Meet Fellow Amy Handelsman

AMY HANDELSMAN is a producer, writer and story executive, working in theater, film and television in Los Angeles and New York. She has developed and produced plays, movies, and cable and network films and series for Center Theatre Group, Showtime, Warner Bros., ABC, CBS, PBS, and Tri-Star. Handelsman has also served as a theater consultant for HBO’s U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen and the Hip-Hop Theater Festival in New York, and as a media consultant for the Foundation for Jewish Culture and Women in Film. She has worked with such diverse artists as August Wilson, Culture Clash, Don Cheadle, Patricia Marx, Erin Cressida Wilson, and Danny Hoch. A lifelong sports fan, Handelsman wrote about her boxing experiences for Playboy and is working on a documentary on baseball umpires. She served as the Executive Director of the United States Poker Federation and the United States Mind Sports Association and contributes to various boxing and poker sites. Handelsman teaches The Literature of Games and Forms of Drama at Stony Brook University and New York University, respectively (Fall 2017). She is a cum laude graduate of Harvard University.

WHAT DREW YOU TO APPLY TO LABA?

I attended a Tikkun this spring for Shavuot and was inspired by the variety of offerings and the vibrancy of the dialogue. The air was electric. To dig deep into my work with the feedback of fellow artists and through the engagement of classic Jewish texts seems too great an opportunity to pass up. As I get older, I find textual (re)immersion a great prism through which to enhance practices of writing, spiritual housekeeping and community. Shout-outs to all the teachers who helped me along the way, including Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Ted Falcon, Dan Polish, Jonathan Omerman, Sharon Brous, Avraham Czapnik, Tamar Frankiel and Dov-Ber Pinson.

LABA PROJECT 

LOVE BY TKO: Life Lessons from the Ring is a memoir about my obsession with boxing, as both a participant and observer, and my simultaneous return to my Jewish spiritual roots, as ignited by my trainers, the women competing for the New York Golden Gloves, my colleagues from the Mark Taper Forum and a (failed) romance with an unlikely contender.

WORK SAMPLES

REPORTAGE OF THE COTTO V. FOREMAN FIGHT AT YANKEE STADIUM

http://www.amyhandelsman.com

What is your favorite East Village spot?

Veselka

What is the place that most inspires you?