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In the Voices of Our Mothers
by Naomi Rothberg
In a startling and provocative theater piece, Carol Fox Prescott has given voice to five of the best known women of the Bible, Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, Rachel and Miriam. Five actresses rise from an audience arranged in a circle and offer first person accounts of their roles in familiar Torah stories, which are also the stories of their lives. These are riveting. Prescott has managed to be true to the ancient texts –with all those tents and concubines and dusty herds of goats—and yet absolutely convince us that we know these people as intimately as we know ourselves, the emotional lives described are variants of our own, the descriptions of how and why choices are made are completely understandable, and recognizable, and the actions taken — whether bold or surreptitious — those too we almost remember, and the consequences are the consequences we live with.
