THE DYSMORPHIC DIVA to Open at The Braid This November

Her mother was extremely thin, and she...wasn't. Now, after a sold-out run at the 2026 Hollywood Fringe Festival, Macarah brings that deeply personal struggle to the stage in The Dysmorphic Diva, a hilarious and heartfelt one-woman show coming to The Braid in Santa Monica November 1-8. 

But the mirror tells only half the story. As her parents divorced, her father remarried, and her relationship with her mother grew increasingly harder to navigate, Macarah grappled with the nagging suspicion that youth, thinness, and beauty were what mattered most in a woman. Those insecurities followed her into audition rooms, where she compared herself with slender young actresses she believed looked the part of the romantic lead. She observes that these beauty standards haven't gotten any easier in the "age of Ozempic."

Throughout the show, Macarah punctuates these stories with her beautiful singing voice, bringing it to songs from Broadway favorites including Cabaret, Fiddler on the Roof, Falsettos, Grey Gardens, The Prom, and Merrily We Roll Along.

According to Macarah, as she started conceiving of the show, she 'just wanted to do a cabaret where I get to be self-indulgent and sing my favorite songs, but then I realized that every song I wanted to sing had something to do with some deep and important experience from my own life. Whether it was the heartbreak of my first love in college, or feeling like my father was going to forget about me when he got remarried and had another child, all the songs powerfully resonated for me on a personal level, and I wanted to share that context with my audience. So I kept writing, and realized I was writing a personal narrative one-woman show that would string all of these songs together.'

For Macarah, who is Jewish and the daughter of an Israeli father, coming to The Braid is also a homecoming. An Abby Freeman Artist-in-Residence at The Braid, she has performed in several of the company's theatrical productions, including Hold Me, Heal Me and the acclaimed On Being Jewish Now. Her cabaret briefly addresses the controversies surrounding Israeli identity, recounting how her paternal grandparents fled Poland to build a life in what would become Israel, while relatives left behind were killed in the Holocaust. She wonders whether generations of Jewish women trying to fit into the prevailing culture have shaped her own dream of becoming an "all-American dreamgirl."

The Braid, Los Angeles's only dedicated Jewish theater space, has long given a stage to the diverse experiences of Jewish life. Macarah's cabaret adds to that tradition by telling a Jewish woman's story in full-not only her heritage, but her family, ambitions, insecurities, and sense of humor.

A veteran of Los Angeles theater, Macarah's previous creations include Wine Time With Roni, which played at Hollywood Fringe and New York's United Solo Theatre Festival, and Five, an Encore Award-winning musical exploration of the five stages of grief. She has also appeared in major motion pictures including Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret and The Disaster Artist.