Lazarre Seymour Simckes
He has developed approaches to the use of creative writing in areas including prison therapy and cross-cultural communication between students in the Middle East.
[2] He is a graduate of Harvard College (Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa), Stanford University (Wallace Stegner Writing Fellow, M.A.
During his Fulbright year at the University of Haifa, he conducted a similar workshop linking Israeli Arab and Jewish high school students with their counterparts in America ("Celebrating Differences").
"[5] The play was reviewed by Michael Smith in The Village Voice as "timeless, mythic, enlivened by all kinds of stylistic intrusions and an almost hysterical inventiveness.
[7] The critic Richard McBee called it "a riveting puzzle,"[3] and it has also been described as a "dark farce" and an "absurd exploration of history and the horrific times we live in.
"[7] His other plays include Minutes, a fictional encounter between Sigmund Freud and Gustav Mahler; "Soldier Boys" about Czar Nicholas's 1827 edict to recruit Jews into the Russian army for the first time, including children as Cadets, which had a reading at Theater for the New City with Judd Hirsch as the Czar; and "Open Rehearsal," chosen by Edward Albee as first runner-up in the inaugural 2006-2007 Yale Drama Series Competition,[3] He also wrote the screenplay for Sidney Lumet's movie version of The Last Temptation of Christ, which has not yet been produced.
He continued working on this idea and eventually launched writing workshops in community centers, "attempting to foster literacy, empathy, listening skills, insight, respect, and resolution of conflict."
He made "fostering cross-cultural insights and empathy" in the "interlocked perspectives surrounding the Arab/Israeli encounter" the core of his Fulbright year in Israel, at the University of Haifa.
[4] Among his initiatives were a creative writing seminar, "The Mirror of Fiction", and a two-way live interactive video workshop, "Celebrating Differences", broadcast on February 27, 1996.
