Silent Amidah

the long version

As the century draws to a close, we look back and remember. One of a select number of scripts considered for the 1992 Arizona Theatre Company New Play Reading Series, Silent Amidah recreates in real time (90 intermissonless minutes) one Sabbath evening in the life of an Orthodox Jewish family in halting denial of an approaching yahrzeit memorial for a son. Set in an early year of the AIDS pandemic, elliptic and ultimately elegiac, the play takes its title from those moments of pause and silent standing woven into the prayer service.