Ari Roth

Ari Roth (born January 10, 1961) is an American theatrical producer, playwright, director and educator.

Based on his playwriting, he received two Avery Hopwood Awards for Drama, the first in 1981 given by Arthur Miller, a noted UM alum and playwright (and student of Thorpe Rowe).

Roth is married to Kate Schecter, the CEO and President of World Neighbors.

They have two daughters.

From 1988 to 1997, Roth was a lecturer for the University of Michigan's English and Theater departments, teaching playwriting and dramatic literature.

He later taught in the Department of Theater Arts and the Genesis Institute at Brandeis University, and was an adjunct professor at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

Roth has been a visiting professor in the Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama graduate program in Dramatic Writing, and a visiting writer at George Washington University.

In 1989 Roth was commissioned by Arena Stage to write a play based on Peter Sichrovsky's widely acclaimed book of interviews with the children and grandchildren of Nazis (Schuldig Geboren, serialized in Der Spiegel in 1987 and published in English in 1988 by Basic Books).

Entitled Born Guilty, Roth's dramatic adaptation follows Sichrovsky as the Austrian Jewish journalist interviews children of Nazi and SS officials.

Born Guilty had its world premiere in 1991, directed by Zelda Fichandler.

The play was nominated for the 1992 Helen Hayes/Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play.

After further readings at Manhattan Theatre Club, Born Guilty had its Off-Broadway premiere in 1993 at the now-defunct American Jewish Theater.

Jack Gelber directed a cast including Zach Grenier, Greg Germann, Lee Wilkof, Victor Slezak, Maggie Burke, Jennie Moreau, and Amy Wright.

The New York Times called the play a "searing drama" and the production enjoyed a sold out, extended run.

Born Guilty had its Midwest premiere at Chicago's A Red Orchid Theatre in 1994.

The production, directed by Shira Piven, later moved to the Famous Door Theatre Company at Jane Addams Hull House for an extended seven-month run, and received widespread critical praise.

Since then, Born Guilty has enjoyed more than 40 national productions (including in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, and San Francisco) and a radio broadcast by L.A. Theatre Works as part of its "Chicago Theatres on the Air" series.

He was credited since taking over in 1997 with leading Theater J to "national prominence as a home for edgy, politically charged plays – and for nurturing risky new works."

The theater is a program of the Washington DCJCC with an Actors' Equity Small Professional Theatre Tier 7 Contract and membership in the League of Washington Theatres, Theater Communications Group, Cultural Alliance, and the Association for Jewish Theatre.

He was described as creating a "rare mix of professional polish, thoughtful dramaturgy and nervy experimentation – all in a spot just far enough off the New York radar for a playwright to relax."

An article in The New York Times claimed that Roth helped to make Theater J the "premier theater for premieres."

It produced new plays ranging from Joyce Carol Oates's The Tattooed Girl and Wendy Wasserstein's Welcome to My Rash and Third, to Robert Brustein's Spring Forward, Fall Back, Neena Beber's Jump/Cut, and Richard Greenberg's Bal Masque.

In addition to season offerings, Roth led Theater J to become known for its discussion programming, Beyond the Stage. Peter Marks has described the Theater J post-show discussion format as "a chance to digest and puzzle out en masse, in an entirely exhilarating way."

Since 2006, Roth has taught a course in political theater in Washington, DC, for University of Michigan's "Michigan in Washington Program," University of San Francisco's "USFinDC Program" and University of California Berkeley's "Berkeley Washington Program".

As Artistic Director of Theater J, Roth produced over 129 mainstage productions, including 44 world premieres, and 150 staged workshops and readings.

In 2010, Roth was named as one of the Forward 50, honoring nationally prominent "men and women who are leading the American Jewish community into the 21st century, and in 2017 he was given the DC Mayor's Arts Award for Visionary Leadership. In 2021, Roth launched a new partnership with A. Lorraine Robinson, founding Voices Festival Productions, to be the new home for his long-running "Voices From a Changing Middle East Festival." Their first public event was a virtual benefit in support of "Ukrainian Playwrights Under Siege" in partnership with the Arts Club of Washington.

From 2014 to 2020 Roth served as the Artistic Director of Mosaic Theater Company of DC and was formerly the Artistic Director of Theater J at the Washington, D.C. Jewish Community Center from 1997 to 2014.

Over 18 seasons at Theater J, he produced more than 129 productions and created festivals including "Locally Grown: Community Supported Art," "Voices from a Changing Middle East", and Theater J's acclaimed "Beyond The Stage" and "Artistic Director's Roundtable" series.

In December 2014, Roth was dismissed as the Artistic Director of Theater J. Hundreds of noted figures in the world of American theater contested his termination; Tony Kushner called it "an act of political censorship."

Specifically, it was said that Roth was fired due to his protesting the DCJCC cancelation of Theater J's "Voices from a Changing Middle East".

Jeremy Gerard wrote: "It is absolutely clear that Roth was fired because of the content of the work he has so thoughtfully and ably championed for the last two decades."

He also claimed that Roth was disciplined for "blatantly political reasons."

The DCJCC denies that Roth's termination was political.

Immediately following his departure from Theater J, Roth founded the Mosaic Theater Company of DC in December 2014.

Founded by Roth in 2014, Mosaic Theater Company of DC is dedicated to creating independent, intercultural, uncensored, socially relevant art.

In 2017, Mosaic received the 2017 John Aniello Award for Outstanding Emerging Theatre Company from the Helen Hayes Awards.

Past productions include: Jay O. Sanders' Unexplored Interior (This Is Rwanda), Motti Lerner's After The War, and Tearrance Chisholm's Hooded, Or Being Black For Dummies, along with the American Premieres of Izzeldin Abuelaish's I Shall Not Hate, Shay Pitovsky and Shahar Pinkhas' Promised Land, and Hanna Eady and Edward Mast's The Return, Philip Himberg's Paper Dolls, the World Premiere of Mona Mansour's The Vagrant Trilogy (which would move to The Public Theater with same creative nucleus in 2022) and Caleen Sinnette Jennings Queens Girl in Africa.

In November of 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, he resigned as Mosaic's artistic director after complaints from staff.

The son of German-born refugees of the Holocaust, Roth was born and raised in Chicago, where he graduated from the University of Chicago Laboratory High School.

He studied playwriting at the University of Michigan with Milan Stitt (author of The Runner Stumbles) and Kenneth Thorpe Rowe (author of the textbook, Write that Play).