From the Artistic Director

Dear Friends,

It is with joy and excitement that I am announcing Theater J’s 2024-2025 season. This season, we will traverse time, cities, and emotions to bring you a stunning collection of plays that will take you to new terrains.

We will travel from Berkeley to Berlin and from Seoul to Paris to hear the notes from a piano that reverberates through decades and to ask ourselves where we belong. And, what makes us who we are? We ask: What does it mean to be Jewish today? And what should we consider about tomorrow? And even…. what makes us human? This season’s playwrights are searching for answers from AI bots to diaries, to award ceremonies, to birth certificates. By pushing the boundaries of what we know, these plays grapple with ethical questions of our time and the changing landscape of Jewish identities all through the power of brilliant theater.

Having just completed its successful run on Broadway, we are honored to bring Joshua Harmon’s breathtaking play PRAYER FOR THE FRENCH REPUBLIC to Theater J for its regional premiere. I am over the moon to be directing Theater J’s Trish Vradenburg Prize-winning play. 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.

In collaboration with Mosaic Theater, we are delighted to bring Tony Award-winning actor Ari’el Stachel and his story OUT OF CHARACTER. As a Yemeni Jewish artist growing up in California, Ari’el reveals the challenges he experienced navigating the complexities of his identity and how he was perceived by his peers. Though deeply personal and specific, this story resonates broadly.

YOUR NAME MEANS DREAM, by nationally acclaimed playwright José Rivera, is a beautiful story of an unexpected friendship between an AI robot and a spirited senior. We’re thrilled to welcome Naomi Jacobson back to Theater J, side by side with Sara Koviak, for whom the play was written.

In the spring we bring you Andrea Stolowitz’s mesmerizing THE BERLIN DIARIES, which opens the page to the past to take us on a third-generation mystery, uncovering a lost family history.

In addition to these new plays, after a sold-out run at Theater J, we are thrilled to welcome back Sun Mee Chomet and her powerful play HOW TO BE A KOREAN WOMAN. If you didn’t get a chance to see it during its limited run, now you have another chance! And if you did, you know how amazing it is, so please come back and share the experience with a friend.

And we are excited to welcome families back with our Theater Jr. program and are delighted to give you a chance to dive deeper into the making of theater through our classes. We will open our doors for you to see new plays in development and offer bountiful opportunities to discuss this season’s plays through our Creative Connections program.

I am elated to bring you this slate of plays that open the imagination and are sure to prompt illuminating and inspiring conversations.

I look forward to our shared journey!

Hayley Finn, Artistic Director