NEWSLETTER
Award-Winning Musical Memoir Gets One-Night-Only Pride Month Performance
New York, N.Y. – Celebrating NYC Pride Month, The 92nd Street Y presents the award-winning Don’t Cry for Me, My Yeshiva, a 90-minute musical memoir about a lifelong search for family, love, acceptance, and that elusive rainbow connection, written and performed by Joe Fox. Directed by 23-time Manhattan Association of Cabaret’s award-winner Lennie Watts, with musical direction by Dan Furman, Don’t Cry for Me, My Yeshiva also features Camille Diamond and Karen Steinberg. The one-night-only performance will be staged on Sunday, June 21, 2026 at 7:30 p.m. at The 92nd Street Y - Warburg Lounge, 1395 Lexington Avenue in Manhattan.
Part musical parody, part memoir, part love letter to Broadway, with reimagined show tunes, original songs, and razor-sharp storytelling, Don’t Cry for Me, My Yeshiva grows in part from Fox’s experience returning “back into the closet” while filming a 2009 documentary in Maine around a same-sex marriage referendum. A story of identity, family, and acceptance, told through music and memoir, this unforgettable evening follows his journey from the yeshiva classroom to the most unexpected of places, promising an evening of laughter, recognition, and standing-ovation-worthy joy.
“Everyone has their own pride story. As we celebrate, we should always remember in these trying times that one’s sense of pride can be inspired thru the most adverse situations,” shared Fox. “As the son of an Orthodox Rabbi, my story is told through the lens of being Jewish and Gay, and what it was like to reconcile faith and sexuality.”
Don’t Cry for Me, My Yeshiva won the 2025 Manhattan Association of Cabarets Best Director award. The production was also nominated for Manhattan Association of Cabarets Best Special Production 2025 and BroadwayWorld’s Cabaret Awards (Best Director 2025).
“Don’t Cry for Me, My Yeshiva is my way of turning a period of fear and contradiction into something joyful, theatrical, and hopefully universal,” continued Fox. “A Broadway-loving, music-filled reminder that the struggle to be fully yourself can lead to the most human, authentic and liberating kind of truth.”
The runtime is 90 minutes, no intermission.
Tickets are $18.
For tickets and more information, visit: 92NY.org
Starting in July, Don’t Cry For Me, My Yeshiva will be performed throughout New York City, with venues and dates soon to be announced.
MEET THE CAST & CREATIVES
Joe Fox (creator, writer, performer) – has had a career shaped by his love of storytelling whether it’s on film, print or on the stage. He is the co-owner of a film/documentary production company: Fly On The Wall Productions. Over the past several decades his documentaries on such topics as the forced internment of Japanese-Americans during World War Two and the battle to win same-sex marriage in Maine have been aired on PBS stations (winning a few awards along the way) and have been distributed on major streaming platforms such as: Netflix, Apple and Amazon. Within the realm of the written world – he has written for many leading publications including USA Today – where a three-part series he did on South Africa, Israel and Northern Ireland was nominated for that paper’s Pulitzer Prize. For the stage – he was awarded a major grant by the City of Los Angeles to create a stage presentation about the LA Riots – where he interviewed hundreds of Angelinos across the city and presented their stories on stage using real people from the actual impacted neighborhoods. He also picked pomegranates on a Kibbutz for a year. (The Kibbutz never recovered) and lives in Brooklyn with his husband Frank.
Lennie Watts (director) was recently named one of the 50 Most Influential People in Cabaret (Nightlife Exchange) with the Village Voice calling him “A one man Cabaret Army.” He’s a 23-time Manhattan Association of Cabarets award winner for having directed numerous productions around New York City. Lennie is the creator and Artistic Director of Singnasium, a nonprofit singing school in NYC. (Singnasium.org)
Dan Furman (musical director) hails from Old Hickory, Tennessee, just outside Nashville. A graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory, Dan spent 10 years as a political and union activist working in industrial jobs from steel fabrication to mattress making. After moving to New York City Dan began writing for music theatre. He is the founder of Brooklyn Tavern Theater which puts on original musicals in taverns in Brooklyn and beyond. He is composer/lyricist/book writer of Impossible But True, Joe Hill Revival and Walls and Windows. Dan lives in Brooklyn with neuroscientist Kim Allen.
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