Pozez Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia will present “13: The Musical” this weekend. The musical is about a 12-year-old Jewish boy who moves from New York to Indiana a few months before his bar mitzvah and needs to navigate making new friends and a new school.
“He is leaving the world of the Big Apple behind to go to a small, kind of middle-of-nowhere town in Indiana where he has to make friends to invite to his bar mitzvah,” said Eila Nash, the School-Age Services Inclusion and Belonging coordinator for Camp Achva at Pozez JCC and a producer of the show. “It’s just a really funny, heartwarming show with really great music and a good message to middle schoolers.”
The musical debuts the Pozez Jewish Community Center Community Theatre program, launched by Nash.
“I started it with the hope that we would create a mini community within the community, but never knowing if that was for sure going to be possible,” Nash said. “Just seeing the show come together and how close all the kids have gotten … they all really care about each other and love each other and want to put on a great show together, so that’s been the biggest highlight for me.”
According to Nash, Pozez JCC doesn’t have many programs aimed at teens in the community, so this was an opportunity to create a space for teens at the JCC.
“I started something with theater, knowing that would draw some attention and the community would likely support it. Then we could establish some sort of teen community within the J,” noted Nash. “I think the most important thing to me is that these kids, even if they’re not members during the full year, they have a place to return to each summer that they know will welcome them, and where they have people that they trust already in place.”
Since this is the first show the Pozez JCCCT is putting on, the challenges were finding actors and volunteers and rallying support for the production.
“The first challenge [was] getting the word out that we existed, so finding kids to come audition proved to be pretty challenging when there’s other competing programs in the area,” Nash said. “I faced some — I guess obstacles would be the right word — from our senior leadership team because they were nervous about ticket sales, because getting the word out about a new theater is tough.”
The cast is made up of 11 actors from the community.
“Most of us aren’t Jewish, but we’re learning how to honor the culture and the values the show presents, things like family, tradition and forging your own identity,” Jackie House, a counselor at Pozez JCC’s Camp Achva, said in a press release. “There’s a beautiful lyric that goes, ‘I say I won’t cry, I cry until dawn, and then I move forward.’ It feels like the perfect message right now.”
