(JEWISH GROUP) Ari'el Stachel, an 'Arab Jewish' actor with a Tony Award, has a message about antisemitism for Zohran Mam

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Ari’el Stachel, an ‘Arab Jewish’ actor with a Tony Award, has a message about antisemitism for Zohran Mamdani

At the climax of his one-man show, “Out of Character,” the actor Ari’el Stachel declares, “I am a Yemenite, Israeli, Ashkenazi, Jewish, American actor with anxiety.”

It’s a complex identity that has brought him major attention since his Tony Award-winning turn as an Egyptian trumpeter in the hit 2018 musical “The Band’s Visit,” set in an Israeli backwater. It’s also an identity that has drawn some welcome scrutiny: Some critics and fellow actors complained that a Jew shouldn’t have played an Arab, and Stachel says he was fired in 2021 from another musical, “The Visitor,” when he challenged the way his Syrian character was being portrayed.

Stachel is now drawing on his crisscrossing identities during a month-long run in the Berkshires, the third production of a show he hopes to bring to Broadway, and also in a busy Instagram feed in which he has become increasingly outspoken about antisemitism and the invisibility of Jews of color.

Late last month, he drew those threads together in a video appeal to Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, who many Jews and their allies say does not appreciate why Jews are feeling threatened by anti-Israel rhetoric post-Oct. 7.

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