[3] In December 2014, Ari Roth, Theater J's artistic director of 18 years, was fired after a series of widely publicized disagreements.

It has produced world premieres by Thomas Keneally, Robert Brustein, Wendy Wasserstein, Joyce Carol Oates, and Ariel Dorfman, with many debuts from emerging writers like Anna Ziegler, Sam Forman, and Renee Calarco.

Stefanie Zadravec's Honey Brown Eyes,[7] recipient of the 2009 Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play, was published in American Theatre Magazine.

Theodore Bikel's Sholom Aleichem: Laughter Through Tears, a one-man, three-musician musical which premiered at Theater J in 2008, went on to a successful run at the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene at Baruch Performing Arts Center in NY where Bikel was nominated for a 2010 Drama Desk Award for Solo Performance by an Actor.

[8] It was called "quite simply one of the most important and worthwhile projects that any local theater has adopted, in the cause of making this a more hospitable city for playwriting talent" by The Washington Post.

Other second productions that included significant revisions include Jacquelyn Reingold's String Fever in 2005, Kate Fodor's Hannah and Martin in 2005, Jennifer Maisel's The Last Seder in 2003, The Mad Dancers by Yehuda Hyman in 2003, co-directed by Liz Lerman, The Argument by Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros, and the 2016 production of Another Way Home by Anna Ziegler.