FROM BAGHDAD TO BROOKLYN to Play Wilshire Ebell Theatre for One Night
Brian Kite directs the solo piece, which blends storytelling with live oud and piano performance.
Click for Tickets!
On September 30, actress and playwright Michelle Azar brings From Baghdad to Brooklyn, her intimate solo theater piece about Iraqi-Jewish heritage, immigration, family, identity and belonging, to the Wilshire Ebell Theatre for one night only.
Directed by UCLA's Brian Kite, the piece moves between Baghdad and Brooklyn through storytelling, movement and live oud and piano. Drawing on Azar's own family history, From Baghdad to Brooklyn explores the stories we inherit, the places we leave and the places we make home-and asks whether we can make room for someone else's sense of belonging.
At a time when immigration, displacement, identity and who gets to call a place home are at the center of the American conversation, Azar's deeply personal story becomes part of a larger global one: What do we carry with us when we leave? What do we lose? And what do we pass on to the next generation?
The performance will be followed by a special live-recorded conversation with linguist Sarah Bunin Benor, host of the Heritage Words podcast. Benor will explore the role of Judeo-Arabic, Yiddish and Hebrew in the performance and in Azar's family, with the conversation becoming a future episode of the podcast.
Azar, who originated the role of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the touring solo play All Things Equal, created From Baghdad to Brooklyn to bring a less frequently heard Iraqi and Middle Eastern Jewish story into the broader American cultural conversation.
'I grew up carrying stories about where my family came from, what they survived, what they lost and what they carried forward,' says Azar. 'I wanted to understand what those stories had made of me-and what happens when we really listen to someone else's.'
From Baghdad to Brooklyn
- Written and performed by Michelle Azar
- Wednesday, September 30, 2026, 7:30 p.m.
- Wilshire Ebell Theatre, Los Angeles
- FOLLOWED BY: Live Q&A with Sarah Bunin Benor, host of Heritage Words
- DIRECTED BY: Brian Kite, UCLA
- TICKETS: Wilshire Ebell Theatre event page
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