Just as its title promises, “Imagining Heschel,” the current production of the Harold Clurman Laboratory Theater Company (the professional company of the Stella Adler Studio), imagines a series of conversations between Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and Cardinal Augustin Bea about the time of the Second Vatican Council, when Pope John XXIII reconsidered the church’s relationship to the Jews.

This change in church teachings, which removed the charge of deicide, would prove to be immensely significant, but that remains in the future at the time of the play. Cardinal Bea has come to meet with Heschel to convince him to travel to Rome to help the council formulate its new approach. Heschel is cautious, probing to see if the church is serious and ready to apologize for millennia of persecution, and willing to give up its determination to convert his co-religionists.

Black Box Studios offers six performances of the Broadway hit “Into The Woods” by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, between Feb. 2 to 12 at the Jewish Center of Teaneck. The performances are by a hand-picked cast of local adult and teen actors along with select New York-based rising professionals. Visit www.blackboxnynj.com.

In addition, Black Box Studios will present the Moriah Middle School Drama Program’s production of “Grease,” directed by Matt Okin with musical direction by Matthew Brady, at the Moriah School in Englewood, on Jan. 7 at 8 p.m., and Jan. 8 at 4:30. Tickets will be $5 at the door.

Ongoing Black Box Studios’ theater programs at the Jewish Center of Teaneck include the Intergenerational Theater Workshop which will perform “The Music Man,” Jan. 10 at 7:30 p.m., and Jan. 14 at 8. The Adult Acting Workshop will perform “Circle Mirror Transformation,” January 9 and 12 at 7:30 p.m. Both Starting Out on Stage and Continuing on Stage will collaborate to perform “Scenes and Songs from Peter Pan” on Jan. 17 and Jan. 18 at 6:30 p.m. Showtimes for the Pro Drama Workshops for Teens will perform “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs” on Jan. 11 at 7:30 p.m. and Jan. 15 at 8. “Seussical Jr.” will be performed by the Musical Theater Workshop for Kids on Jan. 16 at 6:30 p.m., and Jan. 17 at 7:30. The Pro Musical Theater Workshop for Tweens will perform “The Secret Garden (Spring Edition)” on Jan. 15 at 4 p.m. and Jan. 16 at 8.

Black Box Studios is a Partnership Program with the Jewish Center of Teaneck. For information, www.blackboxnynj.com.

With a new executive director, the National Yiddish Theatre-Folksbiene is heading in a different direction. Both its productions this season are in English, and that is a big change right there.

Executive director Bryna Wasserman is no stranger to Yiddish theater, certainly. For years, she led the Montreal Yiddish theater named after her mother, Dora Wasserman. It was there that she built relationships with other theater companies, and where she developed a particular interest in working with young people.

Wasserman said in a recent interview with The Jewish Standard that she wanted to build bridges to a diverse audience in New York, as well. “We are looking to the future to make this a Jewish theater,” said Folksbiene trustee Judith Rosen, “not just a Yiddish theater.” There is no plan to change the theater company’s name, Rosen insisted.

Until December 4, La MaMa E.T.C. reprises “Golem,” an innovative and colorful dance-puppet theater rendition about the mythical giant who protected Prague’s Jews in the Middle Ages. It was first presented in 1997, and now the reconceived and upgraded performance — with music by Frank London (founder of the Klezmatics), choreography by former Teaneck resident Naomi Goldberg Haas, and written and directed by the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre artistic director, V’t Horejš — is playing at LaMama in the East Village.

At the start of “Rash,” Jenni Wolfson appears onstage in a green peasant skirt and khaki top to the sound of cascading gunfire. Her long brown hair is unceremoniously pulled back
with a black scrunchie. From a trunk, she pulls out a flak jacket and puts it on.

Wolfson then takes center stage and begins to recount an incident from her years of United Nations service in post-genocide Rwanda.

In her Scottish brogue, she talks of being forced from her vehicle by Hutu rebels with her fellow human rights observers, stripped of her identification and threatened with death, of a hand running up her thigh as one of her abductors whispered in her ear, “We’re going to have fun with you.”

For its first off-Broadway production in its 62-year history, the Stella Adler Studio of Acting has chosen Israel Horowitz’s “Lebensraum,” and it is not hard to understand why. The piece, in which three actors play 50 different characters, is a bonanza for actors, giving them the chance to create different personalities through their voices, their postures, their accents, and some very quick costume changes.

Adam Gerber, Aidan Koehler, and Mickey Ryan, under the direction of Don K. Williams, go at it with gusto, and their performances range from poignant to funny and back again. Ryan is hilarious when he creates two different old men having a conversation, just by changing his hat.

Two plays based on classic Jewish texts are in performance very far off Broadway. The Castillo Theatre (543 W. 42nd St.) is presenting a musical play based on tales connected with the chasidic master Levi-Yitzhok of Berditchev. Written by Castillo’s artistic director Dan Friedman more than 20 years ago, the play was Castillo’s first production, and is now back to open the company’s 28th season.

Castillo describes itself as an experimental political theater, so it’s not surprising that “The Learning Play of Rabbi Levi-Yitzhok, Son of Sara, of Berditchev” looks for the revolutionary message in the sage’s sayings.