Amy Guterson
Amy Gordon Guterson is an American Orthodox Jewish actress, filmmaker, and educator. She is best known for her role as Chaya Epstein in the long-running video series Agent Emes. She is the founder and director of the Tzohar Seminary for Chassidus and the Arts and co-founder of the Jewish women's theater troupe Kol Isha. She is also a board member of the Arts and Torah Association for Religious Artists, founded by Miriam Leah Droz.
Early life
Guterson was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to a Modern Orthodox family. She attended high school at Hebrew Academy of the [Five Towns and Rockaway] and studied theater at Stern College for Women in New York, where she was the school's first theater major and played Hannah Szenes in a one-woman show. Following her graduation from Stern in 1988, she studied with Uta Hagen at the HB Studio and with Mike Nichols and Paul Sills at The New Actors Workshop, where she received a graduate degree in acting. She also performed in Off-Broadway plays as well as Jewish repertory and Yiddish theatre, earning Actors' Equity Association membership.Career
Kol Isha
After getting married and settling in Squirrel Hill, Guterson began educating artists and actresses in the community through the local Chabad. During this time she met Barb Feige, an actress and stage manager, and the two formed Kol Isha, a Jewish women's theatre troupe, in 1995. The following year, the troupe performed their first play, An Invisible Thread, at the Squirrel Hill Jewish Community Center.The group's second play, Journey Through Ruth, about modern-day women encountering the Biblical figures of Ruth and Naomi, premiered in 1998. A third play, The Choosing, premiered in 1999 at Pittsburgh's City Theatre; that same year, the troupe performed a Hanukkah play entitled Hannukah Lights. In 2001 they performed Spirits of Valor, which portrayed the historical Jewish women Bella Abzug, Barbara Myerhoff, Molly Picon, Emma Lazarus, and Glückel of Hameln, at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh in celebration of Jewish Women's History Month. Another play, Imagining Bubbe, based on stories told by the troupe members' grandmothers, premiered in 2007.
In addition to their productions, the troupe have also presented workshops and small performances at such venues as the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance and Pittsburgh's Congregation Beth Shalom.