Ari Stachel (2:35)

I mean, so I spoke about it a little bit in the speech. I hidden that I was Middle Eastern for about eight years after 9 11, after being called terrorist and all of the Islamophobia. And anti Arab ness. And so I had sort of believed for a large part of my adolescence that I would never reveal that I was Middle Eastern. And I even went into college hiding that identity and was encouraged to play roles that I perhaps could get away with playing, such as Hispanic or maybe biracial. But never did I think I would play Middle Eastern. And when I got that role, it felt like life changing because it was a role that was Middle Eastern and that was proud and that wasn't stigmatized. And so it was like the ultimate collision of my dreams as an artist with sort of my purpose as a person, which is to humanize this group of people that I'd felt so ashamed of being a member of for years and years.

Alison Stewart (3:37)

Did you plan to say that at the Tony Awards or did that come from.

Ari Stachel (3:44)

It came from the gut. I mean, I remember the night before I couldn't sleep, so I wrote a couple notes on my iPhone and it was like, what are things that I might want to say? But that just came out. And remarkably, it was exactly 90 seconds, so no one had to play the little, the orchestra off, you know.

Alison Stewart (4:01)

So what happened to you after? And that's where your show starts. You're in the party, people are congratulating.

Interviewer/Host (4:06)

You, but there's this anxiety that's inside of you.

Ari Stachel (4:11)

Well, I think that I had always had this North Star dream of achieving success. And I thought as a kid I was in a lot of pain. I was in a lot of pain. And so acting was a refuge for me. And I thought that, my God, when one as a 14 year old, 15 year old thinks of themselves accepting a Tony Award in front of their parents, life is gonna be really, really good after that.

Alison Stewart (4:36)

All good.

Ari Stachel (4:36)

It's gonna be perfect. And as it turned out, I was still little old me, and I was little old me with a lot more expectation and a lot more people and eyeballs, and I still hadn't made sense of all of that shame. And so I was having panic attacks every day, both on stage and offstage. I mean, every, every moment of life was feeling really scary and dangerous to me.

Alison Stewart (5:03)

When did you start writing?

Ari Stachel (5:06)

I started writing this play seriously about two months after that Tony award win. And I met a writing coach named Gretchen Cryer, who's a wonderful playwright. And I would go up to her apartment on the Upper west side between my matinee and my evening shows and I would telling her parts of my story and the things that resonated with her. She'd be like, oh, that's wonderful.

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Ari Stachel (5:29)

And I would start compiling this thing. And what's so funny is, at that time, I was so focused on my identity, and I didn't realize that what I was living in real time, which was this debilitating anxiety, was also a major force that needed to make its way into the story.

Alison Stewart (5:48)

What did it do for you to write it out, your story out? How'd it help you emotionally?

Ari Stachel (5:55)

Well, for the first, I hooked up with this director, Tony Taccone, who's known for doing epic solo shows like John Leguizamo's Latin History. And so I started sending him drafts. And for two years, he was like, yeah, it's close, but it's not there. And I kept being like, what do you want from me? And so at one point, we get into a workshop at Berkeley Repertory Theater, and it's almost a confrontation. And he's like, what does your character want? Why are you, as an adult, so obsessed with this kid who hid his identity? And I said, I don't know, man. And at some point, after 30 minutes of what almost became a fight, I said, he wants to be less anxious. And he said, interesting. Leave. Right about that. I came back the next day with 25 pages. I'd never written that much that quickly. And that became the urgent thing that this character needed to solve. And what it did for me to reveal and finally free myself from years and years of concealing both my identity and my anxiety was. It freed me. And I found that when we started performing it in its early runs, it seemed to free other people.

Interviewer/Host (6:59)

When did you decide to take it to the stage? Because you can write about it, but then you decide, oh, I'm gonna perform it now.

Ari Stachel (7:06)

Well, you know, talking openly about my OCD and more specifically hyperhidrosis, my sweating disorder that started in my mid-20s was, like, the thing I never. I thought at some I would try everything. The show talks about this. I tried everything to fix that part of myself. Everything. And nothing worked. And so I really think of this as my service as an artist. And I feel like, you know, they say that you have to take a risk, and this is a risk for me, and it costs me something. But I find that through that risk and performing it, it's the service I can do with the talents that I've been given and that I've worked my whole life to sharpen.

Alison Stewart (7:56)

We're talking to Ari Stachil. His show is called Other.

Interviewer/Host (7:59)

It's at the Greenwich house Theater until December 6th. It says on the flyer, I have here a Dramedy about the anxious art of belonging. Let's talk about the ocd. People have a misconception of what OCD is about. Can you explain ocd?

Ari Stachel (8:17)

Yeah. So in the show and in my life, I was put into cognitive behavioral therapy at 5 years old. The way the therapist described it is that there's a force inside of me telling me something bad might happen if I don't do things a certain way. And so it's sort of living life constantly have to perform small rituals to sort of feel settled inside. But then the macro experience of OCD is your brain can't turn off. And so when you get hooked on something, such as for me, writing this play or a character or a food, these are things that sort of. You think about all the. And you think that it's normal until you meet enough people to realize, oh, this is not exactly normal, but it's my normal.

Alison Stewart (9:04)

When was the time you felt your OCD kept you from doing what you wanted to do or needed to do?

Ari Stachel (9:11)

Oh, that's a great question. I mean, I think that, you know, there's a line in the play where I have this reckoning with a friend of mine who's Egyptian American. And I say to him, you know, I keep trying to find out why I'm so anxious. And at one point I say, you know, it's because I felt so isolated as an American and we're Middle Eastern and we're sort of seen as sort of like a side part of the culture. And he says to me, no, I'm Middle Eastern. I didn't have the same issues with my identity. And so I think it was the interplay between my anxiety and my fear of who I was and the OCD making me obsessed with hiding myself. And so I think that in many ways my OCD reacted to this post 911 environment and made me make a very extreme choice that ended up being very costly years later because of hiding your ethnicity. And all of the work that it takes has costs that I'm still paying for.

Alison Stewart (10:14)

Now, in the early versions of the play, the OCD in the program was. It was a voiceover, right? Yeah. What made you change it to you performing your OCD as a character named Meredith?

Ari Stachel (10:29)

Yeah, well, Meredith. So. So for listeners. So Meredith, I was not funny, but funny. It is funny. As a five year old, I was encouraged by my therapist to name it after. To give it a name, and the name that I thought was Meredith Blake, after the evil stepmom in the Parent Trap film. And I decided that I wanted to play it because, you know, I had this idea that maybe if it was a voiceover, the audience might be able to experience it as I experience it. And then I realized, you know, the conceit of a solo show is you're watching what theater does best, which is an actor transform and bring to life things in a way that nothing like live, other than live theater can do. And so it felt like I was distancing myself from something that was really a part of me. And it became more playful, it became more real. And I found that it became more poignant for audiences.

Alison Stewart (11:22)

What do you do when you have an audience that isn't quite feeling it? Maybe they're, like, not in the mood. Exactly. You have to kind of get them to come over to your side. Does Meredith make an appearance on stage that we don't know about?

Ari Stachel (11:36)

Oh, yeah.

Alison Stewart (11:36)

Oh, yeah.

Ari Stachel (11:37)

I mean, well, listen, part of a solo show is different than doing a regular Broadway show, right, where you have other actors and you can sort of focus on them. The solo show, the other character is the audience. And so what I've Learned in the 2 1/2 years that I've been performing it is that a bad audience can make it more of a bummer, but they can't stop you from doing your show. But a good audience can only help you. And so there's a discipline. And even though it looks spontaneous and off the cuff, I am pursuing an action every single second that I'm on stage, including as the narrator. And so what it means is, yes, it sucks when you don't get the laugh that you want, but that doesn't mean you speed up. And that doesn't mean that you let Meredith make you so frazzled by that that you stop doing your show. And so what I would say is that an audience can help the show, but they can't hurt it.

Alison Stewart (12:27)

We're talking to Ari Stochel about his show Other at the Greenwich House Theater. We'll have more after a quick break. This is all of. You're listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest in studio is Ari Stachel. His show Other is at the Greenwich house Theater until December 6th. Let's talk about your parents. Could you describe them each for us?

Ari Stachel (12:56)

Sure. So my mom is an Ashkenazi Jew who is the daughter of a physicist and a social worker and whose entire life is about service and who currently runs an organization called We Care Solar that brings solar energy to clinics in sub Saharan Africa. My father is the son of Yemeni immigrants who arrived to Israel in the late 40s. He is street smart. He is charismatic, charming. He didn't finish high school. And they're an unlikely pair, which is why they divorced when I was one.

Alison Stewart (13:34)

Did either of them have any sense that you were having identity issues?

Ari Stachel (13:42)

No, and they didn't because neither of them had any struggle in any way, shape or form that related to mine. I think my mom, you know, was raised around other Ashkenazi Jews. My father was raised in Israel when it was just becoming a country. And so, you know, they were all sort of very excited about this Israeli identity. And he was raised around a lot of other Yemenis. And I was this fish out of water, you know, around, you know, at a Jewish day school where I was the only kid of Yemeni descent. And so, you know, I was called terrorist. And I went home and I asked my dad, I said, are we Arab? And he said, no, we're Jews. Well, no one in this country seems to think that. Right. And so it actually has taken this play for them to understand me.

Alison Stewart (14:35)

That's been interesting. Have the com. You don't have to share them, but have you had conversations with them?

Ari Stachel (14:40)

Oh, yeah, yeah. And, you know, I've. You know, the show deals with some tough, tough stuff.

Alison Stewart (14:48)

Yeah, it does.

Ari Stachel (14:49)

My dad. You know, part of the show for listeners is, you know, a great source of my anxiety and my shame was that every time my father would meet a peer at school, they would compare him to Osama bin Laden. And it happened so many times that by the time I went to high school, I decided that I would create a story that I didn't have a dad. And so I worked really, really, really hard to hide my family life or my social life. And it felt like a great solution then, and it obviously wasn't. And so I had never revealed some of the things to my dad, and he saw that for the first time on stage at Berkeley Rep. Wow. Because for whatever reason, it feels safer to say it on stage than it does interpersonally. I don't know why, but it does as an. And it is heavy, but I feel freer that he understands me more. And.

Alison Stewart (15:54)

What questions did he have for you?

Ari Stachel (15:58)

You know, my dad is someone who's extremely accepting and loving. He just loves me. He doesn't, you know, he didn't really have questions. He just felt. And it's so hard for me when he's in the audience, but every time. But he didn't have questions. But we do talk a lot nowadays. About why I call myself Arab. And that's something that he and a lot of Jews feel like, well, we can't be Arab Jews. And I just. It doesn't feel real to me, you know, I mean, I spent my entire professional career playing Arab characters. I feel something in my blood when I look at other Arab people that makes it very clear to me that we share ancestry. And then I did a lot of research and I found that Yemenite Jews share a lot of DNA with the Yemeni Muslim population. So I think that it's really created conversations about and it has advanced his sense of who he is, as a matter of fact. Oh, that's interesting, the dive that I've done, because for him, he said, well, I'm Jewish and I'm Yemenite. And he understood that. But for me, being raised in America and having so many questions about who I am has forced him to confront his own identity in a new way.

Alison Stewart (17:12)

You spend a large part of the show describing your period of passing.

Ari Stachel (17:17)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

Alison Stewart (17:18)

You know, most people, it's like people pack from black to white, but you pass from Arab Jew to a black, which is a little wild when you think about it. When you put it in your head, you're like, wow, why did that make sense to you to pass for black?

Ari Stachel (17:31)

Well, imagine being 10 years old after 9, 11, and kids calling you Osama bin Laden and you want to do anything but be who you are. And one magical day you go into a basketball court and another black kid sees you as one of his own. And in a single moment, you are, you are the culture, right?

Alison Stewart (17:55)

The light blocks.

Ari Stachel (17:55)

You are the culture all of a sudden. I mean, it gave me a level of social freedom at school, right? And so the cost was very heavy emotionally, but at school, all of a sudden, it was like this magical transformation that if I adjust the way that I talk a little bit, I can sort of manipulate the way that I'm seen and have this completely different social experience. And as a kid, it sort of, in some weird contorted way, felt free to me. It felt like I don't have to live in this shameful middle eastern post 9, 11 identity. I can exist as of the culture. I can listen to 50 Cent, I can dress how I want to, I can talk how I want to, I can have a certain swagger on the basketball court. And of course, that might seem stereotypical to some, but for a 13, 14, 15 year old kid, it just makes sense.

Interviewer/Host (18:46)

When did it stop making sense?

Ari Stachel (18:50)

It worked for a while in My early years of college, when I was at NYU and didn't want my dad to come to my shows to out me. And I thought to myself, am I going to hide who I am forever? And it created this as a 13 year old, it was fun on the basketball court, but you have very artificial relationships. Everyone that you know can't know who your dad is. I mean, so it just got to a point where I was living such a fractured life that it felt unsustainable to have an adult life.

Interviewer/Host (19:32)

And how did your anxiety deal with that?

Ari Stachel (19:35)

Well, my anxiety, as you've learned, is very loud. I mean, if I have anxiety, well, I'm gonna put it on stage, right? I'm someone who tries to sort of force myself through force of will to sort of overcome these fears. And so, you know, I did a lot of things that were external to try to find pride. I put a poster of Yemenite Jews on my wal and I started developing Middle Eastern community. I tried to do all these external things to sort of reinforce that I didn't feel shame about who I was.

Interviewer/Host (20:09)

I noticed there's a lot of music in the show. Talk to me a little bit about the choices you made.

Ari Stachel (20:15)

Well, the show is called Other and the music, I think if one listened to all the different snippets, both that I sing and songs, it is Other. I mean, it's very eclectic. I have other ancient Yemeni hymns, I have 50 Cent, I have show tunes, I have Fiddler on the Roof and It's a Life and it's My Life. And it feels like the tapestry of what I'm learning. And the reason why the title is Other is because a lot of people straddle all of these different cultures and identities. And so the music is something that sort of viscerally brings people into these various periods of my life, but also it seems, brings them into their own experience of their lives too.

Interviewer/Host (20:58)

It's interesting, at the beginning of the show, you ask people, anybody out there with anxiety, and they're sort of like.

Alison Stewart (21:03)

A hand or two raised.

Interviewer/Host (21:05)

What does that tell you?

Ari Stachel (21:07)

It tells me that we're all going through it at the same time in real time. And, you know, it's a lovely moment because it immediately, I feel, brings people into the story. And by the end of that question, everyone. There's usually two people that don't raise their hand and I poke fun at them, but everyone else does. And it says that we're going, going through something as a culture. And I'm really happy to be standing on the shoulders of other public figures that I really admire who are opening up about it. One person that opened up about his depression was Kevin Love. And hearing that an NBA player opened up about their mental health freed me. My shoulders dropped. And so that is what I'm trying to do, both for myself and for the people who are in the Greenwich House theater with me every night.

Alison Stewart (21:59)

How many people appear on stage? How many people do you play in a night?

Ari Stachel (22:03)

So lazily we say 40. I've never counted, but it's probably a little bit more. And, you know, I'm playing, you know, every race, every gender, every age, everything.

Alison Stewart (22:17)

What's been the response?

Ari Stachel (22:21)

The response has been really overwhelming. I mean, and what I find to be so beautiful, and I'm grateful for, is that people have a lot of different entry points. And so there was two days ago, an older gay couple in their 70s, and they felt like they related so deeply to this experience of having to hide who they were for their whole lives. And so these are people who are like theater goers who probably like hello Dolly, right, But found themselves in the story. And then on the other hand, there's people who. I remember there was a Japanese couple who talked about their parents being in internment camps and wanting to hide their Japanese identity. And so what really the show is about, on some level, is about hiding who you are and about the audacity it takes to just be who you are.

Alison Stewart (23:15)

The name of the show is Other. It's at the Greenwich house Theater until December 6th. My guest has been Ari Stachel. Thanks for coming in.

Ari Stachel (23:23)

It's the biggest pleasure. Thank you so much.

Alison Stewart (23:26)

Deliver Me From Nowhere is the new Springsteen biopic that released in theaters over the weekend. The movie is based on a book by author and musician Warren Zanes. Coming up next. Warren joins me in studio. That's happening after the news.

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Interviewer/Host (23:50)

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Ari Stachel (23:52)

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Ari Stachel (24:07)

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Ari Stachel (24:14)

Sriracha sounds pretty spicy to me.

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Ari Stachel (24:21)

Maybe it's time to turn up the heat.

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