Nalsey Tinberg

Three women (Esther, Riesa and Kimmie) are bound together by their immigrant upbringing and growing up in Los Angeles in the 1960’s. Two are Jewish and one is Chinese. Esther and Riesa are children of parents who escaped Nazi Germany but see their Jewish obligations and American futures very differently. Decades after Riesa passes away, Esther comes to terms with Riesa’s choices and especially her marriage to Ron, which Esther opposed. Muscle Memory is Esther's 1970's recollection of these friendships as the three women move into adulthood navigating the turbulent waters of faith, activism, marriage, children, illness, and death.

Three generations of Jewish women are affected by Sandy Koufax's perfect game in 1965. While only witnessed by the matriarch, two new generations try to apply lessons learned to getting through some difficult times including illness, death, and professional challenges. Sandy Cohen is a (newly-widowed) physicist with two daughters who are trying to maneuver the Jewish dating scene when a young attractive academic joins Sandy's department and upends all their lives. A play about truth, Jewish identity, parenthood, dog owning, and being able to see that while life is not perfect, it certainly can be amusing!

Sexual assault and the politics around it affect not only its victims, but those who try to support those victims. In “Misconduct”, a professor at an idealistic liberal arts college faces her own past, and suffers personal and professional consequences when she comes to the aid of a student victim. How these incidents are reported by the local press, how race affects the college culture, and how administrators choose to protect their own reputations while a faculty member’s life unravels, reveal that no one is free of “misconduct.” A serious and topical subject is explored by a multi-ethnic and multi-generational cast. Using a light hand, the exploration involves humor (when appropriate), and results in a tale of honestly, ultimate optimism and personal triumph.

The play is a 2015 Eugene O'Neil Playwrights Conference semi-finalist and a winner of the 2015 Long Beach Playhouse New Works Festival.

In Cakewalk American-born Bersahla (Barrie) attempts to tell the story of her relationship with her mother, Sprintze, a Holocaust survivor, but Sprintze has her own ideas. Bersahla, born on Christmas, and Sprintze, supposedly “reborn” on Christmas, take us on a ten-year journey (1990-2000) with plenty of pathos and birthday cake. Seasoned storytellers both, these two head-strong, intelligent and passionate women bring us directly into their lives and souls as they share their journeys of survival and triumph – from refugee to homemaker, from believer to skeptic (and back again), from daughter to mother, from care-giver to care-receiver. Not your typical Jewish mother-daughter tale, this play starts comfortably familiar then accelerates from zero to sixty taking on serious themes (war, illness, childbirth, family, faith, assimilation, psychology of the “victim”, history) before you have a chance to recover from your last laugh. These two women are, at their core, bonded inextricably. Their relationship? Anything but a “cakewalk”.

How can a daughter of a Holocaust survivor reconcile her culture's wish that she bear children against her own emotional and physical restraints. A story of family, friendship, and marriage whose bonds are tested at every turn.

Three women, Rose, Ellen, and Winnie (aged from their twenties to forties), meet in a breast cancer support group and decide to meet separately to get to know each other better. They have little in common except for their need for companionship and their fear and hope for the future as they undergo treatment. The women struggle with their own mortality, their fears of recurrence, their appearance, their hair, their breasts, and their love and affection for each other. They meet regularly in a local restaurant where they make the acquaintance of Rick, their waiter, struggling to be a writer/poet. Rose, a lesbian, falls deeply for young Ellen, who falls for Rick. The play’s central tension revolves around this threesome until the the oldest, Winnie, the third and most proper, reveals perhaps the most terrible of personal family secrets, incest. This ensemble piece is a deeply personal journey that 1 in 4 women face – Musical Chairs of who will live and who will not.

A new college President discovers her most famous faculty member has just won a Pulitzer Prize for his recent book. Unfortunately, in the haze of publicity she finds he has lied about his Viet Nam war experience.