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<\/p>\n\n\tTony-winning actor Ari\u2019el Stachel felt the dread of social discomfort early on. As a boy, he was an outlier at his Jewish day school, where his skin was darker than his classmates\u2019 and his surname, Yeshayahu, felt like \u201ctoo much.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tDespite his upbringing in progressive Berkeley, California, his schoolmates taunted him, particularly after 9\/11.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cCheck Air\u2019el\u2019s bag for bombs,\u201d Stachel recounts in his searing one-man play,\u00a0Other, running through Dec. 6 at Greenwich House Theatre in New York.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tInhabiting a staggering 48 characters in this autobiographical revelation, he lays bare the kinds of personal frailties and comical crack-ups most rising actors would be advised by their agents to ignore.<\/p>\n
\n\tIt was a long road getting here.<\/p>\n
\n\tWhile Stachel, 34, has discussed in recent years some of the lengths he went to as a teen to conceal his Arab Jewish Middle Eastern roots, he had not been as forthcoming about a debilitating anxiety disorder that had overtaken his life \u201csince the womb.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tHis original plan as a 10-year-old trying to find even some partial relief in his life was to pass as white \u2014 aided by a new school, new name and hairstyle (\u201clike Ross Geller from\u00a0Friends,\u201d he says).\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tIt worked for a time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tBy 12, his complexion had darkened. When a new friend assumes he is Black, Stachel leans in and stays there, passing as Black through several more school transfers and on through to young adulthood.<\/p>\n
\n\tWriting this show, he told\u00a0THR\u00a0in an interview this week, was \u201cmy active way of almost beating the shame out of myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThroughout his youthful charade, he was also concealing his bearded Yemenite Israeli father, Aaron Yeshayahu, the parent with whom he spent most of his time after his folks divorced.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tStachel even skips all of his school graduations through the years so as not to be seen publicly with him. The stress of it all drives him to a frazzled thread.<\/p>\n
\n\t(His mother, Laura Stachel, a white American Ashkenazi Jew originally from New York, did not pose the same kind of dilemma for him).\u00a0<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tAri\u2019el Stachel portrays 48 characters in \u2018Other,\u2019 which opened Oct. 8.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOgata<\/p>\n
\n\tThe tall, athletic Stachel started writing this introspection on race, identity, mental health and \u201cwhat it means to be American\u201d seven years ago amid his lauded Broadway run in\u00a0The Band\u2019s Visit<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAmong the catalysts, he said, was that he came to understand that \u201cif I didn\u2019t write this story, I would never see my culture reflected onstage.\u201d<\/p>\n