A comedy about what happens when we begin to question our stories

By: Tom Dudzick
Direction: Yael Valier
Cast: Sarit Brown, Mordechai Buxner, Devorah Jaffe, and Andrea Katz

Miracle on South Division Street tells the story of the Nowak family, living amidst the urban rubble of Buffalo, NY. Clara, the family matriarch, happily runs her soup kitchen and tends to the family heirloom – a twenty-foot shrine to the Blessed Mother which adjoins the house. This neighborhood beacon of faith commemorates the day in 1942 when the Blessed Virgin Mary materialized in her father’s barber shop. When the play opens, a family meeting is in progress. Daughter Ruth divulges her plan to finally tell the world about the family miracle. But during the course of the meeting, the entire family’s faith is shaken when hitherto hidden information sheds a harsh light on the family legend. The results are thought-provoking, heartfelt, and hilarious. 

I chose to produce Tom Dudzick's deceptively naive play because, with humor and mercy, it gently unearths issues that all religions and religious people have to deal with. What happens when science, or academia, or our own curiosity holds a magnifying glass to our beliefs and forces us to pay attention? Can we maintain both belief and intellectual honesty? If so, how?

The play is in English with no subtitles