Tony Award Winning Actor - Ari Stachel

Description

This experience will feature a version of his acclaimed solo show, which initially premiered at Berkeley Rep and made its New York debut Off-Broadway in the fall of 2025. Through humor, vulnerability, and masterful character work, Ari explores themes of identity, mental health, and belonging as an Arab-Jewish artist navigating multiple worlds.
Written and performed by Stachel, the show traces his lifelong struggle with OCD, the pressure to assimilate, and the identity fracture that began in the aftermath of 9/11. As a Middle Eastern Jewish teenager in America, Ari’el quickly learned that safety meant silence. He began hiding his father, denying his roots, and reshaping himself to fit a culture that viewed his heritage as suspect. What began as protection became performance—until it all broke.
What emerges is a deeply personal, politically charged, and darkly funny attempt to reclaim wholeness—onstage and off.
Ari’el Stachel is a Tony®- and GRAMMY®-winning actor, writer, and activist known for his breakout performance in The Band’s Visit. After years of success playing roles that often flattened or erased his full identity, Ari’el set out to tell a story only he could tell. Born to a Yemenite Israeli father and an Ashkenazi Jewish mother, raised in California, and trained in New York, Ari’el’s journey as a performer has been shaped by code-switching, cultural erasure, and the constant pressure to conform. In his acclaimed solo show Other, which premiered at Berkeley Rep and made its New York debut Off-Broadway in the fall of 2025, Ari’el merges his theatrical virtuosity with raw personal storytelling. Stachel has also been at the cutting edge of bridging Arab and Jewish identities through his work—creating space for complexity, contradiction, and shared humanity in a deeply divided cultural moment. He has also been featured on MSNBC to speak about Jewish identity and cultural belonging. Find him @arielstachel.