Comedy wins contest

Tasha Gordon-Solmon of New York won the third annual JCC MetroWest Jewish Playwriting Contest with a work about a bride and groom whose rabbi dies in the middle of the ceremony.

Staged readings of excerpts from I Now Pronounce and two other plays were presented before an audience of about 50 people on March 1 at the Cooperman JCC in West Orange.

Audience members voted for their favorite in the Jewish Plays Project competition, founded and directed by David Winitsky of Maplewood. The incubator for new plays began in the Greater MetroWest area but has expanded this year to include three other cities: New Haven, Chicago, and Burlington, Vt.

Ten plays were chosen from among 226 submissions from seven countries by a panel of artists. From those, three were selected by panels from each community, respectively, for staged readings in each of the cities.

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On May 1, the four winning plays — one from each area — will compete in what Winitsky has dubbed “the 2014 Super Bowl of Plays.” The winner will be developed for a workshop production at the 14th Street Y in New York City at the end of June.

Despite its macabre set-up, Gordon-Solmon’s play is a comedy.

The playwright, who was in the audience March 1, said that in I Now Pronounce, she wanted to explore “what happens when established structures crumble.”