Rebecca Joy Fletcher is an actress, classically trained singer, playwright, and ordained cantor with a passion for archive-based original performance, Jewish theater, and international cabaret. She is a performer with a mind of an academic and a playwright with the seasoned vision of a performer. She is also a Jewish clergy person committed to creating transformative public experiences. Based on her expertise in cabaret, and long-standing love of Israel, Rebecca recently began researching Tel Aviv's little known cabaret culture in the 30s and 40s. Following a month's archival research in Israel, the vision for a new show was born: Dream/City (working title), a song and story theatrical cabaret exploring the music, myths, and madness of "the first modern Hebrew city" in honor of the 100th anniversary of Tel Aviv, in 2009.

Rebecca has always been passionate about theater. From the ripe age of seven, when she was first accepted into the Santa Monica Playhouse, (a Los Angeles repertory company specializing in original musicals), Rebecca has never left the stage. Until age fourteen, she performed in over fifteen main-stage productions at the Playhouse, receiving critical acclaim particularly for her lead performances in Moonlight Madness, Mezzanine, Computers Don't Cry and The Clown Prince. The Los Angeles Times called her portrayal of Moonlight Madness's Barbara, "natural, intelligent, and assured" (Los Angeles Times, August, 1979).

At age fifteen, Rebecca moved to Jerusalem with her family, attending the High School Next to the Hebrew University. She quickly became fluent in Hebrew, and performed as a singer in city concerts and coffee houses. Moving a year later to New York, she enrolled in the Ramaz Upper School, where she strengthened her skills in Jewish text; four years later, she received a BA in English Literature from Brown University (BA with honors).

Upon graduation, Rebecca moved back to Jerusalem, where, for the next five years, she worked together with Israeli, American, and Arab theater artists, exploring the many connections and divisions within the melting pot which is Israel. With this group of immigrant actors in Jerusalem, she created Improvokatzia (an improv theater ensemble) and performed at venues across the country. She also performed regularly in cabaret and classical concerts hosted by Mishkenot Sha'ananim, a center for tolerance and the arts in Jerusalem. During her post-graduate year of study at The School for Visual Theater, Rebecca began her training in playwriting, together with Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs, Palestinians, and Russian immigrants. She considers this year of intensive training crucial to the development of her voice as a playwright.

With these Hebrew and theatrical skills under her belt, Rebecca was hired to facilitate training for the Israeli communications company, Seminars for Communication. She taught cross-cultural communication skills to such high level clients as the Israeli Army. In addition, she worked for the Israeli and Diaspora divisions of Melitz, facilitating intensive informal education seminars in Zionism, Judaism, and the Arab/Israeli conflict for high school students from countries as far reaching as Sweden, Brazil, and Kenya.

In 1996, Rebecca moved back to New York, and began a long and fruitful relationship with Dr. Michael Warren, her voice teacher to this day. Inspired by her study at The New School's jazz vocals program, she formed a trio, and regularly performed at Cafe Creole, a West Village Jazz venue. A year later, she decided to combine her musical and Judaic passions by entering the cantorate. She was accepted into Hebrew Union College's School of Sacred Music, and received a Wexner Graduate Fellowship. Hebrew Union College honored Rebecca with awards in cantorial arts, vocal arts, and philosophic thought; she earned a Masters in sacred music and was invested as a cantor in 2001. That same year, Rebecca conceived, co-wrote and performed in Mosaic Fixations, an ensemble theater piece presented by the JCC of the Upper West Side.

Rebecca has amassed a wealth of cantorial experience, both on and off the pulpit. During the years she spent as cantor of Hebrew Tabernacle Congregation of Washington Heights (2003-2006), she served the community in numerous ways, including delivering sermons and sermons-in-song, and teaching adult-education classes on such topics as performance during the Holocaust, Judaism and the environment, and the history of Jewish theater. She also enjoyed serving as cantor of Temple Judea in Massapequa, Long Island (2001), and a one-year term as cantor and arts organizer for Greenburgh Hebrew Center, in Dobbs Ferry (2002). Other highlights include: organizing a community-wide, Hanukah arts event for Greenburgh Hebrew Center, and leading a workshop in spiritual preparation for the High Holidays at Stanford University (High Holiday cantor, 2002).

During her final year of cantorial school, Rebecca fell in love with Yiddish music. Having performed jazz, Israeli folk music, operatic repertoire, and cantorial music, Rebecca was delighted by the instantaneous connection she felt singing in Yiddish. She is indebted to Hebrew Union College's artist-in-residence, Joyce Rosenzweig, for her mentoring in Yiddish music. Buoyed by this new-found love, Rebecca created two original cabaret shows featuring a range of Yiddish and other repertoire -- Songs of Love and Sacred and Swing -- which she performed at synagogues in Reading PA, Long Island, and upstate New York (2003 & 2004).

Recognizing her innovative cabaret work, the Washington Heights Arts Stroll, a celebration of the arts in Upper Manhattan, twice named Rebecca "The Cabaret Artist" for its festival. She performed in June 2004 with the Sephardic music ensemble, Alhambra, in Pearls and Rubies (a show of Yiddish and Ladino song) and in June 2004 in Grit and Glamour Cabaret (international Jewish cabaret music, Yiddish, German, and French). On the basis of these performances, Rebecca was awarded a scholarship to attend the YIVO/NYU Summer Language Intensive in Yiddish; this program is considered one of the finest Yiddish language immersions in the world.

Not long after Rebecca discovered Yiddish music, she became enthralled with Weimar cabaret. Though she had not sung German material before, Rebecca felt instantly at home with the material. She had been exposed to German culture and language throughout her youth by her father, a law professor with strong academic ties to Frankfurt; growing up, her living room was often full of German academics and artists. Under the guidance of Professor Phil Bohlman, ethno-musicologist and scholar of cabaret from the University of Chicago, Rebecca began researching German cabaret; she also began coaching regularly in German dialect with Nico Castel, a leading language coach at the Metropolitan Opera. After a summer of research in Berlin, Rebecca created Degenerate, a theatrical and musical journey into the lives of four of Berlin's most beloved kabarettists, under the auspices of the Makor/Steinhardt Center of the 92nd St Y Artists-in-Residence Program. Degenerate was performed at Makor in February 2005.

Throughout this time, Rebecca continued honing her skills as an actor and playwright. She trained with playwright Chuck Mee at the Saratoga International Theater Intensive, and with other members of the SITI Company, known for their rigorously physical and stunningly visual performance. She trained in the Meisner method at the William Esper Studios (NYC), and in movement at Michael Chekhov Studios (NYC). In 2006-07, Rebecca studied clown work and scene study at the Actors Center (NYC); in the spring of 2008, she began training with Grace Zandarski, immersing herself in Fitzmaurice vocal technique for actors.

In January 2006, Rebecca was invited to premier a new theatrical-cabaret show exploring Warsaw's Yiddish language cabarets at the first annual Kabarett Fete (NYC). Bringing together her language study, research methodology, musicianship, and skills as a playwright, she created Kleynkunst! Warsaw's Brave and Brilliant Yiddish Cabaret. The sold-out premier of Kleynkunst! led to several more shows that spring, including a performance as part of 92nd Street Y's Manifest Festival at Makor (March 2007). Following its initial success, an expanded version of Kleynkunst! opened Off-Broadway in November 2007 for a two-month, sold-out run at the National Yiddish Theater-Folksbiene, the longest continuously-producing Yiddish theatre in the world. Moishe Rosenfeld of Goldenland Productions became the show's exclusive booking agent, and Judith Z. Miller of ZAMO! assumed management of Rebecca's career.

In February, 2008, Rebecca premiered a new cabaret show, A Little Yearning, at the Wexner Alumni Convention in Ft Myers, Florida. A Little Yearning highlights the remarkable contribution of Jewish cabaret artists in the bustling inter-war cities of Tel Aviv, Warsaw, Paris, and Berlin. As a result of this Florida performance, Rebecca was invited by Hebrew University to perform and lecture as part of their May 12th, 2008 international symposium "Politics in Musical Theater" in Jerusalem, Israel. During the course of the symposium, she performed A Little Yearning and delivered a lecture entitled "Jewish Cabaret Artists between the Wars: Modernists, Outsiders,Visionaries."

Rebecca is a proud member of the following organizations: Kabarett Kollektif, New York City's only European cabaret collective; the Association for Jewish Theater; the Dramatists' Guild; the American Conference of Cantors and the Cantors' Assembly. In September 2006, Rebecca began a new chapter in her cantorial career as the cantor and adult education teacher of Temple Israel in Staten Island, a position she holds to this day.