An excited audience in Collis Commonground sat in anticipation for 30 minutes last night while Goddess Perlman, Vanessa Hidary, Michelle Citrin and Ophera Eisenberg prepared to take the stage in "Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad," a show in which "boldly hilarious young Jewish women trying to shake their reputations as JAPs and Jewish mothers and let their wilder sides emerge," according to the group's website.
Perlman, the driving force behind the creation of "Nice Jewish Girls," said she put the show together in May of 2003 when she e-mailed a group of female Jewish performers and asked if they wanted to sign onto the project.
"I just kept running into all these wonderful women acts," Perlman said.
Citrin, one of those women, said she was enthusiastic about the show's concept.
"Defy the stereotype by embracing it -- that's pretty much what it is," Citrin said of the performance.
The show began as an event for Heeb magazine, but Perlman, who does bookings and promotion as well as performances, now tours with a rotating group of female Jewish performers.
The show began a half-hour late due to technical difficulties with Perlman, clad in a metallic skirt and bustier trimmed with a blue feather boa, declaring that, "I put the ho in hora."
Such allusions to Jewish culture continued sporadically throughout the show, though it was not geared toward Jews alone. Perlman made universally relatable jokes in addition to speaking about summer camps and mikvahs.
Perlman, who performed the first musical act, a song about self-pleasure paraphernalia, was followed by a decidedly antithetical Citrin, sporting dreadlocks, sneakers and a chai necklace. Citrin performed three original acoustic guitar pieces.
Hidary, a Manhattan native, then took the stage and performed three passionate spoken-word pieces about growing up Jewish. Hidary's essay, "Robin Katz's Bat Mitzvah," apparently struck a chord with several audience members, who seemed to appreciate lines like "being fat at Jewish Y sleep-away camp was a death wish."
The final act was Eisenberg's standup routine which, like Citrin's Ani DiFranco-esque guitar strumming, seemed to be less about being Jewish than performing original work.
While Citrin, Hidary and Eisenberg all gave fairly tame performances, Perlman provided a mood shift between each act, emerging from her makeshift dressing room in Fuel onto the Commonground stage in such getups as a dress made of a rainbow flag emblazoned with the sentence, "We the people say no to the Bush agenda."
Audience members said they found the show entertaining and were generally impressed with Hidary's poignant pieces, but said that the title was misleading.
"A lot of it didn't really pertain to its title," Jessica Kramer '07 said.
Lauren Hassouni '07 chose to focus on the more comical aspects of the performance. Referring to a wardrobe malfunction that occurred while Perlman was dancing in her homemade flag dress, she said, "My favorite part was when we saw her nipple. That was the highlight of the show."
The show was sponsored by Hillel, the Gay Straight Alliance and the Dartmouth Rainbow Alliance.
