Jan 25, 2008  |  By: ZACK ROSEN  | COMMENTS     

Lesbian comedian Judy Gold will probably never blend in. More than six feet tall and ferociously outspoken, Gold is known for a series of HBO comedy specials and network TV guest spots, as well as her Emmy-winning stint as a writer/producer for "The Rosie O'Donnell Show." Currently, she can be found at the Washington, D.C. Jewish Community Center through Feb. 24 in her one-woman show, "25 Questions for a Jewish Mother." 

The show was first performed in New York in early 2006, where it earned Gold a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Solo Performance. Similar in construction to Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologues," the play is the result of Gold's collaboration with lesbian playwright Kate Moira Ryan. The two interviewed more than 50 Jewish mothers from all across the country on subjects like "What is God to you" and "How many times a day do you call your children."

Onstage Gold recreates many of her interview subjects, all while framing their answers with her own story of the clashes she experienced with her mother while coming out, falling in love and raising two children. Her mother becomes an integral character in the show, a fact that the real Ruth Gold reportedly doesn't mind.

"She's always been a part of my act, she loves it," Gold says. "She gets so much attention and all her friends come and see it. [They say] 'When you do your mother it's like she's there, you have her down.'"

Gold also says that these same friends would get the run-around when they asked about a certain baby picture in the Ruth's house. The typical explanation was, "That's Judy's roommate's baby." While that's technically true, the elder Gold's discomfort with acknowledging that her lesbian daughter has a partner and a child is at the heart of "25 Questions," which is that being gay and being Jewish are not at all mutually exclusive.

THE INTERSECTION OF gay and Jewish identities is something that has gotten Gold some of her strongest feedback.

"We were in Florida after [a performance] and all these 90-year-old women couldn’t wait to tell me they had a gay daughter or a gay son or that 'My daughter and her partner have been together 20 years and I have grandpups,'" Gold says. "It's like the damn had broken and we could talk about this. I had older gay men saying, 'Thank you so much for talking in the show about the woman whose son had died of AIDS.'"

Though Gold is a comic, the show addresses some weighty issues. A question raised throughout the show, which Gold also published in book form last spring, was why Jewish mothers are so quick to worry about their children. Though this is represented comically, such as in the inclusion of frantic answering machine messages from Gold's mother, it's rooted in a Holocaust-tainted history of loss that defines the modern Jewish experience.

"Every Jewish mother has had some terrible tragedy," Gold says. "That transfers from generations. They've been protecting their kids for so many years."

Beyond just a play about gays or Judaism, "25 Questions" is an exploration of parent/child relationships, a theme that makes it accessible for audiences of all sexualities or denominations. Gold hopes to take this normalization of a niche experience and apply it to her next planned project: a sitcom about a gay couple with children.