Before a work reaches a mainstage, it passes through stages of development — workshops, readings, rewrites, and the crucial moment when words written in isolation are finally heard in a room with an audience.

A staged reading is one of those moments. Actors perform with scripts in hand, without full staging or production design, so the focus stays entirely on the writing and the performances. For a playwright, it is often the first real test of whether a work lives on its feet. For an audience, it is a rare opportunity to encounter a story along its journey to final production.

Festival of the Spoken Word made space for exactly that. Across six theatre works — from semi-staged musical theatre to double bill staged readings — the festival brought new and developing Jewish stories to Sydney audiences in August 2026.

“Some of the most important work in theatre happens before anyone sees a finished production,” said Hannah Saunders, Head of Program and Engagement at Shalom Collective. “Staged readings give writers and directors the chance to hear their work with an audience for the first time. That moment — when a story that existed only on the page suddenly exists in a room — is irreplaceable. Festival of the Spoken Word wanted to be the place where that happened for Jewish artists.”

One of a Kind

One of a Kind opened the festival as a semi-staged musical — a form that sits between staged reading and full production, with partial staging, performance in role, and live instrumentation. Created by Jewish Arts, the work traces a wealthy Egyptian Jewish family’s displacement from Alexandria in 1957 and their rebuilding of life in Sydney — a story that is part of the rich and varied tapestry of Australian Jewish experience. Read the AJN feature.

Wake — Ron Elisha and Suzanne Heywood

It has been said that behind every great man stands a great woman. In Wake, acclaimed playwright Ron Elisha interrogates two words in that aphorism: “behind” and “great.”

Through the voices of four women — Mileva Marić, Martha Freud, Alma Mahler, and Katia Mann — familiar histories are retold from an entirely different perspective, laying bare the emotional wreckage left in the pursuit of genius, ambition, and public greatness. Performed by four actors in role, the work moves between wit, grief, and psychological insight to reveal not only what these women endured, but the unexpected forms of awakening and liberation that followed.

Directed by Suzanne Heywood, Wake demonstrated what the staged reading format does best: when there is no set, no costume, and no production design to hide behind, the writing either holds the room or it doesn’t. Wake did not disappoint.  Read The Jewish Independent feature.

Dear Jessy, Dear Miriam — Jessica Chapnik Kahn and Miriam Hechtman

Dear Jessy, Dear Miriam imagines a friendship between two Jewish women who might have met as 13-year-olds at Hakoah Club, tracing their connection through adolescence, identity, and the curious timing of finding each other — told through letters between Sydney and Melbourne. As a staged reading, the epistolary format translated with particular power: two voices, two lives, read aloud in a room. Read the AJN feature.

The Border | Sacrifice — A Double Bill

Two playwrights. Two worlds. One evening.

The Border, written and directed by Galit Klas and starring Alexis Fishman and Lloyd Allison-Young, opens at JFK Airport: a routine customs interrogation that spirals into something far more dangerous when Tsippy Shulman arrives in New York following her mother’s death. What begins as a visa interview becomes a tense reckoning with migration, deferred ambition, Jewish identity, and the seductive myth of America.

Sacrifice, written and directed by Marc Radomsky and starring Rose Tabbiche as Fatima and Tony Sloman as Yonni, opens in an abandoned café as war rages outside. An Israeli reservist and a wounded Palestinian fighter, with nowhere to run, are forced into a dangerous dialogue that strips away slogans and exposes the human cost of extremity. Tense, intimate, and psychologically charged, Sacrifice examines what violence, ideology, and survival demand of everyday people when escape is no longer possible.

Presented as staged readings, this double bill brought together two new works that place private encounters under public pressure — asking what remains possible when certainty begins to fracture.

Groyse Tsores

How do you keep a language alive when people want to transmit it but don’t necessarily want to learn to speak it fluently? How do you make Yiddish fun, engaging, and enjoyable for audiences of all ages who don’t necessarily understand it?

These are the questions motivating creators Galit Klas, Adam Starr, and Rivke Margolis. Part performance, part creative development, the event presented songs and scenes from Der Griner Giraf — a new intergenerational work exploring childhood through Yiddish language and song, blending live music, movement, puppetry, and storytelling.

With no Yiddish knowledge required, the performance was enjoyed by the young and young-at-heart bringing children, grandchildren, and grandparents into the same room — and into the same story.  (we could link to the insta post)

For more on what a staged reading is and how theatre moves from first draft to full production, read our FAQ.

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Festival of the Spoken Word is presented by Sydney Jewish Writers Festival, created by Shalom Collective. With thanks to Waverly Council, Woollahra Council, The Australian Jewish News, Gertrude & Alice Café Bookstore, Multicultural NSW, Adina Chippendale Sydney and our funding partner JCA.

Shalom Collective creates contemporary Jewish experiences that celebrate culture, deepen identity, and build a thriving community.

Through immersive art, food, festivals and intergenerational storytelling, we bring people together in joyful, meaningful, and imaginative ways.