Starting Over on the American Stage

Actress Meital Dohan has racked up Israel's most prestigious awards and nominations for her work on the stage and on the big and small screens. So the obvious next move might not necessarily be an off-Broadway production in an 89-seat theater. Yet that's exactly where Ms. Dohan finds herself these days.

Ms. Dohan may be best known to American audiences for her role on the Showtime series "Weeds," where she played a sexually manipulative rabbinical scholar who is as skilled in the Talmud as she is with a dominatrix's whip. She is now in previews for Anthony Neilson's play "Stitching," which opens at the Wild Project on Wednesday.

Though she is a certified star in her native country, having earned Israeli Film Academy Award nominations for the films "God's Sandbox" and "Giraffes" and having enjoyed a plum role on the Israeli version of "Ugly Betty," Ms. Dohan is now building a career in America. And that means starting from scratch, from a professional position she bid farewell years ago."I was at a point in Israel where unless it's for charity, I don't do low-budget," she said at a café near the Wild Project on 3rd Street on the Lower East Side. But, as she quickly acknowledged, "In comparison to here, everything is low-budget in Israel."

Though that may be the case, Ms. Dohan, 31, has proved adept at associating herself with some of the glossier names in Israeli theater. The actress attended the prestigious Nissan Nativ acting school in Tel Aviv, signing with Israel's Cameri Theatre before she had completed school in 1998. In 2000, she won the Israeli Theater Award, the equivalent of a Tony, for most promising new actress based on her work in the play "Best Friends." And in 2002, she won acclaim for her role in "Bad Children," a part written for her by the Israeli playwright Edna Mazya.

But America called. Despite the high profile of her role on the second season of "Weeds," Ms. Dohan has been forging a decidedly less glamorous career outside of her home country. Her first role in America was in a 2003 production of Federico Garcia Lorca's "Blood Wedding" at the tiny downtown theater at the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural Center. And her next, in "Bath Party," at the Here Arts Center, did not raise the bar by much.

But those modest moves don't mean Ms. Dohan hasn't completely abandoned the renown she achieved. Her appearance in "Stitching," for example, came about as a result of the actress's insistence that the play be produced. "I had to feel like she was right for the part that she had brought to me in the first place," the director, Timothy Haskell, said with a laugh. "I was auditioning her for her own project."

Mr. Haskell, who had encountered Ms. Dohan briefly when he did the fight choreography for "Bath Party," said he was somewhat wary of the actress's ability to buckle down and work. "Because she has a kind of celebrity in Israel, I didn't know what her work ethic would be like," he admitted. "But it is unparalleled," he said. "She is possibly — for better or worse, but in this case the better — one of the most passionate people I've ever met. She's a fiery, fiery woman."

Such ferocity serves Ms. Dohan well in "Stitching," in which she plays Abby, a woman driven to mental instability by a torrid relationship, an unexpected pregnancy, and a tragedy that ultimately sends her over the edge. For Ms. Dohan, who even offstage favors the smudged eye makeup and ruby lipstick she wears in "Stitching," the difficulty of the role was not mastering her character's scenes of madness, but, rather, locating Abby's more easily identifiable needs and desires. "I chose to relate to what she wants — a family, a baby, security," Ms. Dohan said. "So when she gets crazy, she gets crazy; she doesn't start crazy."

Given Ms. Dohan's penchant for playing characters with, at the very least, a subtext of subversivenessn — in addition to her roles as Abby and the carnally aggressive rabbinical scholar, she has played a woman with a history of sexual abuse and one subjected to genital mutilation — it is somewhat surprising that she names the HBO series "Curb Your Enthusiasm" as one of her inspirations. But it is the show's embrace of humanity's flaws that Ms. Dohan hopes to emulate. And, with her upcoming role in a new semi-improvised television series in Israel, she'll get a chance to do just that.

"I really believe that in art, there should be mistakes," she said. "It's about what's missing — the awkwardness."