Making Juliet Jewish
Stardom and conversion play out well together for Lorna Courtney
Lorna Courtney went to the LaGuardia High School of Music and Art in Manhattan. That’s the New York City public school more popularly known as the “Fame” school immortalized in film and TV.
She didn’t necessarily want to live forever, but she did want to learn how to fly. High! And considering her professional trajectory, Ms. Courtney, 26, clearly paid attention in class. Her career literally took off almost the moment she finished college.
She now stars in “Heathers: The Musical,” based, of course, on the 1988 movie “Heathers.” For those who remember it, Ms. Courtney plays Veronica Sawyer, the student who takes on the high school bullies and mean girls in her own particular — and homicidal — way.
And when I say “for those who remember it,” literally thousands do. Ticket sales overwhelmed the New World Stages box office in Manhattan even before the show opened in July, prompting producers to extend it at least through January.
Who knows how much further it can go, because the play has taken on a kind of “Rocky Horror Picture Show” vibe, with young audience members cosplaying various roles. They’re known as corn nuts for no discernible reason other than one of the three Heathers (all the mean girls share that name) utters those two words just before she dies.
Based on the performance I saw, I guess that less than a quarter of the audience is made up of corn nuts. The rest are normal, and by normal, of course, I mean adults who came to see a fun musical and listen to great voices. And to be fair, the corn nuts’ enthusiasm makes the entire experience even more enjoyable.
This is the second major role for Ms. Courtney, whose breakthrough was her Tony-nominated “blow you away performance,” according to the New York Times, as the title character in “& Juliet.” Like “Heathers: The Musical,” it, too, is based on an iconic production, only in this revised version of Shakespeare, Juliet does not follow Romeo into the great beyond. Instead, she heads for Paris, where, to the tune of many hits that Grammy winner Max Martin composed for the likes of Katy Perry, Britney Spears, and Taylor Swift, she finds herself.
It was in some ways the same for Ms. Courtney, but instead of Paris, she found herself and her calling at a gospel school.
Ms. Courtney was brought up in Ozone Park, Queens, in a rather remarkable mixed-race family. Her Jewish father was an Air Force veteran who worked as a shipping clerk when he got out of the service but eventually went back to college and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering. (Lorna is named for his mother, Lorna Slutsky.) Her mother is Black.
Lorna’s mom went back to school to receive certification to teach deaf children. She raised Lorna and her sister as nominal Catholics, but Lorna was not enthused.
She was shy as a child. One Sunday evening when Lorna was in seventh grade, her mom saw a “60 Minutes” segment on a Harlem-based program called Gospel for Teens. She signed her daughter up. It was there that Lorna met her best friend, Rachel Mizrahi, and where they both indelibly proved they had Jewish genes: “We connected because we both had no clue how to stomp and clap at the same time, and we didn’t know what these songs were,” she said in a Zoom interview. “But we loved it, and it really brought us out of our shells.”
The experience also convinced her to apply to LaGuardia, where she had to pass a difficult audition process. But it was well worth it. The school “was amazing. It’s unlike any other high school experience, because everyone there is so talented. We’re all connected through the arts in some way.
“What I loved best was being part of the school’s musicals in my junior and senior year. It brought together all the different art forms: the technical theater students would make the scenery, the art students would help design posters, and the dance, drama, and vocal majors like myself and, of course, the orchestra, brought everyone together.”
If there had been any question before, LaGuardia High School sealed the deal as far as career ambitions go. Ms. Courtney was accepted at the University of Michigan, and then had to audition before she could enter the school’s vaunted theater program. Of course, she made it.
She graduated in three years with a degree in musical theater and went almost straight from cap and gown to work. “During spring break my senior year I went back to New York,” she said. She’d head into Manhattan and sign up for non-Equity auditions — auditions where you don’t have to be a union member to try out, although she’d have to sit and wait while all the Equity members went first. But a voice like Lorna’s couldn’t be held back.
She was still in Michigan when she heard that her spring break trip paid off. She got stand-by for two roles in “Dear Evan Hansen.” Shortly thereafter she not only got into the ensemble of a new production of “West Side Story,” but was also the understudy for Maria.
It seemed that nothing could stop her. Until Broadway shut down because of covid. Sadly, when it reopened, “West Side Story” didn’t. But it did give her more time to contemplate something she’d been thinking about:
“I was interested in my other side, my Jewish side,” she said. “I have Jewish family members, cousins. My best friend is Jewish.”
She called a number of organizations that offer classes on Judaism for potential converts. “But a lot of them didn’t work with my work schedule.”
Eventually, she filled out an online application at Ohr Torah Stone’s Jewish Learning Center of New York, and its head, Rabbi David Kalb, got in touch with her. By this time, she’d landed Juliet, and in the kind of coincidence that seems made up because it’s too good to be true, Rabbi Kalb had seen the show about a week before they spoke.
“I ask everyone what they do,” Rabbi Kalb said in a telephone interview. “She said to me she’s an actor. And I said, ‘What do you do?’ She said she was in plays. She’s a very modest person.”
“So I ask, ‘Anything I might have seen you in?’ And she says, ‘I’m actually in a Broadway show, “& Juliet.”’ I go, ‘That’s funny. I just saw the show. What part are you?’”
Told she was the lead, Rabbi Kalb told her she was very good. His course runs for 36 weeks and meets on Tuesday evenings, which, of course, made it impossible for Ms. Courtney. So as he’s done in the past for people who work odd hours, he agreed to tutor her.
He found Ms. Courtney to be a “very enthusiastic, very committed, and very serious student.”
The JLCNY connects its students, according to its website, “with a Beit Din that offers an inclusive approach to traditional Halachic conversion.”
What originally began as a way to connect with the grandmother she was named after took on additional meaning.
The transition has been relatively smooth. Even with Mom. “Everyone thought my mom was going to be against this, but she married someone who is Jewish,” Ms. Courtney pointed out.
She found a welcoming community in Kehillat Harlem led by Rabbi Kyle Savitch, who also was a co-founder of the Harlem Moishe House, an organization for Jewish young adults that Lorna also belongs to.
“I found a lovely Jewish community here in Harlem,” she said. “They are the most accepting people in the whole world. So for me it’s all about community. And within that community I found a Jews of Color community as well.”
Ms. Courtney is as observant as her schedule permits. She keeps kosher at home. (She’s a vegan, so that is relatively easy.) And she goes to Shabbat services when she can.
Earlier this year, Ms. Courtney converted to Judaism. What originally began as a way to connect with the grandmother she was named after became deeply powerful, and eventually changed her life.
The transition was smooth and easy. “I think that’s because I grew up with Judaism in my life, with extended family members and my best friend’s family,” she said. “I stayed over at her house so many times. We would celebrate the holidays together, the High Holidays.
“I think this process was just a confirmation of who I already felt like inside, of who I am.”
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