Astute audience members attending the play Peace Warriors by Doron Ben-Atar, which debuted on Friday, July 11, at the Capital Fringe Festival in Washington, D.C., may have noticed a familiar last name on the program. The cast features one Natalia Emanuel as Glen Lewis, an adolescent involved in a tussle over Israeli-
Palestinian politics, activism and love that takes place at the home of two married professors.
Ms. Emanuel, a rising sophomore at Yale who, according to the university’s Web site, worked on five plays (as assistant producer and costume designer) as a freshman, happens to be the daughter of oncologist Zeke Emanuel—older brother to White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and superagent Ari Emanuel, who provided the inspiration for Entourage’s eternal saving grace, Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven).
Contacted by cell phone, Ms. Emanuel politely deferred comment to the show’s co-producer, Eric Braverman, a partner at McKinsey and Company who served as an adviser to the Obama-Biden Transition Project until January 2009. Mr. Braverman did not return a phone call, but another co-producer, Christopher Tine, told the Transom that the cast and crew “didn’t know anything about [Natalia’s] family until after” she got the part.
“It was just a random coincidence,” he said, adding that neither prominent uncle has made an appearance at the D.C. show. (Nor would their press representatives comment for the record.)
They’ll have another chance when the play makes its way to the New York International Fringe Festival in late August.
