You'd think all that, but you'd be wrong. Just as Naomi Karz Jacobs was wrong. A native of Southern California, she'd grown up the daughter of an actress on the Russian stage, and a prominent Jewish builder in Los Angeles. "My parents were married in L.A. and loved the theatre," she exclaims. "My father employed actors in his business - he felt actors were always underpaid, and did his best to remedy that!"

When marriage took her to Baltimore, Jacobs would go to New York and revel in all the latest shows. "I was inspired, and I started writing plays for groups myself." When she returned to Los Angeles, she found theatres devoted to black theatre, Asian theatre, Mexican theatre - everything but Jewish theatre, it seemed.

"I couldn't understand it," she says. There had been several attempts to get a Jewish theatre group going in the city - "they were all very sincere, but they just weren't able to pull it together" - and so, in the early 1990s, Jacobs decided to try it herself.

"My lawyer, my therapist, and my family all said I shouldn't," she laughs. It took her more than three years to get everything organized, but finally, in November of 1994, the West Coast Jewish Theatre made its debut.

"I started the theatre with Skip Usen," says Jacobs. "We got our 501(c)(3), and decided our first show would be Skip's play Love, Dreams, and Lost Uncles. We got Shelley Berman to star in it, and we booked it for one night at The Friars Club."

Remembering that night, Jacobs smiles. "It was a huge success! We were totally sold out, and had a line of people around the block trying to get in."

Over the next several years, the theatre produced 35 shows and readings - "most of them new works," says Jacobs - in a variety of venues. "We tried to find places to perform, but most of the time we had to do 'one-nighters' at synagogues and small theatres. Finally, in 2002, the company presented its first full run, a six-week co-production with Los Angeles Reperatory Company of Aaron Posner's adaptation of Chaim Potok's The Chosen at Santa Monica's Miles Playhouse. "We actually made money," says Jacobs, with a mix of pride and wonder.

Other shows followed, including an award-winning co-production with Pacific Resident Theatre of Clifford Odets's Rocket to the Moon. But the long haul was taking its toll on Jacobs. At a meeting of The Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights, she struck up a conversation with another member, writer/director Herb Isaacs, who'd attended many of West Coast's shows, and whose production of Driving Miss Daisy Jacobs had just seen.

As they talked, Jacobs admitted she was looking for someone to take over as Artistic Director. "I might be interested," Isaacs remembers saying, and before long, Jacobs turned over the reigns to him.

Isaacs began by insisting that the company do full seasons and sell subscriptions, which had never been done. His first season opened with Wendy Graf's Lessons, starring Hal Linden and Mare Winningham, followed by a new musical, American Klezmer, and concluded with the premiere of Zero Hour, a show about the late Zero Mostel written by and starring Jim Brochu. Zero Hour went on to win the Ovation Award - L.A.'s version of the Tony - for best play, and is headed for a New York production later this year. The company added a "bonus" production, Graf's new play Leipzig, a co-production with The Group at Strasberg, which starred Salome Jens, Mimi Kennedy, and Mitchell Ryan.

The current season opened with a significantly rewritten Lessons, again starring Hal Linden, but this time co-starring Larissa Laskin and directed by Gordon Davidson; then a new musical about Albert Einstein titled The Smartest Man in the World; and will end in the fall with a revival of Leonard Spigelgass's Broadway comedy A Majority of One.

Isaacs is always on the lookout for new work "which is relevant to Jewish life, how we relate to our environment and our history." While he cautions that "we don't do many Holocaust plays," he gets excited by plays which deal with "Jewish philosophy and ethics and conflicts, plays which stress the difficulties characters face." The company's Reading Committee is comprised of six people, and prefers playwrights to submit a synopsis and ten pages rather than a full script.

When asked about her role these days, Jacobs laughs. "I'm just the founder," she says with a smile, but then grows serious. "I'm really proud of the West Coast Jewish Theatre," she says. "I think it's been a big asset to L.A., but it isn't easy, and we need support. We need a permanent building of our own. If anyone is interested in helping, please get in touch with us - visit our website, make a contribution, volunteer."

And she hopes the theatre will speak to a new audience as well as the traditional one. "When someone in the younger generation sees a Jewish play, they learn something. Theatre is important for our survival as a culture."

The West Coast Jewish Theatre can be reached at www.westcoastjewishtheatre.org.