There is no better way to end 2025 than by catching up with my friend, Playwright & Actor Michael Raver! While this is our 4th interview together, I can't believe it has been 7 years since our last one, and that is way too long to go without more direct contact than our yearly Pride texts.

Michael is getting ready to take on the most challenging role of his career, thus far, where he will be playing over 30 characters. He is about to star in Sarasota Jewish Theatre's production of Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski, a one person play about Jan Karski, an underground courier and spy for the Polish government-in-exile who witnessed the Holocaust firsthand.

In this NEW interview, Michael once again answered my call, but this time around he shares:

• Why he wanted to be part of Remember This
• What he hopes audiences will relate to about this show
• How the show correlates to the tumultuous times we live in today
• What he will carry with him after inhabiting the role of Jan
• So  much more

Connect with Michael: Website, Instagram

In a virtuoso performance, Sarasota Jewish Theatre favorite Michael Raver portrays the Polish World War II hero and Holocaust witness Jan Karski, who risked his life to carry his report of the Warsaw ghetto from war-torn Poland to the Allied Nations and the Oval Office, only to be met with inaction and disbelief.

This story of moral courage and individual responsibility is a cautionary tale about the dangers of complacency and the ways in which a self-described “ordinary little man” can become a true hero.

Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski will play at Sarasota Jewish Theatre from February 4-15, 2026. Click Here for tickets!

Michael Raver
Photo Credit: Michael Kushner

1. This February, you are starring in Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski a one-person play about Jan Karski, an underground courier and spy for the Polish government-in-exile who witnessed the Holocaust firsthand. What made you want to be part of this play? Carole Kleinberg, the Artistic Director of Sarasota Jewish Theatre, brought this play to my attention last year. We did a zoom reading of it, which I guess served as a sort of test drive for what we’re set to do with the full production.

The challenge of playing over thirty characters, the extensive amount of dialect work, research, and everything asked of me physically to do this play was too good of an opportunity to pass up. That too, Karski himself is such an inspiration.

2. What do you hope audiences come away with after seeing Remember This? Compassion, hopefully. Some courage. To me, these are among Karski’s signature characteristics and it has been so inspiring to learn what bravery and compassion can accomplish.

3. What do you relate to most about Jan? He was incredibly restless, and I relate deeply to that. Workaholism is the most socially celebrated addiction in Western civilization. Hustle culture has become the order of the day, and while his urgency came from vastly different circumstances, I recognize that constant pull to keep moving. Rest doesn’t come easily. We’re often led to believe that if we aren’t continually producing, we lose our value. It’s a real struggle to shut down the computer, put the phone away, and allow stillness. 

Where I connect with him most, though, is in his dedication to service. I feel a strong compulsion for my work to do something, to matter in a way that’s helpful or supportive to others, even if the impact is modest. That sense of purpose is what ultimately bridges my experience with his.

Michael Raver
Photo Credit: Michael Kushner

4. While the play takes place in 1942, how do you feel it relates to the state of the world today? We’re right in that kind of zone today. What’s happening right here on our soil is eerily similar to what went down in Eastern Europe at that time. There are far too many parallels for any rational person not to see them.

The country is as polarized as I’ve ever known it to be. This is a chief reason why I’m so excited to be doing this play now. There are shifts taking place in a positive direction for sure, but we still have a long way to go. 

5. What is something you have learned about Jan Karski that you feel you will carry with you from this moment on? His sense of courage was awe-inspiring. I think I admire that more than anything else. I’m afraid of all kinds of things, though I wish I wasn’t. But, I do love the idea of being terrified of something, utterly terrified…and still showing up anyway.

6. In this play, Jan tells the world about the Holocaust. What has been an event in your life that has happened that you felt the world needed to know about, and people nodded politely as you told it? I don’t think I’ve experienced anything that belongs in the same moral universe as what Jan Karski carried, and I’m careful about that comparison. But on a much smaller, human scale, I’ve had moments where I’ve tried to speak urgently about something that felt essential. Injustice, or harm happening in plain sight, those are things I’ve spoken up about only to have it fall on deaf ears.

Even telling people that you want to be an artist as a kid, that can be dismissed by adults as absurd or frivolous. That disconnect stays with you. It teaches you how easy it is to listen without truly hearing, and how lonely it can feel to carry a truth that doesn’t yet land.

That sense of urgency—and frustration—is something I take with me into this play.

7. What do you like about preparing for a one-person show, with you being the sole cast member? Honestly, much of it runs counter to my instincts as an actor. I prefer the buddy system, being on stage with other people.

Listening is 110 percent of our job, and at first, the idea of standing alone onstage, essentially listening only to myself, scared the hell out of me. I never chased after any opportunities to do a one-person show.

And yet, that resistance became part of the draw. I didn’t think I could do it; I wasn’t sure I was up to the challenge or capable of carrying it.

But if something scares me, I tend to run straight toward it. Maybe that’s one of the lessons embedded in the play itself. A little fear can be a very good thing.

8. There are times when actors lose their concentration during a show & rely on their cast members to bring them back to where they are in the script. Since you are the only cast member in Remember This, how will you bring yourself back should this happen to you during the show's run? The words themselves are my anchor. Derek Goldman and Clark Young have written a profoundly compelling script, and the language carries its own momentum.

By truly listening—to the text, to the rhythm and intention embedded in it—I stay grounded. In a way, listening to myself is also listening to them, and that becomes my North Star.

Michael Raver
Photo Credit: Michael Kushner

9. You have performed with the Sarasota Jewish Theatre before. What do you like about their productions that make you want to keep coming back to their theatre? I love this company. Sarasota Jewish Theatre is deeply committed to challenging its audiences, and that’s incredibly exciting to me as an actor.

I’ve had the opportunity to perform many beloved theatrical “chestnuts” over the course of my career, but there’s something uniquely powerful about work that asks the audience to lean in—to engage, reflect, and be impacted. That shared sense of purpose is what has been drawing me here.

I love being part of this community and will keep coming back as long as they’ll have me.

10. What is something we didn't get to talk about in this interview that you'd like my audience to know about you? Just that I don’t approach this or any play I do to be admired. It’s a responsibility to be carried. My goal isn’t to impress—it’s to serve the story, the history, and the audience sitting in the room.

If I do my job well, I disappear and Jan Karski’s voice remains. That sense of stewardship is what guides me, and it’s what makes this work so meaningful.

More Michael Raver Interviews:

2016 (Read Here): Burning Bright with Fire on Babylon at NYC's Fresh Fruit Festival
2018 (Read Here): Sinking His Claws into Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Michael Raver
Photo Credit: Michael Kushner

More on Michael Raver:

Off-Bway: Vieux Carre, The Seagull (The Pearl), The Persians (National Actor’s Theater), Death Comes for The War Poets, Fire On Babylon, Romeo & Juliet, Julius Caesar (Aquila) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (The Hive).

Select Regional: Westport Country Playhouse, Virginia Stage Company, North Coast Rep, Orlando Shakespeare Theater, Bay Street Theatre, Peterborough Players, Greenbrier Valley Theatre, Ivoryton Playhouse, Bridge Street Theatre, Music Theatre of Connecticut (CT Critic’s Circle Best Actor Nom for Cat On A Hot Tin Roof), Playhouse on Park, American Stage, Red House, Shadowland Stages, Telluride Theater, Great River Shakespeare Festival, Bristol Valley Theater, Saratoga Shakespeare, and Sarasota Jewish Theatre, where he is also an associate artist.

Film/TV: TURN: Washington Spies, Murder Castle, How We Built The Bomb, Your Cookie, Star Night and Else/Where. 

As a writer, a three-time O’Neill semifinalist, with work presented at Sonnet Rep, Orlando Shakespeare Theater, Playhouse on Park, TheatreLab NYC, The Martha Graham Company, Sheen Center, Bridge Street, Great River Shakespeare Festival, and The Pearl.

Additional writing honors from The Austin Film Festival, Red Bull Theatre Company, ScreenCraft, All Out Arts, The Chesley/Bumbalo Foundation, and was a recipient of a grant from City Artists Corps.