New Theatre Production Celebrates Wide Ranging, Rarely Heard Jewish Stories That Are Integral to the Story of America

As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, a new stage production explores the America in our hearts and the remarkable diversity of Jewish and American life today.

April 21, 2026 – With L’Chaim America!, The Braid, recognized as the nation’s leading Jewish storytelling theatre, invites audiences into the vibrant, complicated, and often overlooked contemporary experiences of American Jews in ways not seen before.

Opening May 12 in Los Angeles, the show brings together true stories from a community far more racially, culturally, and geographically diverse than many people realize. Supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, L’Chaim America! will tour nationally, with performances in Los Angeles, Orange County, the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, Boston, and beyond, alongside global livestreams.

Foregoing sets, props, or costumes to focus on the pure art of storytelling, a handful of actors take on multiple roles, using the audience’s imagination to transport them from an Iranian family’s Thanksgiving table to the windswept great plains, from a naturalization ceremony of hundreds to a quiet American suburb. Performers and stories deftly move between storytelling narration and dialogue scenes in a style that’s ever-present and deeply immersive.

The production features a wide range of voices, including:

• Los Angeles Black Jewish writer and performer Joshua Silverstein, who traces how local Ashkenazi activists built alliances with the Black community to help elect their city’s first Black mayor
• Screenwriter Robin Uriel Russin (On Deadly Ground), reflecting on Jewish identity in Wyoming
• Emily Bowen Cohen, a New York Times-featured author (Two Tribes), exploring America through the lens of her Native American and Jewish heritages
• Solomon Dueñas, an immigrant from El Salvador, who escapes civil war to arrive in the U.S. determined to reclaim his family’s suppressed Jewish roots and opens one of the first Jewish bakeries in his new home in Orange County

Additional stories and songs are performed by a versatile ensemble cast, with actors shifting roles to bring a wide spectrum of lived experiences to life.

“In divisive times, this show is a respite from the rhetoric and a reminder of who we are as Jews and as Americans, says The Braid founder and artistic director Ronda Spinak. “The Jewish people are a vibrant part of the American story. But I didn’t want to depict only the narrow version people think they know. Our community includes immigrants from across the globe, Native Americans whose presence here goes back millennia, people from ‘cowboy country’ and new citizens from Zhanjiang, China.”

A special performance of the show will be held on June 7 in Los Angeles at the Skirball Cultural Center, one of the nation’s leading Jewish cultural institutions. It will be part of a special community wide celebration in partnership with Jewish Federation Los Angeles, the Jews of Color Initiative, the American Jewish Committee, Challah and Soul (an organization connecting Black and Jewish communities), the Iranian American Jewish Federation, the Iranian Jewish Women’s Organization, Jewtina y Co (a national organization devoted to the Latin Jewish Community), JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa), and The LUNAR Collective (a national organization by and for Asian American Jews).

Directed by producing director Susan Morgenstern, the cast features:

• Zoë Hall (La La Land)
• Rhiannon Lewis (Traveler’s Prayer)
• Lillian Mimi McKenzie (What Do I Do with All This Heritage?)
• Joshua Silverstein (The Late Late Show with James Corden)
• Marcelo Tubert (Star Trek: Picard)

The show also features writing and music by a wide range of contributors, including noted Iranian Jewish author Esther Amini (Concealed), Latin Jewish LA Times and New York Times journalist Sonia Nazario, celebrated composer Mike Himelstein (The Tonight Show), acclaimed essayist Susan Baskin (writer of the Academy Award-winning film Violet), Vanessa Bloom and David Chiu (producers of The Braid’s nationwide smash hit about Asian American Jews What Do I Do with All This Heritage?), child psychology writer and Soviet Jewish immigrant Natalya Bogopolskaya, The Braid’s executive director and Israeli American Sharon Landau, Iraqi-Israeli American Aharon Zagayer, and cast member and songwriter Rhiannon Lewis.

Multiple stories from multiple writers allows an uplifting and nuanced portrait to emerge of the experiences of Jews in America.

• Dueñas is filled with gratitude: “I feel so blessed. I love the United States. I’m a proud citizen. I think America is still a land of opportunity.”
• For Bowen Cohen, her connection stretches far deeper than 250 years: “It’s the land… the trees. Native people have cultivated it for thousands of years… I’m rooted here.”
• Himelstein hopes that America’s past failures can become opportunities for growth: “Can we build a future that learns from our past?”
• For Bogopolskaya, identity itself is the point: she hopes her Black, Russian, Ukrainian, Jewish son will “embrace all parts of who he is… that’s at the heart of what America is all about.”

A stunning and timely production, L’Chaim America! shows that any celebration of America’s 250th is incomplete without including the American Jewish story too. In an era when people are deeply divided over identity and belonging, L’Chaim America! compels audiences to think differently about identity and belonging by shining a powerful storytelling light on individual lives, specific places, and the complicated, deeply human ways people come to call this country home.

Trailer: LINK

Interview access and media assets are available upon request.

Press Contact:
David Chiu
Marketing & Communications, The Braid
Email: david@the-braid.org
Phone: 530-304-6933

This press release was originally posted by The Braid.