Some of the most compelling theater being performed globally, starring some of the biggest names in Hollywood, actors such as Paul Giamatti, Jesse Eisenberg, Elizabeth Marvel, Jake Gyllenhaal, Frances McDormand, Amy Ryan, John Turturro, Lily Taylor and David Strathairn, has less to do with entertaining the audience than it does with healing the world. Bryan Doerries, co-founder and artistic director of the theater company, Outside the Wire, is the Joseph Papp of social impact, deploying ancient Greek dramatists, along with the occasional Shakespeare and O’Neil, to give self-selected audiences the freedom to speak to their pain, and to connect with audiences across time who were also suffering from feelings of loss, betrayal and heartache.

Nothing sells papers or glues eyes to screens like a community in crisis — the indiscreet infighting that exposes the fallibility of a family. A family feud seems to be the central preoccupation of Dov Waxman’s “Trouble in the Tribe.” For many decades, a majority of Americans have supported and sympathized with Israel over its geographic predicament in the Middle East. One Jewish state the size of Rhode Island with a mere 8 million citizens is somehow too much for the Arab world to tolerate as a neighbor — despite its immense land mass and 300 million Muslims. One would assume that tiny Israel would be too inconsequential to matter.