LABA Bay Area’s

Name Game

Berkeley Theater

Nov 27 – 29, 2026

Friday at 7:30 pm, Saturday at 8pm, Sunday at 5pm

Written & Performed by Yehuda Hyman and Sara Felder
Directed by Ronit Muzkatblit

Produced by Elissa Strauss

Ticket Information

Tickets: $30 – $40 General Seating | $50 & $100 Reserved Seating

Duration TBD | No Intermission | Ages TBD

(Please do not bring infants to the show)

Online ticket sales close 2 hours before each performance.
Additional tickets may be available for purchase at the door.

Show Description

What’s in a Jewish name? Two old friends seek to find out in NAME GAME.

A playful and profound exploration of naming, identity, sexuality, and reinvention told through monologues, circus, and dance with a vaudeville flair. Come discover how veteran performers Sara Felder and Yehuda Hyman found their names—and themselves.

 

Artist Biographies

ACTOR: Sara Felder is an Oakland-based theatre artist  She has created and toured solo theatre shows that use humor and circus shtick to activate grass-roots discussion on significant topics. The popular June Bride was about a Jewish lesbian lesbian wedding, while her current show, Class Act, shatters the silence around money.

ACTOR: Yehuda Hyman is a multi-disciplinary theater artist. His plays have been produced at McCarter Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, and many other venues. His essays have been published in Seeing Israeli and Jewish Dance; Dance in America, a Reader’s Anthology; Mahol Akshav/Dance Today; The Oxford Handbook of Jewishness in Dance. 

PRODUCER: Elissa Strauss is a writer, curator and cultural producer based in the Bay Area. She is the author of the book “When You Care” and an artistic director at LABA: A Laboratory for Jewish Culture.

DIRECTOR: Ronit Muszkatblit is a theater director, playwright, artistic director and executive director of LABA. She studied directing at the Actors Studio Drama School in New York. There, she helped pioneer artist-focused Jewish study houses at the 14Y, eventually expanding LABA’s fellowship model globally to cities like Berlin, Buenos Aires, and San Francisco. Her work includes acclaimed children’s play “The Magical letter”. “Say My Name” and “Waiting for Godot” in Yiddish.
COMPOSER: Forest Reid is a Bay Area artist whose work bridges archival sound, ritual, and community narrative. His practice engages Jewish mysticism, Yiddish culture, and repurposed archives, and has been presented at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco, Sukkahwood, and the Without Walls festival.
VISUAL DIRECTOR:  A painter, video artist, and stage designer, Naomie Kremer‘s video based set designs include the world premiere production of The Secret Garden co-commissioned by San Francisco Opera and Cal performances; Light Moves, a collaboration with Margaret Jenkins Dance Company; and Lucia Berlin Stories, performed by Word for Word in San Francisco and France. She has exhibited widely in the US and abroad and her work is in collections including the Magnes Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Berkeley Art Museum, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and the US Embassy in Beijing, China.

Special Events

Special, free pre-show activity, Sunday November 29 at the Magnes Collection (across the street).

3:00- 4:00 pm: Join LABA BAY AREA and the Magnes for an afternoon workshop on the subjects of “names.” Learn about the power of names in the Torah with LABA scholar Tova Birnbaum, discover the layers of meaning in your NAME, and play an actual Name Game in the new gallery show, Nancy Katz: A Private Pantheon. Prizes for winners! NAME GAME begins at the Marsh at 5:00 pm.

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