Staged Reading
August 7, 2026
The Breman Museum | Kharkiv, Ukraine
By Ali Viterbi
After a successful run at Carthage College in 2024 and then at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2025, Ali’s play LIFE CYCLE OF A STAR has been translated into Ukrainian and presented as a staged reading in Kharkiv.
More information about the play and this international collaboration can be found here.
JFest | New Village Arts | San Diego, CA
Book & Lyrics by Ali Viterbi
Music & Lyrics by Toby Singer
Based on an original concept by Toby Singer
Excerpts from Sandi Masori’s article “Ali Viterbi brings a complicated history to life in ‘Budapest, Budapest’” in San Diego Jewish World:
“JFest has come and gone for this year, but not before I got a chance to see one of my favorite parts of JFest, the reading of Ali Viterbi’s newest work.”
“The reading was really good. The actors were incredible, even without a full production around them.”
“There is no full production announced yet. Based on what was on the stage at New Village Arts, it deserves another life. Budapest, Budapest already has a strong story, great performances and music that stays with you. I hope San Diego gets to see what it becomes next.”
The rest of the glowing review can be found here!
Staged Reading
July 30, 2026 @ 7pm
The Breman Museum | Atlanta, GA
By Ali Viterbi
Directed by Mira Hirsch
After a successful run in Washington D.C. at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and Theater J, join us for a reading of the play The World to Come by local playwright Ali Viterbi, including a post-show discussion with the playwright and team.
Synopsis: Every night at the SeaBreeze Hebrew Home for the Aging, Fanny, Barbara, Ruth, and Hal gather for their nightly “Supper Club” meeting. Over Scrabble and charades, the Supper Club gang competes, fights, falls in love, and breaks each other’s hearts. But as the world crumbles around them, they are forced to contend with questions of aging, legacy, and survival. A coming-of-age story set in a nursing home, The World to Come asks: How do we as a society care for our elders? And can you still come of age at the end of your life?
More information about the play and tickets can be found here.
The World to Come
Woolly Mammoth Theater Company & Theatre J| Winter 2026
Written by Ali Viterbi
Directed by Howard Shalwitz
Listed as one “the most promising theater to see in the DC area in 2026” by The Washington Post
Rave reviews for Woolly Mammoth and Theatre J’s 2026 production:
Excerpts Broadway World‘s review
“The World to Come delivers powerful, honest performances and an intriguing story in an extraordinary, deeply touching production that shouldn’t be missed.”
“Ali Viterbi’s powerful new play is both dystopian and spiritual. It is of trial and transformation. The apocalypse becomes intimate. The unraveling of the world unfolds not in fire and brimstone but in a placid community room with groovy furniture, a pink crocheted afghan, photos on the piano and friends who refuse to stop loving one another.”
“The play reminds us that friendship can be shelter, humor can be rebellion, and presence itself can be a kind of salvation.”
“This powerful, quirky, disquieting and tender work of playwright Ali Viterbi”
“Draw a Venn diagram of key components of a powerful show and The World to Come is dead center in the overlapping circles.”
“This play asks: What if the “world to come” isn’t some distant afterlife or imagined future, but the fleeting present we share? The World to Come is a world to share, a play to ponder and experience. Don’t miss this opportunity to see theater at its most compelling.”
Excerpts from DC Theater Arts‘ review
“A knockout encounter with the end of days”
“Ali Viterbi‘s astonishingly stirring play, The World to Come”
“Oldsters encountering the apocalypse, there’s a hot premise for you: the perfect occasion for a personal and collective reflection on entertainment as eschatology”
“A highlight of the play for me was a remembered beach-blanket scene in Act II, when Cleary, as 20-year-old Barbara in a bikini, has a tender exchange with Boddie as Jerry, her attentive beau (and now dead husband). If that beautiful moment of memory supplanting grief were a song, I’d have it on repeat.”
“I cannot imagine that anyone witnessing The World to Come would not in some way become mindful, perhaps even emotionally, of their own and their loved ones’ relationship to mortality — and what that means about how to live. From the jokey badinage at the beginning to the cataclysmic spectacle at the end, this play prompts us to do exactly that.”
Excerpts from K Street Magazine‘s review
“The choice to center older Americans (often sidelined on stage) proves quietly radical. These characters are not sentimental symbols but stubborn, sharp-tongued survivors. Their friendships function as both balm and bulwark. In Viterbi’s hands, joy becomes defiance, and community becomes a kind of civic shield.”
“By merging personal mortality with societal collapse, Viterbi blurs the boundary between private and public peril. Friendship, here, is not sentimental but strategic.”
“Overall, if the apocalypse looms, The World to Come insists on laughter anyway. It asks what we protect when systems fail, what we salvage when certainty slips, and who we cling to when the sirens sound.”
Excerpts MD Theatre Guide‘s review
“The World to Come,” a world premiere by Ali Viterbi, leaves us with hope—a beam of light shining at the end of the world.”
“Viterbi’s multidimensional view of life as a senior affirms that we all continue to grow, learn, and love even as we age—it ain’t over, ‘til it’s over!”
“Character development is a strong point for Viterbi and is served well by the artful direction of Howard Shalwitz”
“The World to Come” is a chilling horror story, a passionate love story, and a profound meditation on the depth of humanity needed to survive.”
Excerpts from Whisk and Quill‘s review
“In The World to Comeacts of survival blend seamlessly with gallows humor, hilarity and a fierce desire to help one another.”
“Viterbi’s surrealistic ‘apocalypse play’ provides us with the key to the bonds of friendship and the sacrifices that define humanity in a world gone terribly wrong. It put me in mind of the great French Romanian playwright, Eugene Ionesco, the godfather of the Theatre of the Absurd, who employed surrealism to describe the iniquities of Fascism and Nazism, two isms recently resurfaced in our modern world.”
“Brilliantly directed by Woolly Mammoth Founder Howard Shalwitz in a co-production with Theatre J, and exquisitely performed by this multi award-winning ensemble, this powerful play is staged with imaginative sting. Viterbi reminds us that the shofar is sounding. It is time to act.”
Excerpts from Theatre in DC‘s review
“A world premiere that is generating tremendous buzz among DC theatregoers”
“A show you do not want to miss.”
“But this is no simple comedy. Viterbi’s script takes a sharp and thrilling turn as the outside world begins to unravel.”
“What has captivated audiences and critics alike is how the play weaves together so many tones and ideas without ever losing its footing. It works as a chilling horror story, a passionate love story, and a profound meditation on aging, mortality, and what it means to build community when the world is falling apart. Viterbi’s writing treats its older characters not as sentimental symbols but as stubborn, complicated, fully alive human beings – people who are still growing, still loving, still fighting. The decision to center the story on seniors who are so often sidelined on stage has been called quietly radical, and the result is a play that feels both timely and deeply moving.”
“At its heart, “The World to Come” insists that joy is an act of defiance, that community is a kind of shelter, and that our most transformational journeys can happen even toward the end of our lives. It is a play that will make you laugh, grip your armrest, and leave the theatre thinking about the people you love and the world you want to build with them.”
Workshop
February 7, 2026
Theater Emory | Brave New Works Festival | Atlanta, GA
By Ali Viterbi
Directed by Amber McGinnis
Mia wants Jay. Jay wants to die. A fragmented fable about the nature of love, SUICIDE ROM COM explores our hunger for connection and the explosive collision of desire with the demons that haunt us. What happens when you find your other half, and that other half consumes you? SUICIDE ROM COM depicts the arc of a single relationship as two people come together… and tear each other apart.
Content warning: This play deals heavily with the topics of suicide, self-harm, mental illness, and depression. It also includes sexual content, strong language, allusions to BDSM, and some violence.
More information about the play and tickets can be found here. And the press release can be found here.