Caraid O'Brien is a Galway born translator, performer, writer, director and a three-time recipient of a new play commission from the Foundation for Jewish Culture and was recently commissioned by Theater J in DC. She has translated eight plays by Sholem Asch. White Goat Press published her translation of Sholem Asch: Underworld Trilogy and her translation of The Dead Man debuted as a radio play as part of Carnegie Hall's Voice of Hope Festival. She also directed her translation of Asch's On the Road to Zion. A co-curator for the theater section at the Yiddish Book Center's acclaimed new exhibit Yiddish: A Global Culture, Caraid also translated and recorded The Last Maximalist by Klara Klebanova, a teenage activist during the Russian Revolution. In addition to their New York City premieres, Caraid's work has been performed at Berkeley's Yiddish Theatre Ensemble, Philadelphia's Theatre Ariel, The Justice Theater Project in North Carolina and many universities. At the beginning of her career, Caraid studied Yiddish theater with Vilna Troupe actress Luba Kadison and crooner Seymour Rexite while performing in the store front theaters of NYC's Lower East Side. She also directed several nationwide broadcasts of Radio Bloomsday and performed the 3 hour Molly Bloom monologue.
