Ari’el Stachel won a Tony award for his performance in the 2018 hit musical, The Band’s Visit, about an Egyptian band stranded in Israel. He was cast as a romantic lead, playing a trumpet and singing a song with one of the show’s leading ladies.
Now he has written a solo play about his childhood. His immigrant father was brought up as a Yemenite in Israel, and his mother Laura is an Ashkenazi American, a 1990s woman. It is a touching, entertaining and cultural zeitgeist for today’s world. Stachel titled the play other, which he describes as an autobiographical dramaturgy about the anxious art of belonging.
His father Aharon was a Jewish Arab, dark-skinned with a beard. His mother was studying medicine. They met at a folk dance in San Francisco. They married, had a daughter, Talia, and then Ari’el, who today is 34. His parents divorced a few years later.
They thought being Jewish was enough to build a life together, but it turned out Ashkenazi Americans and Yemenite Israelis were different people. As a child, Stachel’s identity was always a problem. When he was 5, his mother took him to a psychiatrist.
The psychiatrist said it was OCD — Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Stachel would hear voices in his head telling him something bad was going to happen to him. It was a psychological disorder, and the psychiatrist came up with a cure. He suggested that Stachel use the voice of Lady Meredith, the evil stepmother in the 1961 movie, The Parent Trap.
“All I had to do was follow her orders and nothing would happen to me. From then on, OCD was called ‘Meredith,’” Stachel explained onstage, further detailing that Meredith’s negative aspect made him sweat and perspire as if he was running a marathon. “That still exists even tonight. Towels and paper dispensers are my wingman.”
Because of his dad’s color, his problems got worse. “I was often known as a ‘black kid’ in Jewish schools. After 9/11, they changed it to Arab. I heard one kid say, ‘Check his bag for a bomb.’ In Junior High, I was a black basketball player and wanted to be Shaquille O’Neal. I was chosen for 12 spots on the team out of 100 kids.”
Stachel got involved in hip-hop dancing and attended the Oakland School for the Arts, eventually getting a part in Fiddler on the Roof. “Acting gave me so much freedom in the school,” he told his audience. “My relationship with my Dad improved. Then I got into New York University School of the Arts. Next, short roles on television, films, then finally The Band’s Visit.”
“I never thought of myself as an American. I was always cast as a foreigner or an Arab or Jewish. Then all of a sudden I was one person. Meredith disappeared,” Stachel said.
“Today, there is no hiding any part of myself. It makes me whole. Today I am Ari’el — Yemenite- Israeli-Ashkenazi-Jewish-American from Berkeley, California.”
Other is at the Greenwich House Theater, at 27 Barrow Street, NYC, until December 6th.
Photos: @ogata_photo
