I Sing for Bathsheba

Drag Monologues from the Hebrew Bible

I Sing For Bathsheba is a poetic performance that subverts conventional gender roles (and rules) to provoke critical awareness between ourselves, one another, and the divine. Weaving together drag-as-performance with drag-as-poetry-and-text, iconic figures from the Hebrew Bible are reimagined in a loose narrative of God's manifestation on Earth. Prophets lip sync to pop music, ancient rabbis don sequinned boas, and miraculous transformations occur between men and women and everyone else across Jewish history! Through heightened performances of gender in the search for sacred meaning, the audience is invited to consider a multiplicity of gender expansive voices in our midst and in our past.

Brumberg-Kraus is currently working with two venues to produce this show: an outdoor arts venue in Lancastar, CA, and an experimental Jewish theatre in Cincinnati, OH. More information about these productions forthcoming!

I Sing for Bathsheba Poems and Conversation

This recording comes from a 2019 Artist salon with Dr. Noam Sienna and Max Brumberg-Kraus at Studio Z in Saint Paul, MN, hosted by Rimon (The Minnesota Jewish Arts Council).

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

Jennifer Awes Freeman is the assistant professor and director of Theology and the Arts Program at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. She is the author of The Good Shepherd: Image, Meaning, and Power (Baylor University Press, 2021) and The Ashburnham Pentateuch and its Contexts: The Trinity in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Boydell & Brewer, 2023). She is also a visual artist with a background in illustration and technical theatre.