Chutzpah Sauce

About the Book

           Chutzpah Sauce is, as its subtitle indicates, a collection of one-act plays on Jewish themes, intended to be performed in a single evening. The plays are all comedies and are set in different periods. The Converts is about what could have happened when the Khazars were converted to Judaism about a thousand years ago. He’ll Be Coming Down The Mountain When He Comes  concerns a group of querulous Israelites awaiting the return of Moses from Mount Sinai. Ends and Means focuses on the problem kids of a Jewish family in Long Island. There are also two interludes in which three middle-aged women regale the audience with every Jewish Mother joke known to the author. Played before the curtain, these interludes enable scene changes for the one act-plays to take place unseen by the audience.

            An addendum provides a fourth one-act play unconnected with the previous three. Early Symptoms is a curtain-raiser concerning a Jewish doctor and his disturbed patient.

            For the uninitiated there’s a Glossary explaining the Yiddish and Hebrew terms that appear in the plays.

            The illustrations have been provided by the playwright’s wife, Carolyn Geduld.

About the Author

           Harry M. Geduld, an Englishman by birth and an American by choice, was educated at Latymer Upper School in London and at the Universities of Sheffield and London. Until his retirement in 1996 he was Chair of the Comparative Literature Department of Indiana University in Bloomington. He now holds the titles of Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, West European Studies and Film Studies. The last title relates to his creation of Film Studies at Indiana University and his introduction and teaching of many of the University’s Film courses.

            Harry Geduld’s most recent book is Purim Spiel, a collection of thirty of his short stories on Jewish themes. Among his more than twenty previous books, on various aspect of Literature and Film, are Birth of the Talkies, James Barrie: A Study, Prince of Publishers, Chapliniana, and critical editions of works by Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells. He has edited or co-edited upwards of 100 books in several series, including Film Focus series, Filmguides series, Perspectives on Film series, Visions series, and The Literature of Mystery and Detection series. He was also Advisory Editor of The New York Times Film Encyclopedia.

            His forthcoming books include Ropes, a full-length play set in Palestine during the British Mandate, and The Final Solution of the German Question, a revision of a play originally published as German Requiem and set in Poland during the years of the Holocaust.