Ari'el Stachel's OUT OF CHARACTER & More Set for Theater J 2024-25 Season

Theater J has unveiled its 2024-2025 season. Featuring the DC Premiere of a recent Broadway new-play favorite, the return of an audience favorite, and a first-ever co-production with Mosaic Theater Company of DC. 

The second season curated by Artistic Director Hayley Finn brings audiences on a journey through time and around the world, from Seoul to Paris, California to Berlin, and New York to the virtual spaces of artificial intelligence. Finn selected these plays to dive deeper into the questions surrounding family and identity that drove her 2023-2024 season selections. “By pushing the boundaries of what we know, these plays grapple with ethical questions of our time and the changing landscape of Jewish identities,” says Finn, “all through the power of brilliant theater.”

“Theater J’s role within the American theater landscape feels more crucial than ever,” shares Theater J Managing Director David Lloyd Olson. “As the nation’s most prominent Jewish theater, Theater J is uniquely equipped to dive into the complexities of Jewish identity and community, weaving new threads of nuance and understanding through storytelling. I cannot wait to share these stories with audiences in the greater Washington region and beyond.”

The Theater J 2024-2025 season is as follows:

Prayer for the French Republic 

by Joshua Harmon (October 30 – November 24, 2024) Directed by Hayley Finn

The Benhamou family has lived in Paris for five generations. A visit from their American cousin, Molly, is quickly overshadowed by an anti-semitic attack on the family’s son, Daniel. The turmoil of the event awakens even the most dormant fears as each family member advocates for ways to move forward - or away. Just outside their window, the mounting pressure of Marine Le Pen’s extreme views winning over the populace shows no signs of waning. 

As the family references the choices of generations before, time bends to bring the characters forward, echoing the same questions. Past and present play out simultaneously, revealing our questions have been here before, but the answers have yet to arrive. A new-play favorite on Broadway and recipient of the inaugural Theater J Trish Vradenburg Jewish Play Prize, Joshua Harmon’s Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle award-winning epic family drama Prayer for the French Republic breaks open the global question “Where are we safe?”

Prayer will be directed by Theater J Artistic Director Hayley Finn, whose work helming Jonathan Spector’s This Much I Know received rave reviews and sold-out performances. “I am over the moon to be directing Prayer,” says Finn. “Arguably one of the most formidable plays exploring Jewish identity written in the past 25 years, I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I first read it. I knew immediately that we needed to bring it to this community.”

Theater J and Mosaic Theater Company present the Berkeley Rep production of 

Out of Character 

Written and Performed by Ari’el Stachel (January 8 – January 26, 2025) Directed by Tony Taccone. With additional development support from Theater J and Mosaic Theater Company. 

Tony Award-winner Ari’el Stachel’s one-man show brings to life a full ensemble of characters from his past, availing uproarious laughter, insight, and transformative performance to illuminate what it means to pursue - and accept - our complex identity. Out of Character weaves an expansive autobiographical tale of Yemeni Jewish mixed ethnicity, mental health battles, and career success - all to the tune of relentless humor and extraordinary talent.

Few artists can embody such a wide repertoire of true stories, from childhood to fame, with such compassion and specificity. As a child, Ari’el transfers schools and changes wardrobes and tastes in music to mixed results, naming the pain and confusion of belonging to many ethnic groups all at once. As an adult, he battles chronic anxiety in front of audiences of thousands, managing the panic in order to achieve his dreams. In a world that defines who we are as check-boxes for middle-eastern, white, Jewish, and Other, Ari’el pursues a life where all his identities can breathe as one.

After having its world premiere at Berkeley Rep, this production of Out of Character will be co-presented at Theater J’s Aaron & Cecile Goldman Theater with Mosaic Theater Company, bringing the two theaters together in sharing this intimate new story. Berkeley Rep’s Founding Artistic Director, Tony Taccone, will direct.

Your Name Means Dream 

Written and Directed by José Rivera (March 12 – April 6, 2025)

Academy Award-nominee and internationally acclaimed playwright José Rivera directs his profoundly intimate tragicomedy that asks what it means to be human as we embrace the technology of our future - and it embraces us. Aislin needs constant support in her later years, and her care is placed in the hands of an AI robot-caregiver - designed to look and sound human - named Stacy. The unexpected relationship that blossoms between them sparks questions of what it means to have a soul, what defines humanity - and what happens when those definitions begin to shift.  

Blending magical realism with science fiction, Rivera’s Your Name Means Dream marries the tension of a thriller with the emotional rewards of a quest. Aislin’s body may be aging, but her mind cannot help but actively seek connection and grow an appetite for true friendship. Stacy’s body was designed to fulfill the role of a caregiver but fails to qualify as being alive. The relationship these women find in each other is both surprising and moving, taking us on a journey that challenges us to know the Other as we attempt to discover more about ourselves.

Artistic Director Hayley Finn stated, “We’re thrilled to welcome Naomi Jacobson back to Theater J to play Aislin alongside Sara Koviak’s Stacy, a role that Koviak originated.”

The Berlin Diaries

 by Andrea Stolowitz (June 4 – June 22, 2025)

Wrapping up the 24-25 Theater J season will be the complex, contemporary drama, The Berlin Diaries by Andrea Stolowitz. Oregon Book Award-winning playwright Andrea Stolowitz opens the pages of her great-grandfather’s journal to discover a previously unknown genealogy in The Berlin Diaries. How do you find home when a family history is scattered like the torn pages of a journal entry released to the wind? Two performers become generations of characters in an attempt to stitch together clues and restore memories formerly lost to time.

How do people become verschollen, lost, like library books, leaving only the dusty outline - a life reduced to negative space? Stolowitz searches for clues that propel her forward and backward in time, pursuing a family history formerly lost to war. In a breathtaking journey around the world, what will remain lost and what will be found at the intersection of national history and private lives?

How to Be a Korean Woman 

written and performed by Sun Mee Chomet (September 12 – 22, 2024) direction and dramaturgy by Zaraawar Mistry

How to Be a Korean Woman returns to Theater J after its sold-out run in January 2023. It’s a hilarious, heartfelt, and personal telling of Korean American adoptee Sun Mee Chomet's search for her birth family in Seoul, South Korea. This poignant one-woman show told from the perspective of an adult Jewish adoptee uses text, music, and movement to explore themes of family, love, adulthood, and the universal longing to know one's past. "As an actor, I often use my own history to strengthen or inform my characters," says Chomet. “Now, I'm doing this daunting thing of giving my whole life over. It's daunting but rewarding to be so bare.” Chomet's award-winning play has been presented to sold-out audiences in the United States and Seoul, South Korea. Back for a second limited engagement, Theater J subscribers have exclusive access to add How to Be a Korean Woman tickets to their season subscription package before they go on sale to the general public. 

Alongside Theater J’s mainstage season, the company plans to have readings of commissioned works by the racially and ethnically diverse Jewish writers of the Expanding the Canon Initiative, continued workshops of Yiddish play adaptations through the Yiddish Theater Lab, additional Theater Jr. programming for youth and family audiences, alongside continued Creative Conversation talkbacks, partnerships and more. These additional partnerships and programing will be announced at a later date. 

For more information about the season and to purchase subscriptions or tickets, please visit theaterj.org or call the ticket office at 202-777-3210. 

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