‘The Goldsmith’ offers a gold mine of storytelling at Solo Flights in Aspen

When a Broadway actress set out to participate in a New York Fellowship program in 2023, she never imagined she would discover a theatrical gold mine in her own family history. 

What evolved is a story of jewelry, heritage, connection, and coincidences.

Sharone Sayegh will perform in her own production of “The Goldsmith” at 4 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 2, and 7 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 4, in the Solo Flights’ sixth annual one-person play festival at the Hurst Theatre.

This new solo show, directed by Zachary Prince with music and musical arrangements by Avi Amon, weaves together real-life inspired stories centered around gold jewelry from her Iraqi-Jewish heritage.

“This is just my personal life story, and there’s nothing political about it at all,” Sayegh said. 

The New York-based actress, known for her role in the Tony Award-winning “The Band’s Visit,” has been part of many theatrical productions and is currently performing in “Beetlejuice.”

This is her first fully independent creative work. 

During her fellowship, students were assigned to present 20 minutes of an original work in-progress. She came to realize she had a lot of stories that either happened to her personally or happened to someone in her family that were centered around a piece of gold jewelry.

“I thought, that’s kind of weird. What’s that about?” she asked.

The coincidences didn’t stop there. After naming her work “The Goldsmith,” she discovered through conversations with her grandmother that her last name means “goldsmith” in Iraqi Arabic — something she hadn’t known before.

To make things even more profound, it turned out her great-grandfather had a career as a goldsmith in Iraq.

The positive response from her first public reading of her work exceeded all her expectations. During the question-and-answer period, the audience wanted to know more.  

This enthusiasm emboldened her to keep going, and she finished the piece in late 2024. The validation continued during subsequent readings in New York and Philadelphia, where audience members approached not just with compliments, but with their own jewelry stories.

“One of the beautiful things that has come out of it, which I didn’t expect but really moved me, was when this group of three women all wanted to show me the jewelry they were wearing and tell me their story,” Sayegh said, which related to their mothers and grandmothers, as well.

“I was like, yes, this is what the play is about,” she said. “I think with it being such a specific story, it wound up being really universal, and it’s basically about love and acceptance. I think any first-generation person from anywhere in the world will kind of feel connected.”

The play’s music includes an original song by her and musical compositions of Amon, another New York Fellowship participant.

“There’s going to be some really beautiful kind of Middle Eastern instrumentation that Avi’s going to do with specific Middle Eastern instruments, like the Od and the Duka, which is really cool,” Sayegh said.

The project is the expression of the emotional weight objects carry across generations — one necklace, one ring, one bracelet at a time. 

Tickets for Solo Flights range from $35 to $50, with the exception of the matinee performances, which have a “pay what you can” option, with a $10 minimum for standard seats. These seats are only available to purchase in-person and are not available to purchase over the phone or online. For tickets, visit theatreaspen.org/solo-flights-2025.