolved into The Dybbuk. Directed by David Bassuk and introduced by Rena Potok, the performance celebrates the publication of The Collected Plays of Chaim Potok, edited by Rena Potok. A book signing follows the program. 

Chaim Potok (1929-2002) is the author of nine novels, including The Chosen, My Name is Asher Lev, Davita’s Harp, and I Am the Clay. He also wrote Wanderings: Chaim Potok’s History of the Jews as well as Young Adult fiction, children’s books, a collection of novellas, biographies, and numerous essays and short stories. An ordained rabbi, Potok served as a U.S. Army chaplain in Korea. The Collected Plays of Chaim Potok is the first volume of his plays to be published.

Rena Potok is a writer, editor, and educator. Her poems, literary translations, and academic essays have appeared in Religion and Literature, The Bryn Mawr Review of Comparative Literature, The Pennsylvania Gazette, and other publications. She is the editor of Hills of Spices: Poetry from the Bible and the 50th anniversary critical edition of The Chosen by Chaim Potok. She is a recipient of a Fiction Fellowship at the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. She teaches English literature, Irish film, and writing at Villanova University, and is completing her first novel.

David Bassuk is Professor of Acting in the Conservatory of Theater Arts at Purchase College, SUNY, School of the Arts. He is a director of many productions, among them Cat’s Cradle: a musical by Kurt Vonnegut; Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People; Chaim Potok’s The Chosen Off-Broadway; and American Camera at Lincoln Center. Recent Purchase Repertory productions include last year’s The Maids, Tales from the Vienna Woods, Master and Margarita, Hedda Gabler, Peer Gynt, Lady Windermere’s Fan, and The Cherry Orchard. He holds an M.F.A. from Southern Methodist University.