Theatre Ariel Returns With Philadelphia Premiere Of Maya Arad Yasur's AMSTERDAM in November

This November, Theatre Ariel will produce its first Mainstage production since 2009 with the Philadelphia premiere of Amsterdam, by award-winning Israeli playwright Maa Arad Yasur, translated by Eran Edry. The play's gripping and timely narrative captivated audiences as a reading, and now Theatre Ariel invites a wider audience to experience the full power of this play. Amsterdam will run November 14-24 at Christ Church Neighborhood House, 20 N. American Street.  Opening Night is Thursday, November 14 at 7 p.m. Tickets are $18-$36 and are available at www.theatreariel.org. 

In a timely play that explores how the bill for past injustices always comes due, four performers act as storytellers, introducing us to an ex-pat Israeli musician whose dreams of assimilation into the European arts world are upended by the mysterious delivery of an unpaid gas bill – from 1944. The implications of the bill send her spiraling through issues of identity and alienness, legacy and peoplehood. Amsterdam is a thrilling and imaginatively-told mystery centered around the possible, devastating origins of the bill. 

“The premise gives you goosebumps,” said Bernstein. “And though specifically about the Jewish experience and the legacy of the Holocaust, Amsterdam speaks to the shadows that hover over all marginalized people living in places where injustices against their people occurred. It is about the struggle to assimilate while also advocating for your uniqueness; about the paranoia inherent in life as a minority; about the refusal of nations to take responsibility for their actions. The Jewish people are not alone in these experiences.” 

Yasur's unique narrative style involves the actors as storytellers who step in and out of the action, sometimes having to navigate competing details of the story, or going off on tangents that may be more than they at first seem. The result is a dynamic, shifting journey like the movements of a flock of starlings – a metaphor that inspired Yasur's writing. 

Bringing Amsterdam's unique style to life is a cast that includes Keith Conallen, Kishia Nixon, Adam Pelta-Pauls, and Taylor Congdon. The play is directed by Theatre Ariel Artistic Director Jesse Bernstein. 

“I feel very fortunate to have this cast of local powerhouses,” Bernstein states. “Amsterdam is pure theatre: physical and poetic and at times darkly funny and it requires performers who can think quickly, feel deeply, and live in their bodies. With this cast, we've got those performers.” 

The narrative will be framed by a design team consisting of Andrew Thompson (Set Designer), J. Dominic Chacon (Production Manager and Lighting Designer), Leigh Paradise (Costume Designer), Damien Figuearas (Sound Designer), Avista Custom Theatrical Services (Props Designer) and Celia HuttonJohns (Stage Manager). 

That plot is partly inspired by actual events. Yasur, while living in Amsterdam, learned of Dutch Holocaust survivors who were forced to pay utility bills for the time they were prisoners and slave laborers in concentration camps. Theatre Ariel got a first hand account of this injustice when it first performed a reading of Amsterdam and an audience member recounted how his father's family, returning to Amsterdam after fleeing for their lives during the war, was similarly burdened by a bank demanding back-payment on their mortgage. Unable to pay, the family lost their home.

“It's real history that echoes strongly today,” Bernstein says. “Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism are on the rise. Questions of identity feel so fraught – and Yasur's play captures it all perfectly. Jewish audiences will feel seen, non-Jewish audiences will come away with a deeper understanding of our experience – and perhaps their own.”

About the Playwright

Maya Arad Yasur is an Israeli playwright whose plays deal with issues of identity, exile and war through the dissection of narrative mechanisms. Her plays have been produced and published worldwide in more than 13 languages. She is the recipient of the Berliner Theatertreffen Stückemarkt prize for her play Amsterdam, the International Theatre Institute prize for her play Suspended and the Habima Award for her play God Waits at the Station. Her latest play How to Remain a Humanist After a Massacre in 17 Steps has been staged or publically read in Europe and beyond.

About the Director

Jesse Bernstein is the Artistic Director of Theatre Ariel. Directing credits outside of TA include: The Wanderers (Lantern Theater Company); Gift of the Magi, It's a Wonderful Life, Shipwrecked!, Little Mermaid, Jr., Aladdin, Jr. Honk, Jr. (Walnut Street Theatre); Complete History of Comedy (Abridged) (Cardinal Stage); Peter and the Starcatcher (Drexel University); Heathers: The Musical (Penn Players); Young Voices (Philadelphia Young Playwrights); Secret in the Wings, Mary's Wedding, Achilles in Sparta (NHSI); and the short film “Allergy” (available on YouTube). Jesse is also a writer, teacher and actor. He continues to tour his solo shows, Ethics of the Fathers and The Scribe. www.iamjessebernstein.com

About Theatre Ariel:

Theatre Ariel is a 501(c)3 nonprofit founded in 1990. Since spring of 2011, Theatre Ariel's main mode of performance has been our Salons – concert readings of new and established plays performed in intimate spaces. Inspired by the 19th-century gatherings of intellectuals and artists, these readings originally took place in living rooms around the Philadelphia area. When COVID-19 forced people to stay at home, Theatre Ariel quickly pivoted to produce an all-online season. This was followed by a season half on-line and half in public venues where distancing was possible. In 2022, Theatre Ariel returned to completely in-person performances and for the 2023 - 2024 season we reintroduced a few in-home performances. 

Amsterdam represents the first fully-mounted production for the company since 2009, when Theatre Ariel performed a run of 10 IMAGININGS OF SARAH AND HAGAR at Theatre Three in Manhattan (NYC) for Theatre of Ideas' International Jewish Theatre Festival.  We remounted the show for the Bucks County Jewish Theatre Festival produced in partnership with the Bristol Riverside Theatre. 

Theatre Ariel presents professional performances of new and established plays inspired by the past, present, and future of the Jewish experience – its heritage and humor, struggles and triumphs, ethics and intersections. Through our focus on the specific, we illuminate the universal. Our performances entertain, educate, and enrich audiences in intimate communal settings unique to our region's cultural life. Theatre Ariel welcomes everyone to engage with our shows as a catalyst for exciting, thought-provoking discourse

In 1990, Founding Artistic Director Deborah Baer Mozes created Theatre Ariel in response to a gap in the cultural mosaic of Philadelphia – the lack of a Jewish theatre. This was not always the case. Richard Cumberland's The Jew had its American debut in Philadelphia in 1830. In the early 1900's Philadelphia was a vibrant center of Yiddish theatre, with the names of Molly Picon (a native Philadelphian), Jacob Adler and all the greats of that era glittering on the marquees of Philadelphia's theatres. With the diminishing light of Yiddish theatre, Jewish theatre lay dormant in the city -- until the birth of Theatre Ariel. 

In its thirty-three years, Theatre Ariel has made an impact locally, nationally and internationally as a theatre committed to the development of new Jewish plays and emerging Jewish playwrights as well as celebrating published and established work.  More information can be found here: www.theatreariel.org/history

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