Abe is a prizewinning novelist living in Brooklyn with a devoted wife, two children, and what looks like a charmed existence. But he’s plagued by a quiet suspicion: What if he’s living the wrong life? His wife Sophie, also a writer, is trying to hold their marriage together while managing her own disappointments. When Abe begins an unexpected email correspondence with a famous actress, he finds himself pulled into a connection that awakens something in him he can’t quite explain.

Across the city, Esther and Schmuli—newly married members of a Hasidic Jewish community—are beginning a life bound by tradition. But as Esther dares to imagine something more, both couples find themselves confronting the same essential questions: Can we rewrite the stories we’ve been told? Or are we forever shaped by the ones we’ve inherited?

With poignancy, humour and lyrical precision, Anna Ziegler (Photograph 51, Actually) explores the nature of love, belief, trust, and what it means to be the author of your own life.

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“The Wanderers is that rare play worth seeing twice, with a plot to ruminate on for a lifetime.”

‍Washington City Paper

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“A charming, penetrating, deeply moving new play—it sparkles.”

‍The New York Sun

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“Thoughtful, compassionate, funny…The Wanderers is about more than bittersweet relationships and coping with the past; it’s about the human tendency to be chronically dissatisfied”

The Washington Post

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“This absorbing, twisty, and thoughtful play is the finest play of the year! ...In addition to writing with searching depth, Ms. Ziegler can be quite funny… A play of superior quality.” ‍

The Wall Street Journal

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Writer Anna Ziegler is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter whose work has been staged around the world, from New York to London to Tokyo. She is best known for Photograph 51, which starred Nicole Kidman in the West End and won the WhatsOnStage Award for Best New Play. She is currently adapting the play for film, to be directed by Tom Hooper.

Ziegler’s acclaimed body of work includes Actually (Los Angeles Ovation Award for Playwriting), Boy (NY Outer Critics Circle nomination), The Janeiad (2025 Susan Smith Blackburn finalist, 2025 Steinberg Award citation), and The Wanderers, which received the San Diego Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Play when it premiered at The Old Globe, before it went on to be produced around the country and at Roundabout Theatre Company.

Director Igor Golyak is a Ukrainian-born, award-winning director and founder of -Arlekin! and Zero Gravity (zero-G) Theater Lab. A bold innovator in hybrid and virtual theatre, his acclaimed 2024 production of Our Class at BAM won four Lucille Lortel Awards, including Outstanding Director. Other notable works include The Orchard starring Mikhail Baryshnikov and Jessica Hecht Off-Broadway, The Merchant of Venice at Classic Stage Company, and the US premiere of The Dybbuk.

A graduate of the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts and the Schukin Theatre Institute, Golyak has directed and taught internationally. His company -Arlekin!, formed of immigrant artists, has performed across the US, UK, and Europe. He is the founder of the #ArtistsforUkraine initiative.