The Circle. The Theory. The Playwright.
The Hineni Circle Project LLC is more than a theater company. It is a living laboratory for a new kind of ritual — one that belongs to everyone who enters the circle.
Dr. Laurie S. Sherman
Laurie S. Sherman has written over 54 plays and directed more than 30 of them. She has written her first novel, three poetry collections ready for publication, monologue books for women 55+, YA plays and books, prayer books, and works in social, group, and organizational psychology. She is releasing three books every month through 2026 and into 2027.
Her academic background spans a Ph.D. in Ancient Communications (Theater) and graduate degrees in psychology, creative writing, and public health. She was inducted into the PRSA College of Fellows in 2003 and has spent her adult life at the intersection of arts, activism, and community.
She was a professional singer in Hollywood from age 4.5 to 18. She still sings. She had her first poem published in a literary journal at age 8, for which she received $25 — and has never stopped writing since.
Through the Hineni Circle Project, she is teaching and practicing a new theory of ritual theater — how to write it, how to direct it, how to voice it, and how to bring it to audiences who have never experienced anything quite like it.
"Theater is the oldest form of liturgy.
Every stage is an altar."
The Hineni Circle: A New Theory of Ritual Theater
The Hineni Circle is a new framework for understanding and making ritual theater. It addresses every dimension of the work: how to write a ritual play, how to direct it, how to train the voice for ritual space, and how to design the technical elements that serve the sacred.
This is not conventional theater theory. It draws on Dr. Sherman's decades of work in theater, her background in social and communications psychology, her deep engagement with Jewish ritual and text, and her lifelong practice as a playwright and director.
The circle is the central metaphor and the central practice. In a circle, there is no front and back, no hierarchy of sight. Everyone sees everyone. The audience is inside the ritual. The stage is everywhere.
We are developing this theory through practice — through the actual making of plays, the actual gathering of circles, the actual experience of audiences who come expecting theater and find something more.
Dr. Sherman's plays and monologue books give voice to women across centuries — biblical heroines, scientists, activists, and artists. These portraits are from her book series In Sarah's Tent,Kol Isha, and We Refuse!
Who We Are
Our founding circle includes approximately ten senior members — people with deep life experience, rich stories, and the time and willingness to do serious creative work.
We are actively inviting high school seniors to join the circle. Intergenerational work is at the heart of what we do — two generations, one stage, one essential conversation.
Anyone drawn to the intersection of theater, ritual, and spirit is welcome. You do not need experience. You need curiosity, willingness, and the capacity to show up.
Women Who Surprised Me: Sarah
Of all the women I have written, Sarah surprised me the most.
Not Sarah the icon. Not Sarah in stained glass. Sarah the woman.
When I first approached her in In Sarah's Tent, I thought I understood her story already: the barren matriarch, the laughter, the long-awaited child. But as I wrote, another Sarah emerged — one whose laughter carried exhaustion, irony, grief, longing, jealousy, survival, and eventually a hard-earned tenderness.
She stopped feeling symbolic to me. She became recognizable.
I began to understand that Sarah's laughter was not disbelief alone. It was the sound a woman makes after decades of unanswered prayers. It was the laughter of someone who has survived disappointment long enough that hope itself becomes frightening.
What startled me most was that Sarah did not want to be admired.
She wanted to be understood.
That realization changed the way I approached nearly every woman afterward. I became less interested in perfection and more interested in complexity — in allowing women to remain contradictory, wounded, loving, fierce, funny, spiritual, bitter, holy, and human all at once.
Perhaps that is part of what HINENI itself became for me: not a gallery of heroines, but a Tent where women are finally permitted to speak in their full humanity.
One of the most unexpected moments in the development of HINENI came through Sarah. At first, I imagined her as one of the ancestral pillars of the Tent — dignified, sorrowful, wise. But during readings and rehearsals, especially as Esther began inhabiting both Sarah Imahot and Sarah bas Tovim, something shifted.
Sarah became alive in a completely different way. Suddenly she was not merely "the matriarch." She was recognizable as a woman who had waited too long, loved imperfectly, carried grief in her body, laughed through pain, and still somehow managed to keep the Tent open for others.
Esther brought an emotional truth to Sarah that revealed layers even I had not consciously known were there. Certain lines deepened in the room. Silences became charged. Humor sharpened. Tenderness became visible.
That is one of the mysteries of ritual theater:
sometimes the character arrives fully only when another woman breathes life into her.
In HINENI, the women do not remain historical figures alone.
They become present tense.