Interview: Writer/Performer Karen Agam Macarah of THE DYSMORPHIC DIVA at The Braid

The latest offering from The Braid is The Dysmorphic Diva, written and performed by Karen Agam Macarah (pictured, credit David Chiu). Fresh from its sold-out run at the Hollywood Fringe Festival, her confessional cabaret shares how the shape we see in the mirror and how our family sees us shapes who we are for the rest of our lives.

I spoke with Karen about how she developed her one-woman show, how she decided on which Broadway musical show tunes to sing, and which hilarious and touching true stories about family relationships and body struggles to include on her way to finding her best self.

Thanks for speaking with me Karen. Tell me about your previous playwriting and performance history that led you to developing your own one-woman show.

I wrote my first one woman show, Wine Time With Roni, in 2017, and performed it in the Hollywood Fringe and United Solo in 2018. Then, in 2019, I co-wrote a song-cycle called “Five” with a composer friend who wrote the music (I wrote the book), and we also performed that in Fringe in 2019 and won an Encore award. I wanted to write another one in 2020, but we all know what happened that year, and then my son was diagnosed with leukemia in 2021 (he’s fine now, thank goodness). So this is my first foray back into playwriting since 2019, and it’s been an absolute blast. I’ve surprised myself, over and over, throughout this writing process.

Karen Agam Macarah
Photo credit: David Chiu

I first started thinking about doing a show like this around a year before my fiftieth birthday, which was in November 2024. I loved the experience of doing Wine Time, but one thing I missed was that I didn’t get to sing much in that show. I had incorporated one brief cut of “Let Me Entertain You” from Gypsy, but I really didn’t feel like that was a story or format that lent itself to adding any songs beyond that. My acting teacher at the time, Carole D’Andrea (known for playing Velma in the original Broadway cast and movie version of West Side Story) loved Roni so much and was so supportive, but she constantly lamented to me that I ought to be singing more in my show, because really her class was built around “acting the song.”

So as I started conceiving the show in late 2023, I just wanted to do a cabaret where I get to be self-indulgent and sing my favorite songs from my book, and I’ll invite all my friends for my fiftieth birthday so that I’ll have a captive audience. And that was about it. I wasn’t thinking about doing it in Fringe at all

But the writing process was slow, and I didn’t get my act together to do the show for my fiftieth birthday on November 8, 2024 (the weekend of the national election, and I thought who in their right mind is going to want to go see a cabaret at a time like this??). But I kept writing and discovering. Then I thought, “I’ll do it for my fifty-first birthday,” but that birthday came and went. Finally, I thought, “51 ½ or bust!” And that was the Working Title of the show for a long time – “51 ½”

Karen Agam Macarah
Photo credit: David Chiu

And then we also lost my acting teacher Carole to heart disease in 2025, and I had worked on pretty much all of these songs in her class. So, I thought it be great if I could do this in the Fringe to honor her and her memory by performing these songs, most of which I had worked on with her.

Ultimately, 51 ½ didn’t feel like the right title, because that sounded like a show about anxiety around aging, and that’s not what ultimately emerged out of what I wrote. What did emerge was that I had spent a lot of years, especially my younger years, feeling “less than” and “unworthy” because I wasn’t a lithe and lovely little ingenue type - and that it had really shut me down not only as a performer, but also as a woman. And as I got older, because of the life experience I gained, I started to see things differently and became a more joyful and fully realized performer and person. But I don’t claim to have it all figured out! It’s an ongoing process.

As a performer, what’s your process for preparing for such a demanding or emotionally complex role?

I studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Institute and I’m a big fan of the Strasberg “Method.” That’s not to say that I stay in character all the time – although I have immense respect for actors who do that sort of thing, the Daniel Day Lewis’s of the world. But I think that getting relaxed and focused and tapping into our own emotional memories is the best way to get prepared to go on stage and create a believable and compelling world for the audience. So that’s what I do. I have a playlist I listen to, and I breathe and I relax and I go to those places in my mind that will help feed my performance on stage. If the actor doesn’t genuinely live the moment, then the audience won’t feel it. It has to be real for the actor to be real for the audience.

What drives you to perform, and how does this role align with your artistic goals? 

I’ve always loved performing since I was a girl, and when I started auditioning again as an adult (I had a career as a lawyer for many years and didn’t get back to performing until my 30’s), I realized that of course I was only going to be able to perform if someone was willing to cast me - since you can’t perform for an audience of zero in your bedroom! So that’s when the idea came to me for me to create my own show, so that I could give myself the opportunity to be on stage.

Solo theater gives me the opportunity to get up in front of people and do what I love – sing and act. But also, as I’ve done more of it, I realize that it’s a wonderful opportunity to connect with people by telling stories to which other people can relate – it creates a bonding experience between me and my audience that I absolutely treasure.

What inspired your interpretation of this role, and how did you decide which of your own experiences to integrate into the performance? 

These are all true stories from my life, but they all related back to a theme that started to develop as I was writing; I realized that what I kept wanting to write about was what shut me down as a performer (and a woman) earlier in my life, and how I came back from that. And it became clear to me that so much of what stopped me from pursuing what I really wanted was related to feeling like I wasn’t physically alluring enough to command the attention necessary to achieve my goals.

That’s why it’s so important to tell your story so that other women gain insight into knowing they are good enough to succeed no matter how they think they look or how society sees them.

Karen Agam Macarah
Photo credit: David Chiu

How does the role blend physical theatre, storytelling, and personal narrative?

I sing and move, as in your typical Broadway musical theater show. I also play characters with different accents, different physicality. And then, of course there are parts of the show that are pure narration - although my hope is that the narration is also really engaging because I’m deeply invested in everything I’m telling the audience!

Do you have a favorite moment during each performance when you feel the most comfortable onstage?

Acting the song is my absolute favorite thing to do, and it’s where I think I really excel. It has been especially gratifying to revisit singing from Mama Rose’s repertoire because I played that role when I was 17 years old – and it’s always been my favorite role and my favorite show. And now I’m finally old enough to actually be Rose and I just love performing her songs!

How are you working with directors, choreographers, and fellow performers at The Braid to shape a production’s artistic vision? 

It has been an absolute joy collaborating with Ronda Spinak and Susan Morganstern at The Braid. They both saw the show when I did it in the Hollywood Fringe Festival this past summer, and were both so excited about it they immediately came to me saying, “we want to put this show up, and we want to help you make it even better.” And they absolutely have done that! Ronda has such a gift for dramaturgy and figuring out what belongs on the page to make the best, most compelling possible narrative. And Susan has given me brilliant direction, which I think has improved the piece tremendously as well.

Karen Agam Macarah
Photo credit: David Chiu

How did you decide which Broadway show tunes to include? And how do they forward the story?

Sometimes it’s the lyrics that serve the piece, for example “I’m Breaking Down” (although ironically, I changed some of the lyrics for my own cabaret); sometimes it’s the character (I so powerfully related to Donna/Oolie, who sings “I’m one of a long line of good girls/who choose the wrong guy to be sweet on”); or sometimes it’s something more personal (“Rose’s Turn” and “Not a Day Goes By” are songs/characters that I performed at pivotal moments in my life). But it’s always the music and the genius of the songwriters. I wouldn’t want to include any songs that I didn’t absolutely love.

How do you connect with an audience in a way that makes the performance memorable, especially in a small performance space? 

I look at the audience, into their eyes, and talk directly to them. After all, I’m telling them my story. Solo theater is unique in that we spend so much of it breaking the fourth wall. And since The Braid does a lot of salon theater, where actors are performing personal essays, the group is very well versed in how to create theatrical pieces out of something that could otherwise be straight narration by working with their actors so that we live it, breathe into it, make it real and compelling for the audience as a lived experience instead of just plain narration.

How do you see your role contributing to The Braid’s mission or the broader arts community? 

Performing my show at The Braid is so deeply meaningful for me, because it marries my deep connection to my love of performing and of great professional theater with my deep connection to the Jewish community and being in spaces that embrace and celebrate Jewish identity. It is a dream come true and has been a joy of my life creating and sharing this show, and I’m so excited to share it with a new audience!

Thanks so much!