2024-2025
HERITAGE, JOY, AND JOURNEYS
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Four performer-storytellers introduce 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 exploration of the bills that always come due, centered around the possible, devastating origins of the bill.
"A deeply compassionate play." - New York Times
"A remarkably intelligent drama."
- New York Newsday
Cast & Creatives
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Jesse Bernstein - Director
Dominic Chacon - Lighting Designer/
Production Manager
Andrew Thompson - Scenic Designer
Damien Figueras - Sound Designer
Leigh Paradise - Costume Designer
Amanda Hatch/Avista Theatricals - Props​​
Celia HuttonJohns - Stage Manager
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Keith J Conallen - Actor 1
Taylor Congdon - Actor 2
Kishia Nixon - Actor 3
Adam Pelta-Pauls - Actor 4
It’s 1977 and Skokie, Illinois native Isaac Adams has been pretty laid back when it comes to his Judaism. Just ask his gentile wife. But when Neo-Nazis plan to march in his old neighborhood – home to over 40,000 Jews, including thousands of Holocaust survivors – Isaac faces a moral conundrum: how should he respond to this blatant anti-Semitism in his own backyard? What does he owe to his family, his people, his faith – and himself? Isaac wrestles with it all as he explores the quirky ways we connect with our heritage. His journey will leave you laughing – and thinking.
Directed by Seth Reichgott
Cast:
Isaac: Jesse Bernstein
Mrs. Adams: Marcia Saunders
Actor I: Jared Michael Delaney
Actor II: Damon Bonetti
Actress I: Eleni Delopoulos
Actress II: Alanna J. Smith
By Daniel Kitrosser, Alex Marcus, Alix Rosenfeld and Alanna J. Smith
It’s time for a little Jewish joy! Theatre Ariel presents an evening of short plays by local playwrights, all inspired by the theme, “Good for the Jews.” It’s time for a little Jewish joy! Join us for happy news, a laugh or two, and perhaps a few insights. Trust us: it’ll be good for you.
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Directed by Jesse Bernstein. Presented in Partnership with Lantern Theatre Company and Folkshul.
Cast:
Will Stephen Connell
Janis Dardaris
David Ingram
Leah Walton
Stemming from Broadway's Sharone Sayegh's true family's journey, The Goldsmith is a treasury of stories woven through the golden jewelry passed down through her family across countries, borders, and generations. Each piece of jewelry takes us further along her family's forced flight from Iraq to Israel, and then to America, where Sharone grapples for love as a first generation Iraqi, Israeli, American Jew. As she wrestles with identity, belonging, multiplicity of self, and acceptance, this solo play moves, surprises, and inspires the audience to investigate the stories and legacies with which we adorn ourselves throughout our lives.
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A Solo Show Written and Performed by Sharone Sayegh
Directed by Zachary Prince
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2023-2024
A SEASON OF LOST & FOUND
Directed by Jesse Bernstein
CAST
Isaac Geldhart - Brooke Behmke
Marge Hackett - Zuhairah McGill
Sarah Geldhart - Julia Natoli
Aaron Geldhart - David Pica
Martin Geldhart - Jamison Foreman
This insightful drama focuses on two key moments in the life of Holocaust survivor turned successful entrepreneur and bon-vivant, Isaac Geldhart. In the first, integrity clashes with commercialism as a family coup threatens to oust Isaac from his own publishing company. In the second, an aging Isaac must sort through the trauma of his past in order to prove he is sane enough to maintain his independence.
"A deeply compassionate play." - New York Times
"A remarkably intelligent drama."
- New York Newsday
A swirling journey through love, faith, Judaism, modernity and history told through the lens of one woman trying to recreate herself following a painful divorce. How do we begin again? How did it all start in the first place?
Directed by Esther M. Cohen
CAST
Mama - Bobbi Block
Baal -Thomas Geiger
Other Man - Frank Jimenez
Ida - Michaela Shuchman
The dead are meant to stay buried – aren’t they? Shiva is over, but Mort and his son Artie are still mourning the loss of wife and mother Shirley when a seeming miracle jolts them from their grief. But the miracle comes with its own complications, which they try to navigate in the most unexpected of ways. A dark comedy about death that is nonetheless filled with life.
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Directed by Jesse Bernstein
CAST
Marcia Saunders as Bella
Hannah Gold as Shirley
Jeff Pfeiffer as Artie
Seth Reichgott as Mort
Jack Hoffman as Sid
Charlotte Northeast as Ceil
Simultaneously an elegy for the dead and a cry of hope for the living, Sholem Asch’s poetic and riveting drama about a traumatized shtetl is brought to vivid life in this new translation. A soldier feared lost in war returns home, prophesying about a place without suffering. Will they join him in this new world – or stay and push on in this one?
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Directed by Jesse Bernstein
Assistant Directed by Esther M. Cohen
Jesse Bernstein - The Foreigner, First Merchant
T.C. Caldwell - Reb Nehemiah
Ben Cohen - The Second Child
Alec Farquharson - Yosef
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Jim Golden - Third Jew
Jemma Bleu Greenbaum - The First Child
Jeff Kudisch - The First Jew, Third Merchant
Dana Liu - Madwoman, Second Woman,
Second Merchant
Susan Moses - The Mother
Aneesa Neibauer - Dina
Emily Schuman - The First Woman
Belle Starr - Girl
Beau Starr - Boy
Rebecca Fox Starr - The Third Woman
Alan Susser - The Second Jew
Tom Teti - Reb Khonen
2022-2023
A SEASON OF LEGACY
Directed by Jesse Bernstein
Assistant Director/Stage Manager: Nora Gair
CAST
Linda - Janis Dardaris
Saul - David Ingram
Nan - Marcia Saunders
Bev - Susan Riley Stevens
Sammi - Melanie Bernier
A seder might be all about order, but you wouldn’t know it when the Stein family gets together for Passover. Will this off-kilter clan can come together as a family – or will this age-old tradition finally tear them apart?
Ariel - Kaitlyn Zion
Ester - Sonseray Reed
From the master comic mind behind the hit play All In The Timing comes this witty, romantic story of a couple looking to take the next step. Can they reconcile their differences? Can love mature? And why won’t that phone stop ringing…?
Directed by Jesse Bernstein
Assistant Director/Stage Manager: Danielle Fredane Quinn
CAST
Ruth - Chelsea Cylinder
Jack - Carl Smith
An Israeli violinist living along a picturesque canal in Amsterdam receives an unpaid gas bill from 1944. The past comes due in this imaginatively-told mystery about identity and assimilation. A Philadelphia premiere!
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Directed by Jesse Bernstein
CAST (as themselves)
Dana Liu
Jordan Hunter-Fidalgo
Adam Pelta-Pauls
Bobbi Block
2022 Jewish Plays Project Finalist
In a world where family is everything, a woman's struggle with infertility will lead her to reach beyond the safety of her Hasidic community.
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Directed by Esther M. Cohen
CAST
LEAH WALTON as Yehudis
SETH REICHGOTT
BEN BEHRAND
BRITTANY ONUKWUGHA
2021-2022
