Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Daryl Roth, ‘Kinky Boots’ Producer, Honored By Einstein

“Thank you for coming to my Bar Mitzvah!” joked emcee Jordan Roth, president of Jujamcyn Theatres, to the festive crowd at The Plaza Hotel for the November 11 Albert Einstein College of Medicine Women’s Division 50th Anniversary Celebration which honored his mother, Broadway producer Daryl Roth, and philanthropist Benjamin Winter.

“I knew little of what a Broadway producer actually does,” confessed Allen Spiegel, The Marilyn and Stanley M. Katz Dean of Albert Einstein College of Medicine. “That is until I listened to an NPR interview with Daryl Roth who described how a producer aggregates the resources…the creative talent…actors…to realize their dreams, thereby the productions entertain and educate their audiences.” Spiegel paused:” As a medical dean I thought I could do well to use Daryl Roth as a role model…to aggregate resources, empower the brilliance of our faculty to educate our students to become compassionate and competent physicians.”

Daryl Roth Image by Karen Leon

Accepting the award from Carol Roaman, president of the Women’s Division, Roth spoke of being inspired by stories that can change people’s minds, attitudes, and [plays] “where audiences leave a little smarter, a little bit kinder, a bit more informed, hopefully encouraged to do something in response.”

Roth’s productions — seven of which were based on Pulitzer Prize winning works — include: “”Wit,” “The Normal Heart,” “Driving Miss Daisy,” “A Little Night Music,” “The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife,” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” and (Tony Award- Winner) “Kinky Boots,” members of whose cast entertained the 360 guests who raised $1 million for Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

“’Wit,’ reflected Roth, “is a profound story of an English professor, Vivian Bearing, and her stoic reaction to treatment for stage 4 ovarian cancer. An amazing piece of theater, my own life was forever altered by being involved with it. It addressed end-of-life care and the doctor-patient relationship…. In fact, ‘Wit’ has inspired medical classes in compassion and humanity [now] taught today in many schools across the country. It was a bold call to action…to remind that much work is still to be done and, in fact, is being done here at Einstein.”

Touting the women’s Division — of which she is a longtime member—Roth stated: “For over sixty years this women’s division has raised funds for research in cancer, cardiology, pre-natal studies and, yes — AIDS.” Twice included in Crain’s “100 Most Influential Women in Business,” Roth’s honors roster includes The Broadway Association Visionary Leader Award; Stella Adler Spirit Award and Lucille Lortell Lifetime Achievement Award.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.