Every civilization spanning human history has the tradition of the storyteller: the yarn spinner, a merchant of tales, the keeper of unwritten history. I love a good story. And Jon tells a good story. They make up his life, they course through his veins. Jon conjures up stories from before he was born as if he was just on the other side of the room, laughing at the joke with everyone else. To someone like myself, who has the memory of a goldfish, it's a superhuman feat to recreate the past, enliven the dead, recall the tiniest nuances of someone's voice, their face, the idiosyncrasies that made them unique. In a world where not much can be taken for granted, I take comfort in the fact that Jon will be telling stories about me long after I'm gone. Gone, but not forgotten.
-Chantal Pavageaux, Director, Walking in Memphis

Walking in Memphis: The Life of a Southern Jew traces the life of Jon Ross, an actor and playwright now living in New York City. Jon begins the play by giving his background, his origin, and the show weaves itself through his childhood as a Jew in the Southern city of Memphis, Tennessee. It is a unique journey of passage, and it is made all the more so by the characters Jon inhabits. He begins with his family of course, a logical place to start. But soon branches out into Elizabeth, his family's housekeeper, Clarence, his barber, Jim Grigg, their Southern Baptist next-door neighbor, and many others. He even spends some time during the show at Jewish summer camp. And by the end of the show, the audience feels like its been sitting in a living room having a conversation with a dozen or so people even though they were in a theater, listening to just one person, and not speaking themselves at all. Jon touches on the lives and deaths of many people during the course of the show, and ends the show with a touching, and quite humorous, remembrance of his mother; ending the show in a fitting way, as all Jewish services do - with Adon Olam.

Use of the music and lyrics to the song "Walking in Memphis" are courtesy of Marc Cohn and Famous Music Corp.

All wardrobe for walking in memphis provided by Lansky126 at the Peabody.

Praise for Walking in Memphis

"Walking in Memphis... is an extremely well-crafted memoir of a fascinating life"
- The Justice (Brandeis University)

"Like Sholom Alaichem, Ross teaches us: 'What's truer than the truth? The story'."
- The Forward

"Ross......is an engaging young man who....exudes youth and warmth."
- Backstage