MIDDLE EASTERN

AMERICAN THEATRE

Michael Malek Najjar is an associate professor of Theatre Arts at the

University of Oregon. He holds an MFA in Directing from York University
and a PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies from UCLA. His research
focuses on Arab American and Middle Eastern American theatre and
performance. He is the author of Arab American Drama, Film and
Performance: A Critical Study, 1908 to the Present (2015), and the editor of
Heather Raffo’s Iraq Plays: The Things That Can’t Be Said (2021), The Selected
Works of Yussef El Guindi (2018), and Four Arab American Plays: Works
by Leila Buck, Jamil Khoury, Yussef El Guindi, and Lameece Issaq & Jacob
Kader (2014). With Jamil Khoury and Corey Pond, he is the coeditor of
Four Plays of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2018). He is an alumnus of
the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, Directors Lab West, and the
RAWI Screenwriters Lab-The Royal Film Commission Jordan. He has also
directed mainstage productions with Golden Thread Productions, New
Arab American Theatre Works, and Silk Road Rising.
Also available in the Critical Companions series from Methuen Drama:

CRITICAL COMPANION TO NATIVE AMERICAN AND FIRST

NATIONS THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE: INDIGENOUS SPACES
Jaye T. Darby, Courtney Elkin Mohler, and Christy Stanlake

THE DRAMA AND THEATRE OF SARAH RUHL

Amy Muse

THE THEATRE OF AUGUST WILSON

Alan Nadel

THE THEATRE OF EUGENE O’NEILL: AMERICAN MODERNISM ON

THE WORLD STAGE
Kurt Eisen

THE THEATRE AND FILMS OF CONNOR MCPHERSON:

CONSPICUOUS COMMUNITIES
Eamonn Jordan

IRISH DRAMA AND THEATRE SINCE 1950

Patrick Lonergan

PRISON THEATRE AND THE GLOBAL CRISIS OF INCARCERATION

Ashley Lucas

For a full listing, please visit www​.b​​looms​​bury.​​com​/s​​eries​​/crit​​icalc​​ompan​​

ions/​
MIDDLE EASTERN
AMERICAN THEATRE

COMMUNITIES, CULTURES, AND ARTISTS

Michael Malek Najjar

Series Editors: Patrick Lonergan and Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.

 METHUEN DRAMA
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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First published in Great Britain 2021

Copyright © Michael Malek Najjar, 2021

Michael Malek Najjar has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on pp. xi–xii constitute an extension

of this copyright page.

Cover design: Charlotte Daniels

Cover image: 444 Days by Torange Yeghiazarian, Golden Thread Productions, 2013.
Harry (Michael Shipley) and Laleh (Jeri Lynn Cohen). Directed by
Torange Yeghiazarian. Photograph by David Allen Studio

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in writing from the publishers.

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any
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book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any
inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but
can accept no responsibility for any such changes.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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For Rana and Malak
vi
CONTENTS

List of Illustrations x
Acknowledgments xi
Preface xiii

Introduction: Polyculturalism, Transnationalism, and Diaspora 1

Middle Eastern American Communities 3
Middle Eastern Americans and the Transnational Belonging 5
Middle Eastern Americans and the US Census 9
The Polycultural and Middle Eastern Americans 10
Middle Eastern American Literature 13
Middle Eastern American Diasporic Cultural Production 14
Middle Eastern American Theatre 19
Issues Facing Middle Eastern American Theatre 29
Major Themes of Middle Eastern American Theatre 34

1 Major Middle Eastern American Companies 41

AJYAL Theatrical Group 41
Alliance for Jewish Theatre (AJT) 44
Arab-American Comedy Festival 45
Art2Action Inc. 45
Darvag Theater Group 46
Golden Thread Productions 48
Jewish Plays Project 49
The Lark 50
Mosaic Theater 50
New Arab American Theatre Works 51
Nibras Theatre Ensemble 51
Noor Theatre 53
Pangea World Theatre 54
Silk Road Rising/Silk Road Theatre Project 54
Contents

TARTE: Turkish American Repertory Theater & Entertainment 55

Theater J 56
Tribute: Reza Abdoh 57

2 Return to the Homeland Plays 59

3 Persecution Plays 73
Governmental Persecution Plays: Back of the Throat, Truth
Serum Blues, and Zafira and the Resistance 75
Societal Persecution Plays: Autobiography of a Terrorist, Me
No Terrorist, Roar, Mosque Alert, and Lubbock or Leave It! 83

4 Diaspora Plays 95
Middle Eastern Americans and the Entertainment Industry:
It’s Not About Pomegranates! and Browntown 95
Living between “Here” and “There”: 444 Days; This
Time; Twice, Thrice, Frice . . .; Reading Hebron; Noura;
Dragonflies; Suitcase; and Living in the Hyphen-Nation 102
Keeping Tradition Alive: TRAYF, A People: A Mosaic Play,
and Detour Guide 116
Searching for Roots: Baba and (dis)Place[d] 122
Diaspora and Its Discontents: Stunning, Deep Cut, and The
Man in the Sukkah 125

5 Plays Set in the Homeland 131

Plays Exploring the Refugee Crisis: Urge for Going and Not
My Revolution 131
Plays of the Holocaust and Plays Set in Israel and Palestine:
The Zionists, Abraham’s Daughters, and Food and Fadwa 135
Plays and Musicals About the Troubled Homeland: Pera
Palas, The Band’s Visit, and We Live in Cairo 142

6 Conflict Plays 149

The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: The River and the Sea, Facts,
Martyr’s Street, and Wrestling Jerusalem 149
Plays of the Armenian Genocide: March! and Night Over
Erzinga 158
Civil War Plays: Scorched, Game of Patience, and Smail 162

viii
 Contents

7 The Current State of Middle Eastern American Theatre 169

8 Critical Perspectives 173

“Theatre that Disrupts Our Unconscious Bias with Humor
and Joy”: An Interview with Maia Directors Kareem
Fahmy, Evren Odcikin, Megan Sandberg-Zakian, and
Pirronne Yousefzadeh 175
“Be a Part of Changing the American Narrative About
the Middle East”: An Interview with Golden Thread
Productions Executive Artistic Director Torange
Yeghiazarian and Silk Road Rising Co-Founder and
Co-Executive Artistic Director Jamil Khoury 183

References and Further Reading 209

Notes on Contributors 225
Index 227

ix
ILLUSTRATIONS

1 Mosque Alert by Jamil Khoury, Silk Road Rising, 2016 91

2 Manar by Melis Aker, LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, 2017 112
3 TRAYF by Lindsay Joelle, Theater J, 2018 119
4 Urge for Going by Mona Mansour, Golden Thread
Productions, 2013 132
5 Night Over Erzinga by Adriana Sevahn Nichols, Silk Road
Rising, 2012 161
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A book like this is not possible without the assistance, advice, and support
of an entire village. I would first like to thank Mark Dudgeon, Lara Bateman,
Joseph Gautham, and the entire outstanding editorial and production team
at Methuen Drama. My deepest gratitude and regards to the series editors
Patrick Lonergan and Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. who have been invaluable to
me as guides throughout this process. Their encouragement and support
helped me immensely, and I could not have completed this volume without
them. Thanks also to my colleagues in the Department of Theatre and the
College of Arts and Sciences, University of Oregon. Also, I would like to
express my gratitude to the Oregon Humanities Center for granting me
the 2019–20 Ernest G. Moll Research Professorship in Literary Studies—
specifically, Paul Peppis, Jena Turner, Peg Freas Gearhart, and Melissa
Gustafson. You opened your doors to me at the OHC and you have made
me feel at home.
Of course, I am most grateful to the Middle Eastern American artists,
scholars, and practitioners who have, through tireless and often unheralded
efforts, created a genre that transcends borders and cultures. I would like
to specifically thank Danny Bryck, Catherine Coray, Kareem Fahmy,
Lindsay Joelle, Jamil Khoury, Evren Odcikin, Megan Sandberg-Zakian,
David Winitsky, Deborah Yarchun, Torange Yeghiazarian, and Pirronne
Yousefzadeh for sharing their cultural insights and theatrical histories with
me. I also want to acknowledge a host of other theatre producers that have
committed themselves to this mission over decades of their lives. Also, I’d
like to thank those whose production photographs are included in this
book: Michael Brosilow, David Allen Studio, Teresa Wood, Airan Wright,
and Juan Zapata. Thanks, too, to the staff at the theatres who arranged the
photograph permissions: Laurie Levy-Page, Michelle Mulholland, Corey
Pond, and Juan Zapata. There are far too many to mention here, but I’ve
done my best to chronicle their work in this volume. To those artists and
theatre companies I may have omitted, I deeply apologize. I hope that,
in the future, we can publish more books that celebrate even more of the
accomplished artists that comprise this genre.
Acknowledgments

I would like to offer my gratitude to my colleagues on the MENA

Theatre Makers Alliance (MENATMA): Shoresh Alaudini, Andrea Assaf,
Leila Buck, Catherine Coray, Debórah Eliezer, Yussef El Guindi, Nora El
Samahy, Tracy Francis, Kathryn Haddad, Pia Haddad, Denmo Ibrahim,
Taous Claire Khazem, Jamil Khoury, Kate Moore Heaney, Evren Odcikin,
and Torange Yeghiazarian. I am inspired by your work, and it is my honor
to be collaborating with you on furthering this movement.
Lastly, I am forever indebted to my family and friends for their support.
Thank you, Dina, for being such a supportive and loving sister. To my
beautiful wife, Rana, and my precious daughter, Malak, I hope you find
this book worthy of the time away from you that I spent writing it. Finally
I dedicate this to my late mother, Samia Assad Najjar, who passed away in
2019. She was a guiding force in my life, and I will be a forever grateful son
for all that she did for me.

xii
PREFACE

Throughout history, political figures and governmental policies focused

on differences between communities to stoke animosity and hatred. Such
is the case in the current political climate where immigrants and refugees
are scapegoated, religious and cultural differences are suspected, and
individuals speaking different languages and practicing different cultural
values are attacked. So it is with Middle Eastern Americans. Since 2000, this
vast and diverse group have been misunderstood and assailed with growing
frequency. In North America, those who espouse beliefs that differ from
so-called American values are considered foreign “others” who are a danger
to society. Middle Eastern Americans are expected to assimilate, leaving
behind the cultural riches they brought to North America. Many are born
with cultural names that they might Anglicize for the outside world due to
prejudice, lack of social cohesion, or simply because they are too difficult to
pronounce. This duality extends itself greatly when one faces rising tensions
between the culture of their birth and the culture of their upbringing. When
conflicts between the US and Middle Eastern nations occur, Middle Eastern
Americans feel particularly vulnerable. This vulnerability is heightened
when there is a domestic incident involving terrorism. Even when there
are no Middle Easterners connected with the terrorism, the entire Middle
Eastern American community is scapegoated as somehow being complicit
with these heinous acts. In addition, Middle Easterners are frequently
dramatized in Hollywood films and television programs mercilessly
terrorizing Americans. Generations of Americans have been exposed to
such images, and these also cause more fear and suspicion, especially for
those who dress in traditional or religious clothing. Synagogues, mosques,
churches, and temples are attacked; hijabs are ripped from women’s heads;
religious cemeteries are desecrated; and governments ban travel.
It is from this crucible that Middle Eastern American theatre is forged.
The stories in these works are born from topics that include the difficulties
of growing up bi-culturally in a Middle Eastern American household,
struggling to find a place to belong in society, life-altering visits taken to
the Middle East, dealing with the blowback from US military interventions,
Preface

or backlash from terrorist incidents carried out on American soil. Middle

Eastern American theatre artists utilize their writing, acting, directing,
and other performance skills to contest the notion that they are somehow
the abject “other” in American society. They employ their artistic talents
to give voice to those who are suffering due to the vicissitudes of foreign
policies that include economic sanctions, direct military interventions,
occupations, and drone wars perpetrated in the Middle East. For these
artists, the people “over there” are not just faceless masses shaking their fists
and chanting violent slogans seen on television news. For these artists, the
people of the Middle East are relatives, friends, and colleagues that suffer
and die due to foreign policies often funded by their own tax dollars. These
plays and performances imbue humanity to those individuals and societies
dehumanized by politicians that believe they come from what some deem
“shithole countries.” Unfortunately, these countries are the territories where
larger nations fight their proxy wars, dictatorial governments are sustained
by foreign capital, occupations are funded for decades, and coups depose
democratically elected leaders. The rich resources of the Middle East have
led to the creation of great wealth, but also to the misery of many who have
died in wars to secure those riches. Of course, there is much blame found
within these countries, but the overwhelming forces that have led to such
circumstances such as colonialism and global proxy warfare, not to mention
the devastating effects of global warming and pandemics, created a massive
migration from the region and a refugee crisis of epic proportions.
The dramatic and comedic works of Middle Eastern American writers
often run counter to the hegemonic narratives pushed by governmental
bureaucrats who foment desert wars and financial crises in the name of
military supremacy and monetary gain. These artists recognize the need
for positive action, creative solutions, and dialogue to solve the intractable
problems facing the Middle East. They believe that human beings are more
valuable than money or politics because, when the sanctions are imposed,
and the bombs fall, it will be the innocent civilians who will ultimately
suffer. Of course, these artists are not monolithic. They hail from many
nations and countless communities that are sometimes in direct conflict
with one another. These communities have traditions that are hundreds, if
not thousands, of years old. The Middle East was the “fertile crescent” where
some of the greatest human civilizations rose and fell. The contemporary
Middle East is suffering through changes that began with colonialism and
religious conflict hundreds of years in the making. Now the nations of the

xiv
 Preface

Middle East are facing seemingly intransigent difficulties that will take
generations to solve.
The aim of this book is to introduce readers to some of the voices that
comprise a burgeoning genre of American theatre often ignored by the
mainstream theatre establishment. I have included plays from artists who
reside in the United States and in Canada in English translation. I apply
the word “American” here to include all the Americas, not only the United
States. I must note that my inability to read and/or translate Spanish and
French has limited my inclusion of plays mainly to North America and to
those translated into English. It would be better if future editions of books
like these could encapsulate the Americas from Canada to South America.
Also, it is impossible to include every playwright, director, designer, and
theatre professional that is working in this genre. The plays I have included
here are representative plays and are by no means the only works that
exist. Many of the works included here were generously shared with me by
playwrights who self-identify as Middle Eastern Americans. Other plays
were found in pre-published scripts, anthologies, or videos. Some might
criticize the inclusion of certain works and decry the exclusion of others. To
this critique I can only say that, in the future, I’m sure entire volumes will be
written about these artists and theatres. I must add that, to fully appreciate
these plays, one must see them in production. A playscript is to a fully
staged production what a blueprint is to a physical building; you cannot
fully understand the magnitude of these dramas until you see them fully
realized onstage with actors, direction, design, and all the other elements
that comprise live theatre. In the case of the one-person monodramas
studied here, the actors/playwrights that created these works are such gifted
performers that descriptions of their work are a paltry substitute for seeing
them perform live onstage.
My hope for this Methuen Drama Critical Companions volume is to
introduce theatre students and audiences to the playwrights, directors,
designers, and companies that comprise this rich field in the hopes that
these plays will receive more scholarship, publishing, funding, and
productions in the future. Middle Eastern American theatre is in the same
state that other great theatre communities (such as African American,
Asian American, Latinx, and Native American) were in decades ago when
they, too, were trying to create an entirely new genre. More of these plays
must be published, produced, and studied if this genre is to reach its fullest
potential. Progress will be gradual, difficult, and oftentimes frustrating. I

xv
Preface

believe that these artists, and those that follow them, will continue to shape
the theatre of the Americas for generations to come.
This book focuses on artists who believe in empathy, solidarity, and
celebration of culture. I have met, and worked with, many of the artists
included in this book and I can tell you that they see their theatre work
as a vital part of who they are as individuals and theatre makers. These
artists frequently travel to the Middle East and return with important
stories about a terribly misunderstood region. These multitalented writers
and performers bring great humanity to their work, and they share that
humanity with audiences. They are important harbingers of the events we
are seeing in our time and, if we listen closely to them, we might have a
much deeper understanding and appreciation of the Middle East, but also
of our wider world.

xvi
INTRODUCTION
POLYCULTURALISM, TRANSNATIONALISM,
AND DIASPORA

Middle Eastern Americans have been a vital force in the United States since
the great migrations starting in the late nineteenth century. The Middle
East (or Near East) is a term that encompasses a massive area that includes
the countries Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait,
Lebanon, Libya, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Turkey,
the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Some include South Asian countries
like Afghanistan or Pakistan on this list as well. Furthermore, if one adds
the nations Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco in North Africa, there is a vast
and virtually limitless definition to the peoples, cultures, and religions that
are present.
To understand the scope, imagine a group that includes Armenians,
Ashkenazi Jews, Turks, Egyptians, Bedouins, Yemini Arabs, Muwahhidun/
Druze, Qashqai, Baluch, Turkoman, Hazaras, Pashtuns, Tajiks, Iranians/
Persians, Marsh Arabs, Kurds, Lurs, Moroccan Arabs, Berbers, Haratins,
and Sephardic Jews. Then, imagine the multiplicity of religious and
ethnic groups that constitute each of those communities. The nation-state
identification is only one of the umbrella concepts that can define Middle
Easterners; one must then go further to get a deeper sense of who these
people are and what they believe. For instance, when discussing Islam, we
begin by dividing this group into Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims. From there, we
must break down the larger into smaller groups such as the Sunni schools
of the Hanafi (found in the Middle East and Pakistan), the Malikite (found
in western and northern Africa), the Shafite (found in Egypt, East Africa,
Malaysia, and Indonesia), and the Hanbalite (found primarily in Saudi
Arabia). For the Shi’ites, one should consider the Twelve-Imam Shi’ites (also
known as “imamism” found in Iran and Iraq as well as the Gulf Emirates,
Chinese Turkestan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India) and the “Seveners”
or the Ismailis (who are concentrated in India, Pakistan, Central Asia, Iran,
East Africa, Europe, and North America). Other groups splintered from
the Ismailis as well, namely the Druze, and are often subsumed into the
“Muslim” category even though the Druze consider themselves an entirely
Middle Eastern American Theatre

distinct group which lays claim to elements of Judaism, Christianity, Islam,

and Vedic philosophy.
This brief example demonstrates that there is a complex tapestry
that makes up the people of the Middle East that is often overlooked
by many who are content to identify people of this region generally by
religion (i.e., “one is Muslim”) or by nationality (i.e., “one is Israeli”).
These generalizations are problematic because they presuppose that all the
people in a group are similar. The late scholar Edward W. Said, whose book
Orientalism changed the way many academics approach the study of the
so-called East, wrote:

The point I want to conclude with now is to insist that the terrible
reductive conflicts that herd people under falsely unifying rubrics like
“America,” “the West,” or “Islam” and invent collective identities for
large numbers of individuals who are actually quite diverse, cannot
remain as potent as they are, and must be opposed, their murderous
effectiveness vastly reduced in influence and mobilizing power. (Said
1994, xxviii–xxix)

As a displaced Palestinian refugee himself, Said understood more than

anyone that reductive labels have dangerous power that can lead to
pernicious ideas such as “the clash of civilization” and imperialist wars of
conquest. Even the title “Middle East” is a highly contentious Eurocentric
term, as European geographers originally called the region the “Near East”
given its proximity to Europe. According to Karen Culcasi, the term “Middle
East” was coined by British general Thomas Edward Gordon in 1900 to refer
to Afghanistan, Persia, Russia, and British India. Two years later, US Navy
captain Alfred Mahan used the term in relation to British imperial interests.
By 1921, Winston Churchill officially institutionalized the term with the
establishment of the Middle East Department of the British Colonial Office
(Culcasi 2010, 585). Cartographers have contradictory maps regarding the
location of the Middle East and the countries found within its borders.
While some include North Africa, others include countries of South Asia
such as Afghanistan and Pakistan. This has led to the coining of the term
“The Greater Middle East,” which then extends from Morocco to Pakistan.
Further difficulties arrive when one attempts to define the region by certain
ethnic or linguistic identifiers such as “Arab,” which then excludes many in
the region who do not identify as such.

2
 Introduction

Dividing the world in discrete regions that are theoretically unified

by human and physical geographical traits is a commonly accepted
way in which to order and understand our world. Whether we are
referring to “Western Europe,” “Southeast Asia,” or the “Middle
East,” all world regions have been created, imagined, and naturalized
through various historical, economic, and political discourses. What
is unique about the Middle East is that pejorative discourses about
this place are wide-spread and readily accepted. (Culcasi 594)

Ultimately, the term “Middle East” carries tremendous cultural baggage

that includes colonialism, Orientalism, and perverse notions of the region
that have been perpetuated through scholarship, popular entertainment,
and the arts.

Middle Eastern American Communities

The complex nature of the Middle Eastern American community lies in the
differences not only between the people of different home nations or religions
but also within the same religious groups themselves. For instance, Sephardic
Jews, or Jews that developed communities on the Iberian Peninsula around
1000 ACE, and who have a distinct Judeo-Spanish language called Ladino,
also had communities in the former Ottoman Empire (North Africa, the
Middle East, Eastern Mediterranean, and the Balkans). These communities
practice Sephardic customs that were imparted by Iberian Jews in exile over
the past centuries. Mizrahi Jews, on the other hand, come from Middle
Eastern ancestry and do not trace lineages to the Iberian Peninsula. Their
lineage comes from Persia, Babylonia, and Yemen. Sephardic and Mizrahi
Jews were expelled, or migrated, after the events of the 1948 Arab-Israeli
War and moved primarily to Israel or the United States. Those Mizrahi
Jews who left after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran settled in Southern
California and New York. Unlike Ashkenazi Jews, who were primarily from
Europe and who primarily spoke Yiddish, Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews have
been struggling for visibility among the American Jewish community. In
the book Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews in America, Saba Soomekh writes,

No longer are Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews dealing with antisemitism

and second-class citizenship of their homeland, but now they must

3
Middle Eastern American Theatre

cope with how to preserve and navigate their culture, language,

history, and heritage of their traditions while dealing with
assimilation—not only into a dominant American society, but into a
dominant Ashkenazi society. (Ross, Soomekh, and Ansell 2016, xiii)

There are also the Chabad-Lubavitch Jews, who are concentrated in

Brooklyn, New York, where the Chabad rabbinic dynasty lived, and
where the last Chabad rebbe/spiritual leader first immigrated after fleeing
persecution in Europe during the Second World War. This community
encourages “Mitzva Tanks” in which groups of Chabad men and boys take
to the streets in vehicles to encourage secular Jews to perform “mitzvah,” or
good deeds, to become more connected with their heritage.
Similarly, many believe that there is a monolithic Iranian American
society, but this is also composed of many subgroups, some of whom have
no connection to Shi’ite Islam whatsoever. As mentioned earlier, there are
Mizrahi Jews that called Iran home, but there are also other groups such
as the Baha’is. The Baha’is trace their history to a leader named the Bab
(1821–50), who considered himself the gate to the Hidden Imam. After his
execution, many of his followers were killed or exiled, and the remaining
went into hiding. The exiled leader, Mirza Husayn-Ali Nuri (1817–92),
also known as Baha’u’llah, attempted nonviolent opposition to the Iranian
State, and relations improved somewhat. However, there continued to be
killings of Baha’is and other persecutions that exist to this day (ira​nbah​
aipe​rsecution​.bi​c​.org). The Baha’i community in the United States grew
steadily from the 1890s, especially following the establishment of the
Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979. Another Iranian group, the Lur, is found
in Iran and Turkey. They speak an Indo-Iranian dialect closely related to
Persian/Farsi (ibid.). Yet another group is the Kurds, who hail from several
contemporary Middle Eastern countries, including Iran, Turkey, Iraq, and
Syria. The Kurds are an indigenous people of Western Asia, who are now
the world’s largest non-state nation (Hassanpour 2005). Of course, there are
different Muslim sects within the Shi’ites, who are the largest Muslim group
in the country.
Arab Christians have existed in the Middle East since the Pentecost,
and they are sometimes conflated with Muslim Arabs. According to the
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, there are seven Catholic
Churches in the Middle East: the Latin, Maronite, Melkite, Armenian,
Chaldean, Coptic, and Syrian Churches (USCCB 2010, 1). Since the
turn of the twenty-first century, there has been a precipitous decline

4
 Introduction

in the Middle Eastern Christian population. Pressures on Christian

communities due to lack of economic opportunities, political instability,
and anti-Christian extremism have drastically decreased their populations
(ibid.). The Palestinian-Israeli conflict, with its security wall, expanding
Israeli settlements, and checkpoints, has created a difficult situation for
Palestinian Christians caught between Israeli and Muslim Palestinian
interests. The US occupation of Iraq and the ensuing rise of Isis has
reduced the Christian population in that country from 1.4 million to an
estimated 250,000 in 2020 (Green 2019). In 1970, Lebanon was 62 percent
Christian and by 2017 that population had decreased to 36 percent (State
Department 2017). Coptic Christians, especially those found in Egypt,
have also faced increased persecution in recent decades.
Other groups, like Armenian Americans, are often considered European
Americans and not Middle Eastern Americans. However, plays that deal
specifically with the Armenian Genocide are often staged at Middle
Eastern American theatre companies. The events of the plays harken back
to the Middle East itself since many Armenian villages were in present-day
Turkey. Therefore, some Armenians were, at one time, technically Middle
Easterners. This is not to mention the fact that many Armenians are still
Middle Easterners with vibrant communities in present-day Lebanon,
Israel, Iran, Cyprus, Syria, and Jordan.

Middle Eastern Americans and the Transnational Belonging

Middle Eastern Americans often claim hyphenated identities that include

transnational belonging. The idea of transnationalism is a complex
identity formation that includes notions of integration, assimilation, and
acculturation in American society with ongoing ties and interactions with
their societies of origin. Daniel Naujoks writes that, regarding countries of
origin, there are three distinct types of membership: ethnic, national, and
civic. Ethnic membership denotes those who identify with other co-ethnics
in the host country and around the world; civic membership denotes
identification with the home state, central state, or region; and national
membership is membership with people living in the home country (either
all people or subgroups of those people). Although Naujoks is clear that
none of these markers is unequivocal or uncontested, they provide a
complex understanding of the various factors that comprise diasporic
individuals and their sense of transnational being (Naujoks 2010, 4–5).

5
Middle Eastern American Theatre

Middle Eastern Americans, like other diasporic groups, are sometimes

torn between their various identities. Like other groups who come from
nations that are in conflict with the United States, these citizens feel the
particularly difficult push and pull factors in their lives that often lead to
day-to-day dilemmas. Some immigrants from nations that are, or were,
embroiled in horrific civil wars immigrate to the Americas bearing the
psychological and physical trauma they endured. Others, who survived
wars that were either waged by the United States or by allies of the United
States, face a peculiar schism—how to live in a country that has opened
its doors to them and allowed them citizenship and a better way of life,
while simultaneously causing the grievous situation that forced them to
immigrate from their home nations. Many Middle Eastern Americans
hail from countries that suffered the civil wars that devastated countries
like Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Libya, and Algeria. Others come from nations
that had a direct military conflict with the United States such as Iraq. Still
others are from countries that are facing occupation such as the Palestinian
population living in the Palestinian territories. Yet others are facing the
brutal crackdowns imposed by those who are backed by the United States
such as immigrants from Egypt and Bahrain. Increased tensions and
threats of military conflicts with Middle Eastern nations have also caused
great distress such as the worsening ties between the United States and
Iran. Amnesty International cites the fact that, since the so-called Arab
Spring in 2011, conditions in Middle Eastern countries have worsened.
More than 250,000 people have been killed and more than 11 million have
been displaced from Syria; the so-called Islamic State has killed scores of
civilians and prisoners in Syria and Iraq. Over 8,000 have been killed and
42,000 injured in Yemen; 2.5 million people need humanitarian assistance
and protection in Libya, and 22,000 people have been arrested in Egypt
(Amnesty International 2018).
These conflicts have a devastating effect on the Middle Easterners living
in European and North American nations. According to Lindencrona,
Ekblad, and Hauff, post-traumatic stress disorder and other common
mental disorders are common problems among refugees. Exposure to
severe traumatic events in the refugees’ lives explains a higher prevalence
of mental disorder. Furthermore, research has shown that so-called post-
migration stressors, such as those experienced in the resettlement process,
are contributors to the increase in mental distress in refugee populations,
particularly those exposed to torture trauma (Lindencrona et al. 2008, 121).
Other studies show that many refugees knew friends or family members

6
 Introduction

who were victims of violence, many were imprisoned themselves, and being
imprisoned many suffered physical and psychological torture (Hondius
2000, 626).
Middle Eastern Americans have endured generations of trauma from
the events of the pre–First World War conflicts, through the two world wars,
colonialism, civil wars, political upheavals, mass migrations, occupations,
and contemporary wars fought with drones, suicide bombings, and other
military means. Therefore, these immigrants sometimes have hybrid
identities and/or dual loyalties that can cause conflicting attachments.
The connections they have with their family and friends overseas, who
are sometimes caught in various conflict zones, cause great strain for
Middle Eastern Americans. Of course, those Middle Eastern Americans
who settled in the United States long ago, and their descendants, often
have only a symbolic ethnicity, or nostalgic allegiance to the so-called old
country. Some are so far removed that they rarely think of their Middle
Eastern roots as anything more than a remnant of their family’s history.
For others, the bond is extremely strong with families traveling to the
Middle East on a regular basis with their children to maintain language
and cultural ties to the home country. Some nations actively promote
connections to the homeland, like those who take the “Birthright Israel”
trip, which is open to those who “identify as Jewish and are recognized by
such by their local community or by one of the recognized denominations
of Judaism,” who have at least one Jewish birth parent, or who have
completed Jewish conversion through a recognized Jewish denomination
(Birthright Israel). Others who are persecuted in their home countries,
such as those who adhere to the Bahá’i Faith in Iran, find other ways of
remaining connected such as the Bahá’i Institute for Higher Education
(BIHE), which is committed to educating and empowering Bahá’i youth
in Iran by enlisting volunteers worldwide to take courses that help BIHE
graduates to secure graduate studies at over ninety-eight prestigious
universities and colleges in North America, Europe, Australia, and India
(bihe​.o​rg).
To make matters worse, there have been periodic persecutions of
Middle Eastern Americans throughout recent history. In the post-9/11
era, hate crimes and bias incidents spiked in the United States. According
to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Civil Rights Report
2017, there was a 57 percent increase in anti-Muslim bias incidents over
2015. This was concurrent with a 44 percent increase in anti-Muslim hate
crimes in the same period. From 2014 to 2016, anti-Muslim bias incidents

7
Middle Eastern American Theatre

jumped by 65 percent. In that two-year period, CAIR finds that hate crimes
targeting Muslims surged 584 percent. There was also a rise in anti-Arab
and anti-Semitic hate crimes. In 2015, law enforcement agencies in the
United States reported 4,029 single-bias hate crime offenses based on race,
ethnicity, and ancestry and of those 1.2 percent were classified as anti-Arab
bias (FBI). There was a 6.8 percent increase in reported hate crimes against
Arabs from 2014 to 2015. Additionally, anti-Jewish crimes have also spiked.
The Anti-Defamation League’s annual “Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents”
found significant and sustained increases in anti-Semitic incidents since
2016: “There was a massive increase in the amount of harassment of
American Jews, particularly since November 2016, and a doubling in the
amount of anti-Semitic bullying and vandalism at non-denominational
K-12 schools.” This is not to mention other ethno-religious South Asian
American groups, such as the Sikhs, who are also attacked by domestic
terrorists. One shooting incident at the Wisconsin Sikh Temple in 2012,
which led to seven fatalities and the wounding of many others, was carried
out by a US Army veteran with a white supremacist history (Williams
2012; CNN 2012).
Some of this persecution is fomented by misleading governmental
information. The Department of Homeland Security issued a report
stating that “three out of four individuals convicted of international
terrorism and terrorism-related offences were foreign born” (DOJ, DHS
2018). However, critics have pointed out that the report was based only on
an official list of terrorism cases produced by the Justice Department that
limited those categories to “international terrorism.” However, codirector
of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center
for Justice at New York University, Faiza Patel, wrote that the Justice
Department report failed to show that 73 percent of terrorism fatalities
were caused by far-right extremists. Furthermore, half the convictions on
the list are “terrorism-related” such as lying to authorities, selling untaxed
cigarettes, forced marriage, and female genital mutilation. According to
Patel, “the Trump administration is determined to ignore the complexity
of the threat and to keep the focus on immigrants and Muslims because
that suits its nativist agenda” (Patel 2018). Unfortunately for Middle
Eastern Americans, the lack of governmental resources and the ongoing
fearmongering of politicians and governmental agents continue to
adversely affect this community.

8
 Introduction

Middle Eastern Americans and the US Census

Middle Eastern Americans have not had specific representation in the

US Census since its inception in 1790. The first six inquiries in the
1790 Census included the following descriptions: “Free White males
of 16 years and upward (to assess the country’s industrial and military
potential),” “Free White males under 16 years,” “Free White females,”
“All other free persons,” and “Slaves.” The US Census Bureau currently
lists those people who have origins from the Middle East or North
Africa as “White.” Although many scholars have outlined the history of
this formation of whiteness by Middle Easterners, mostly accomplished
through litigation from the courts, it is clear that the omission of a
racial question that specifically mentions Middle Eastern Americans has
deprived that constituency of the benefits of collecting information on
race as proposed by the US Census Bureau: “Race data are also used to
promote equal employment opportunities and to assess racial disparities
in health and environmental risks.”
This issue with the US Census has been a long-standing one, with
some Middle Eastern Americans advocating for an individual category
on the census that will include them while others, fearing governmental
persecution, argue against such a move. For instance, during the Second
World War, the United States used census data to deny land rights and to
locate and displace more than 100,000 Japanese Americans to incarceration
camps because Japanese immigrants were considered “aliens ineligible for
citizenship” (Zaho 2014, 39). Advocates for the inclusion of this census
data cite the fact that this group would have the opportunity to have
policy makers understand the needs of Middle Eastern Americans and to
appropriate more resources to health, education, voter protections, and
resources for language (Chow 2017). Furthermore, some conservatives
believe the categories on the US Census constitute “faux pan-ethnic
groups” that “divide us as a people and which have no basis in science,
culture, ethnicity or language” (Gonzalez 2017). Others, like Senior
Political Analyst Michael Barone of the Washington Examiner, believe that
race and national origin are often not congruent, and therefore there is no
need for the race and ethnic questions on the US Census. Barone believes
the solution lies either in the two-question format used in recent decades
(such as “Are you Hispanic?” and “What is your race?”) or in asking about
national ancestry (Barone 2017). The MENA Advocacy Network was

9
Middle Eastern American Theatre

established to represent all communities from the MENA region within

the US Census. Maya Berry, the executive director of the Arab American
Institute, wrote in a 2016 article titled “A New MENA Category: The Reality
and the Headlines,”

What this category is about is visibility—visibility for a group of

Americans that are seen only by our government when it comes
to counterterrorism programming, and miss out when it comes
to education, health care research, or English proficiency classes,
to name a few examples. Improved data collection can have a real
impact on people’s lives. (Berry 2016)

All of this is to say that there is little consensus about the definition of
Middle Eastern/North African Americans, and that even a seemingly
straightforward notion such as a MENA census checkbox can cause great
debate. As of January 2018, the Census Bureau has announced that the
2020 Census would not include a new “Middle Eastern or North African”
category. According to the Arab American Institute,

For the Arab American community, and many other stakeholders,

the decision to cut the “Middle Eastern or North African” category
from the 2020 Census is a severe blow. Years of undercounting have
deprived our community of access to basic services and rights, from
language assistance at polling places, to the allocation of educational
grants for cultural competency training and language assistance, to
greater access to health information and research. (Barry 2018)

Actions like these by the US Census Bureau further complicate how Middle
Eastern Americans are treated and perceived in the United States. With
such disagreement among the Middle Eastern American communities
due to fear of further governmental persecution, a future MENA census
category seems to be more of an aspiration than a reality.

The Polycultural and Middle Eastern Americans

Given the great diversity of the people of this region, and of the artists who
identify as Middle Eastern Americans, the notion of “polyculturalism” is a
useful framework for understanding this genre. In the book Everybody Was

10
 Introduction

Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity,

Vijay Prashad writes,

Polyculturalism, unlike multiculturalism, assumes that people live

coherent lives that are made up of a host of lineages—the task of the
historian is not to carve out the lineages but to make sense of how
people live culturally dynamic lives. Polyculturalism is a ferocious
engagement with the political world of culture, a painful embrace of
the skin and all its contradictions. (Prashad 2001, xi–xii)

Unlike multiculturalism, which wishes to claim a direct lineage from a

place, polyculturalism allows for the notion that people may descend
from multiple lineages and that humans are not necessarily categorized
by nationality, culture, or religion. The notion that cultures influence one
another over time, and that cultural borrowing is a norm, is the one that
defines the polycultural ethos. Robin D. G. Kelley explains,

“Polycultural” works better than “multicultural,” which implies that

cultures are fixed, discrete entities that exist side by side—a kind of
zoological approach to culture. Such a view obscures power relations,
but often reifies race and gender differences. (Kelley 1999)

Polyculturalism prizes diversity, acknowledges that cultures are “dynamic,

interactive and impure,” and views cultures as being in flux and connected
(Haslam 2017). When one adds various other factors such as sexuality,
sexual preference, and connection (or lack thereof) to the cultural groups
to which one belongs, the notions of multicultural homogeneity become
much less stable. In their book Middle Eastern Lives in America, Amir B.
Marvasti and Karyn D. McKinney note,

While the creation of a panethnic Middle Eastern identity might

seem like an important step to overcoming the discrimination that
members of this group face, it would be overly optimistic to assume
that there is unanimous agreement on this course of action. There are
many internal divisions among members of this group that block the
aspiration of a panethnic identity. (Marvasti and McKinney 2004, 160)

If the internal divisions were not enough, there is also a desire by some
in this community to fully claim “whiteness” to advance their position in

11
Middle Eastern American Theatre

American society. In his book Whitewashed: America’s Invisible Middle

Eastern Minority, John Tehranian writes that Middle Eastern Americans
have had a complicated and difficult relation to whiteness throughout their
history in the United States.

The negotiation of the Middle Eastern identity is mediated by a two-

fold process that moves both from the top down and from the bottom
up. From the top down, society at large engages in a practice that can
be described as selective racialization. From the bottom up, Middle
Easterners, both privileged and damned by their proximity to the
white dividing line, engage in persistent (and frequently effective)
covering of their ethnic background. These two social forces combine
to create a pernicious stereotyping feedback loop that enervates the
political strength of the Middle Eastern community, heightens its
invisibility, and leaves little effective resistance to the growing assaults
against its civil rights. (Tehranian 2010, 72)

The fact that Middle Easterners themselves are not homogeneous and (more
often than not) claim tribal/religious, rather than national, identities makes
this entire notion of polyculturalism an even more fraught enterprise. For
instance, the nation of Lebanon, which was carved out of Greater Syria by
the French in 1920, and which is only 10,500 square kilometers in size,
contains 18 different religious sects. However, within those larger groups
are multiple subgroups that all contain multiple ethnic and tribal affiliations.
During, and after, migration to the United States there has been a great
deal of intermarriage which further complicates the possibility of finding
any type of consistent or pure lineage. In other words, the Lebanese were
polycultural long before they ever reached the shores of the Americas and,
in the ensuing years, that polyculturalism continues to flourish with greater
diversity within this small population. When one considers the multiplicity
of religions, ethnicities, cultures, nations, and tribes that constitute Middle
Eastern persons, the awe-inspiring diversity of these cultures becomes too
complex to grasp.
For the most part, however, Middle Eastern Americans tend to begin with
an explanation of their national backgrounds such as “Turkish American”
and “Iranian American.” Others might identify as “Persian” instead of
Iranian, or “Maronite” instead of Lebanese. As one continues to probe for
more information, one realizes that there are multiple layers of identities
that make up those who claim Middle Eastern heritage and identification is

12
 Introduction

based less on ethnography and more on political or religious associations in

the current moment. Furthermore, Marvasti and McKinney note that there
should be a distinction made between Muslim immigration and Middle
Eastern immigration, since those two waves took place during different eras
and with different populations. Middle Eastern American artists focus their
attentions on the various social, cultural, and ethical implications that face
this group, creating literature that examines notions of being polycultural
and transnational in America.

Middle Eastern American Literature

According to Susan Atefat-Peckham in the introduction to her book Talking

Through the Door: An Anthology of Contemporary Middle Eastern American
Writing, Middle Eastern American writing has several major traits: political
marginality, the importance of tradition in “alien” environments, ethnic
denial, isolation, the power of the extended family and the community,
integration and assimilation of children into the dominant culture, loss
of mother tongue, the difference between what America represents and
what it is in reality, and the widening gulf between immigrant parents and
their descendants born in the United States (Atefat-Peckham 2014, 18). Of
course, many of these aspects are shared by a variety of diasporic American
literary communities. I would add that there are other defining aspects that
make Middle Eastern American works even more specific. These include
●● Transnational Conflict: The Middle Eastern region has been at
odds with the United States since the Barbary Wars of 1801–5 and
1815–16. With the heightened tensions since the foundation of
Israel in 1948, and the subsequent wars with multiple Arab states
since, the United States has been in various forms of conflict with
Middle Eastern and North African states for generations. These
conflicts are often reflected in Middle Eastern American literature.
●● Islam: Since so many of the nations in the region identify as
Muslim, and since the United States has been a nation that touts
its Judeo-Christian values, there has been great anxiety and fear
regarding Muslims in the United States. This has been the case
since the first recorded Muslim, Estevanico, set foot in the so-called
New World in 1528. Since the earliest times, the United States
has maintained an anti-Muslim stance that is sometimes reflected

13
Middle Eastern American Theatre

in literary production. Of course, not all those hailing from the

Middle East are Muslims (as a matter of fact, Indonesia hosts the
largest Muslim population in the world), but the perception that the
majority from the region are Muslim is pervasive and difficult to
change.
●● Anti-Semitism: There has been a strong anti-Semitic fervor in the
United States from its earliest history. As Arabs and Jews are both
Semites, the fear of their infiltration and miscegenation has led to
terrible anti-Semitic violence. This, too, is reflected in the literature
of Middle Eastern Americans.
●● Omission of Literature: It is striking that one could attend multiple
levels of education in the United States and may never read a Middle
Eastern American writer. For some reason, writers from the Middle
East, or of Middle Eastern descent, simply do not occupy the same
hierarchical structure in American academia as other international
or diasporic writers. This also extends to bookstores, where early
Arab American writers are sometimes shelved under “Spirituality”
or “Eastern Religion” rather than with other American novelists or
poets.
Some contemporary writers in this genre include Elmaz Abinader, Kathryn
K. Abdul-Baki, Hala Alyan, Diana Abu-Jaber, Sara Deniz Akant, Rabih
Alameddine, Mona Awad, Albert Issac Bezzerides, William Peter Blatty,
Michelle Chalfoun, Hayan Charara, Miriam Cooke, Firoozeh Dumas, Safia
Elhillo, Laila Halaby, Mohja Kahf, Pauline Kaldas, Porochista Khakpour,
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Laila Lalami, Shahriar Mandanipour, Khaled Mattawa,
Azadeh Moaveni, Azar Nafisi, Orhan Pamuk, Patricia Sarrafian Ward,
Marjane Satrapi, Samia Serageldin, Naomi Shihab Nye, Leora Skolkin-
Smith, Dalia Sofer, and Ayelet Waldman. With more Middle Eastern
American writers publishing their works, teaching these works in academic
settings, and gaining more widespread recognition there is a heightened
awareness of this genre and the cultures represented therein.

Middle Eastern American Diasporic Cultural Production

One of the diasporic identities that define Middle Eastern Americans is that
of a “diasporic-cultural identification,” defined as an attachment to cultural
traditions, values, and culture as identification with the ethnic group

14
 Introduction

and with the nation itself. Therefore, a form of ethnic and transnational
group bonding takes place that retains a strong attachment to culture and
heritage (Naujoks 2010, 7). Middle Eastern American artists have taken
it upon themselves to incorporate their ethnic and diasporic identities
not only as influences on their work but rather as the primary focal point
of their cultural production. These artists, who regularly identify with
hyphenated identities, see their ancestral homelands as equally valuable in
their lives and experiences as their identities as Americans. This bifurcated
identification serves both as a site of strength and pain, since it situates them
in the interstitial, in-between space they inhabit. On the one hand, they
are legally Americans through birth or through legal citizenship; however,
they retain the markers of their ethnic/transnational belongings physically
and/or emotionally. This transnational condition is one that demands that
they adhere to the notion that they are fully invested in their Americanness,
while simultaneously experiencing the pressures of belonging to their
ethnic group and the concomitant cultural and religious expectations that
accompany that identification.
For many, turning to cultural production is the way they address this
inner schism they face. For Arab American scholar Carol Fadda-Conrey,
Arab American cultural production,

constitutes a formative moment in self-iterations (literary and

otherwise) that insist on portraying Arab-Americans through a
transnational and anti-homogeneous lens. This formative moment
has mobilized more vocal, assertive, and unapologetic claims
to transnational enactments of Arab-American identities that
problematize the assimilative pressures inherent in dominant
performances of US citizenship and belonging. (Fadda-Conrey 2014,
140–1)

Middle Eastern American theatre artists are committed to telling stories of

those who are often neglected, unseen, or omitted from American theatre
cultural discourses. These writers and performers, who have cultural (and
sometimes citizenship) ties to their ancestral homelands, are not content
to allow others to tell their stories, nor are they content to have their
stories told in a stereotypical or damaging manner. The dehumanizing
stereotypes that pervade contemporary American culture’s depiction
of Middle Eastern Americans are both pervasive and self-perpetuating.
Marvasti and McKinney write, “Fears of the ethnic others are manifested

15
Middle Eastern American Theatre

in cultural notions that they possess every characteristic that we do not.

These characteristics then become stereotypes, and one can trace through
the history of the United States how many of the same images are applied to
different groups” (Marvasti and McKinney 2004, 108). Middle Easterners
are portrayed in a variety of damaging and stereotypical ways including
money-obsessed Jews, avaricious and sex-mad Arab oil sheikhs, turbaned
sultans with scimitars, burka-clad suicide bombers, scantily clad belly
dancers, and snake charmers to name a few. These one-dimensional
portrayals are what Jack G. Shaheen labeled as “The New Anti-Semitism,”
which he defined as new,

not because stereotypical screen Arabs are new (they aren’t) or

because anti-Semitism against Jews is dead (it’s not). I use the word
“new” because many of the anti-Semitic films directed against Arabs
were released in the last third of the twentieth century, at a time when
Hollywood was steadily and increasingly eliminating stereotypical
portraits of other groups. (Shaheen 2001, 6)

Benshoff and Griffin write about the “veiled and reviled” nature of Middle
Easterners in American film. They note that the regularity of images of
Middle Easterners in films is in contrast with the relative scarcity of Middle
Easterners in Hollywood itself. Instead, Arab characters are sexualized,
Orientalized, or depicted as terrorists.

rarely have Arabs been shown becoming part of the fabric of either
European or American communities. There has been an attitude
among many that people of Arab heritage cannot assimilate into
Western society [. . .] just as Irish and Italian Catholic Americans
were once considered unable to assimilate because they supposedly
held a stronger allegiance to the pope than the president, so too do
many today assume that Arab Americans pledge allegiance to the
Muslim faith and not to the United States. (Benshoff and Griffin
2009, 72)

Jews also had difficulties with the racial stereotyping in Hollywood films,
especially in the early twentieth century. Despite many becoming leaders
of major studios during the classical Hollywood era, Jews in Hollywood
were still encouraged to assimilate, change their names, and sublimate their
Jewishness due to prejudices that were rampant in a larger white society

16
 Introduction

(Gabler 1988, 4–5). Iranian Americans, who often refer to themselves as

Persians to distance themselves from the connection with the current Islamic
regime that is ruling the country and from the ongoing conflict between
the United States and Iran, also sometimes sublimate their identities due to
prejudices against them through manipulation of their names and through
accent reduction (Tehranian 2009, 76–89).
Inherent to all these issues, of course, is the conflation of one’s
religious affiliation, national origin, and racial identification. For instance,
Tehranian writes that many Iranians or Arabs of Jewish backgrounds
often pass or cover by exploiting what many perceive (or misperceive) as
Jewishness. Other Iranians affiliate themselves with being “Persian” rather
than “Iranian” since Persia has a perception of a long-lost civilization of
empire, complex artistic history, and Zoroastrianism (as opposed to Islam)
(Tehranian 2009, 85). Middle Eastern American artists also struggle with
many issues regarding how they are perceived by artistic organizations.
Many believe that they are either pigeonholed as Middle Eastern American
artists who can only write about topics that pertain to their cultural
backgrounds, or they must suppress their identity and write plays that will
somehow appeal to the mainstream. This either/or dichotomy frustrates
many of these artists since they know that most professional theatres
will only program one “ethnic” play per season (if at all), and that all the
various writers of color will be vying for that coveted position. When their
plays are chosen, they then must deal with the fact that, most likely, a
director not affiliated with that culture will direct that play and, by doing
so, may not bring the requisite cultural background or sensitivity to the
production. One playwright lamented the fact that, even after their play
was chosen and produced by a mainstream theatre, the banner outside the
theatre had completely miswritten the Arabic title. These pressing issues
are central to the state of Middle Eastern American artistic production
and require a comprehensive approach that can address these situations.
Playwright/actress Heather Raffo states,

one personal marker of success would be if I someday get asked to

write about something other than Iraq. I think our value as MENA
artists is how we move through the world, what we understand about
it, and how we have been bridging seemingly incommensurable
cultures. This talent can be brought in many ways into the American
theatre beyond just the telling of Middle Eastern stories. (Considine
2017)

17
Middle Eastern American Theatre

So, while these artists are in demand for their perspectives on the Middle
East, it seems the only topic theatre companies are interested in producing
are these Middle Eastern perspectives.
Some of the central questions that face MEA artists are the following:
Can one be a Middle Eastern American theatre artist and an accepted
“American” artist? What are the difficulties inherent to self-identifying as
Middle Eastern American artists? How can MEA artists simultaneously
write Middle Eastern stories without sacrificing the ability to be considered
a playwright who can write about different topics in different genres? Can or
should an MEA artist from one region write about another region? How can
the MEA term be more inclusive of all the various tribal, religious, cultural,
social, and political groups that constitute the Middle East and its diaspora?
The following chapters are meant to introduce these diverse artists,
examine their cultural production, and explore how these artists
navigate the perilous landscape of professional American theatre without
compromising themselves in the process. This is the challenge facing MEA
artists as they continue to write, act in, direct, and produce plays that deal
with the exigencies of being both artists of color and self-identifying as
Middle Eastern Americans. For many of these artists, this is less a burden
than a calling because they are weary of how mainstream film, television,
and theatre has misrepresented their cultures. Therefore, the need to create
these works becomes a powerful and necessary opportunity to contribute
to a growing body of literature and performance even if the social and
economic climate is often unwelcoming of their work. For the few theatres
that support this work, the desire to tell these stories outweighs the lack
of financial and material reward that other mainstream theatres garner
through works that are more widely recognized and attended.
However, the rewards for these artists lie in their ability to tell the
stories of those who came before them and were unable to speak about
the experiences and atrocities of the past. Regarding Arab American
drama, Rashad Rida writes, “For it to be meaningful, it must signify more
than plays written by someone whose ethnicity is Arab and who lives in
America. It must involve a perspective that is in some meaningful way
affected by Arab culture” (Rida 2003, 158–9). Middle Eastern American
artists tell stories of the European Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide
survivors, of those who died in wars like the Lebanese and Syrian civil wars,
of those who fought and died during the so-called Arab Spring uprisings,
of Palestinians dealing with the trauma of occupation, of Middle Eastern
Americans who face homophobic persecution by those inside and outside

18
 Introduction

their communities, and of migrants desperate to reach Europe to flee wars

and persecution in Africa. All these stories are ones that these artists attempt
to address as a way of dealing with the bitter reality of life in the diaspora.
By hearing these perspectives, audiences can gain a greater view into these
fascinating cultures and the people within them. Most importantly, they
can gain empathy with those who have suffered so much yet fought for a
new life in a new land known as America.

Middle Eastern American Theatre

Each diasporic community has its own cultural production. The factors
that dictate the diasporic cultural production of each group varies due to
the group’s history in the United States, the types of literature these groups
produce, and the cultural centers where most of the artistic production is
found. While there are many similarities in this cultural production, this
kind of literature is the output of diasporic communities that are struggling
with many of the same issues including leaving homeland, attempting to
survive and thrive in North America, issues surrounding marriage and
endogamy, and navigating attitudes regarding sexuality. Each playwright
addresses these issues differently based on their own perspective within
their cultural group. The four major groups mentioned here are by far the
largest groups producing theatre, but they are not the only ones.

Arab American Theatre

Arab American theatre is also a problematic umbrella under which to place

those who come from, or are descendants of immigrants from, the twenty-
two Arab nations. Of course, not everyone who is from this area considers
themselves Arab. There are many minority groups that live within the Arab
nations that do not consider themselves Arabs such as the Maronites of
the Levant, the Kurds, the Amazigh/Berbers, or the Yazidis, to name a few.
The shared Arabic language is one of the hallmarks of what constitutes an
Arab, yet not all Arabic speakers are of that group. Others point to Islam as
a unifying factor, but not all people from the Middle East are Muslims and
not all Arabs are Muslims either. Steven Salaita words it this way:

Arab Americans are Muslim (Shia and Sunni and Alawi and Isma’ili),
Christian (Catholic and Orthodox, Anglican and Evangelical,

19
Middle Eastern American Theatre

and Mainline Protestant), Jewish (Orthodox and Conservative

and Haredi and Reform), Druze, Bahai, dual citizens of Israel and
twenty-two Arab nations, multi- and monolingual, progressives and
conservatives, assimilationists and nationalists, cosmopolitanists and
pluralists, immigrants and fifth-generation Americans, wealthy and
working-class, rural and urban, modern and traditional, religious
and secular, White and Black, Latin American and Canadian. We
also occupy the many spaces between these binaries. Sometimes Arab
Americans are non-Arabs such as Circassians, Armenians, Berbers,
Kurds and Iranians. We are likely to inhabit any American industry
and are represented across the social and political spectrums of the
United States. (2007, 1)

Given that expansive definition, it is nearly impossible to neatly categorize

this group. Their early great migration to the United States, starting in the
1800s, was mainly of Syrians from Greater Syria, and was mainly composed
of Christians. This changed over time with different waves of immigration,
and now Arab American immigrants are from a diversity of Arab states and
of many faiths and traditions.
The early Syrian/Lebanese American writers Kahlil Gibran, Ameen
Fares Rihani, and Mikhail Naimy were all playwrights in addition to their
more well-known works as poets and novelists. Gibran, Rihani, Naimy,
and other Syrian/Lebanese immigrants created a writing group known
as The Pen Group in 1920. This group aimed to “lift Arabic literature
from the quagmire of stagnation and imitation, and to infuse a new life
into its veins so as to make of it an active force in the building up of the
Arab nations” (Nu’aima 1974, 154). The Pen Group, which also included
members Elia Abu Madi, Nasseeb Arida, Wadih Bahout, William Catzeflis,
Rasheed Ayoub, Abdul-Massih Haddad, and Nudra Haddad, is credited
for the Arab literary movement known as al-Nahda, or The Arab Cultural
Awakening, which lasted from 1870 to 1950. The group disbanded shortly
after Gibran’s death in 1931. Although these plays were never produced in
the United States, they did mark the beginnings of Arab American dramatic
output in the early twentieth century. In his essay “Issues of Identity: In
Theater of Immigrant Community,” Ala Fa’ik writes that early Arab
American immigrants created and produced plays about Arab history in
their cultural clubs and organizations. The Egyptian Arabic periodical Al-
Mushir reported on an 1896 performance of a play titled Andromak that
was performed in New York by the Syrian Youth Society, “which had a

20
 Introduction

large audience of ‘Syrians’ and Americans” (Suleiman 2006, 488). At Ellis

Island there is a large photograph of seventeen actors in costume with
an inset of a young man’s face titled “Amateur Drama Group of Lebanese
Immigrants, Utica, New York, ca. 1910. This company performed until the
1940s” (Faris and Yamna Naff). There were other scattered performances by
Middle Eastern Americans in the ensuing years between the 1940s and the
1970s. For instance, Lebanese American comic and actor Danny Thomas
performed “Ode to a Wailing Syrian,” where he wore a tablecloth over his
head, spoke Arabic, and lamented the death of Syrians due to famine and
revolt against the Ottomans. This performance piece was a comedy, and was
Thomas’s calling card for Hollywood. Another performance was Lebanese
American playwright S. K. Hershewe’s comedy about a Lebanese girl falling
for a Jewish boy in his play An Oasis in Manhattan, which premiered in
1965 at the Stage Society Theater in Los Angeles starring Alan Reed and
Vic Tayback (Los Angeles Times 1965). Tayback later revived the play in Los
Angeles where he starred in the leading role.
By the 1980s there were more concentrated approaches to theatre by
Arab American immigrant communities, mainly by nonprofessional
troupes. The Baghdad Theatre, founded in 1985 by Salah Kulato in Detroit,
had produced fifteen plays by 1999 (Ameri 2000, 246). Another Detroit
company, Firqat al-Yaoum (Today’s Cast), founded in 1987 by Hussam
Zorro, had produced eight plays by 1999. These companies performed in
an Iraqi Arabic dialect that focused on immigration and the difficulties
immigrants faced in the United States (Ameri 2000, 246). Another Detroit
company, the Arab Theatrical Arts Guild (ATAG), was founded in 1998 to
promote an interest in the performing arts within the Arab American
community. They produced plays by American and Arab playwrights
(Ameri 2000, 247).
The Arab American Children’s Theater Company, founded in California
in 1989, produced plays such as The Festival by Hammam Shafie with
music composed by Faheem Said. Shafie explained that the goal of the
Los Angeles-based company was to provide “a place where kids learn to
experiment, explore, and perform their culture, heritage, history, and values
which makes it real for them” (Fa’ik 1994, 113). The Kanaaqeel Theater
Group, founded in 1998 in Los Angeles, also worked to “explore cultural
issues of importance” (Kayyali 2006, 130). Another company from Los
Angeles, founded by Arab American anthropologist and filmmaker Fadwa
El Guindi, was Al-Fanun Al-Arabiya (Arab Arts). Their most prominent
production, written by Ahmed Ahmed and Fadwa El Guindi, was titled

21
Middle Eastern American Theatre

Mahjar, produced in May and June of 1996 at the Ruby Theatre at The
Complex Hollywood, California. The play was described as

[an] original Arab-American bilingual dramatization, in two acts,

of life in America as told and lived by Arabs in the community,
blending American with traditional & classical Art theater forms
with poetry by Khalil Gibran & Maya Angelou and music by Jihad
Racy & Marcel Khalife [. . .] MAJHAR is not about any one family,
any one country, any one Arabic dialect, or any one experience.
Arab-Americans everywhere will find their story embedded in
MAHJAR. (Mahjar 1996)

Gradually more plays by, and about Middle Eastern Americans, were
created in the 1990s. One production, Ghurba, by writer/director Shishir
Kurup, was a Los Angeles Festival production performed at MacGowan
Hall at UCLA in 1993. Taken from testimonies by Arab Americans living in
Southern California, the play “wove oral histories into a complex tapestry,
then added fragments from the sayings of Jesus, the poetry of Sufi mystic
Rabia Al-Adawiya and the writings of Palestinians Mahmoud Darwish
and Edward Said. Even a W.B. Yeats play, ‘Purgatory,’ has been mixed into
Kurup’s text, alongside Arabic music and dance” (Stayton 1993). The play
was coproduced with Cornerstone Theater Company and Al-Funun Al-
Arabiya. The play received good reviews and The Daily News critic Daryl
H. Miller wrote, “There is no plot, really—just the unfolding pageant of
life. In the process, the audience is treated to traditional songs and a taste
of the vendor’s sautéed eggplant [. . .] one can’t help but be charmed by the
energy and sincerity of its cast of professionals and everyday people” (Miller
1993). Chapter 1 will focus on the Arab American theatre companies that
were founded in the post-9/11 period. Suffice it to say Arab American
theatre is a genre that is one of the oldest among Middle Eastern American
communities.

Iranian American Theatre

For Iranian Americans, there were many changes in Iran during the
twentieth century from the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, to the
Islamic Revolution of 1979. In addition, Iranians come from many
different religious traditions, despite wrongly considered by many to be
predominantly Islamic. Many Iranians are proud of their rich literary

22
 Introduction

history that includes the great poets Omar Khayyam, Hafez, Saadi, and
Rumi. According to Daniel Grassian, there is a great deal of diasporic
literature and Iranian literature translated into English in the form of
fiction and memoirs. Iranian and Iranian American literatures have been
marginalized in the United States, especially in the academy. Grassian
states that Iranian diasporic literature is characterized by a sense of
alienation combined with a longing for a lost life in the homeland. That
said, “many diasporic Iranian writers and diasporic Iranian characters,
both first- and second-generation Westerners, strive to be and sometimes
succeed in becoming something more than alienated exiles” (Grassian
2013, 5). In addition, Iranian American literature does not neatly fit in the
category of Asian American literature or postcolonial literature. Western
media persists in stereotyping Iranians as fanatical, violent, and anti-
American, or depicting Iranian Americans as spoiled rich immigrants
living in Southern California. Films also continue to perpetuate historical
inaccuracies regarding past conflicts. Benshoff and Griffin write that the
film 300 “seemed almost designed to exploit and capitalize on current
anti-Arab and anti-Muslim feelings in American culture; its grotesque
stereotyping encourages audiences to hate and fear its Persian characters
while simultaneously inflaming and justifying white masculine violence”
(Benshoff and Griffin 2009, 74). This is but one of the many films that
continually denigrate Iranians/Persians being produced and distributed in
mainstream entertainment.
However, Iranian Americans are actively fighting against these
stereotypes. The generation of Iranian diasporic writers born from the early
1960s to the early 1980s, known as “the Burnt Generation,” dealt with the
strife of the Iran-Iraq War, the rise of the Islamic Republic, and a bleak
economic environment. However, this generation was very technologically
savvy, highly educated, and more willing to embrace democratic reforms.
The generations that followed that were born and raised in North America
continue to write about the difficulties of being othered in North American
society, conflated and confused with Arabs, and treated with scorn after
9/11 even though no Iranians had anything to do with the attacks. That
said, diasporic Iranian writers and Iranian Americans continue to write
about their unique experiences in the United States.

With so little known about Iran and so much presumed about it in

the Western world, Iranian and Iranian diasporic literature serve a
crucial role of educating the Western public about Iran as a country,

23
Middle Eastern American Theatre

and, if the texts find their way (legally or illegally) through or by

Iranian censorship, providing insight into the West for those living in
Iran. (Grassian 2013, 18)

Indeed, even within Iran itself the theatre scene is rich, vibrant, and
transgressive. In her article “Dramatic Defiance in Tehran: Reflections on a
Society of Contradictions,” Torange Yeghiazarian writes that governmental
authorities still regulate what can or cannot be staged; however, the
productions she witnessed there were aesthetically and politically
challenging. Theatre students in Iran see the theatre as a powerful tool for
changing society. “For these students,” Yeghiazarian writes, “the practice
of democracy and cultural change begins in the theatre workshop”
(Yeghiazarian 2012, 90). That said, many theatre artists have fled Iran due
to persecution and censorship; the question remains whether they will be
allowed to return and work in theatres there in the future. Iranian artists
who have left Iran including Parvis Sayyad, Farzaneh Taidi, and Arbi
Avanesian have brought the same political and social activism to the works
they stage in the Americas. Between their works, and the works of Iranian
Americans, there is a rich artistic community that continues to shape the
Middle Eastern American theatre aesthetic. Chapter 1 will highlight several
Iranian American theatre groups including Darvag Theater Group.

Jewish and Israeli American Theatre

In his book Beyond the Golden Door: Jewish American Drama and Jewish
American Experience, Julius Novick writes that, although there has not
been a paucity of Jewish playwrights, after the Second World War many
of these playwrights did not concern themselves with writing Jewish
protagonists with Jewish themes: “Instead, like the Jewish studio heads who
ruled Hollywood, like the Jewish creators of Archie and Superman comics,
they conjured up worlds where everybody is ethnically neutral, with
an Anglo-Saxon name, except perhaps for some secondary comic types
capering in the background” (2008, 1). Jewish American playwrights like
George S. Kaufman, Moss Hart, and Lillian Hellman rarely created Jewish
characters in their major works. It is Novick’s contention that writers are
not necessarily expected to write about their backgrounds: “I reject the
idea, tenaciously held in some quarters, that a writer who is a member of a
minority group has some kind of moral duty to be always the representative
of that minority group” (2008, 3). Therefore, the notion that one must bring

24
 Introduction

one’s ethnicity into their writing seemed not to be a preoccupation with

these earlier playwrights.
Despite Novick’s claim, in her introduction to the anthology Fruitful &
Multiplying: 9 Contemporary Plays from the American Jewish Repertoire,
Ellen Schiff writes that Jews have been writing plays about Jews since the
1920s. Plays written about Jews were not always positive representations.
“It is exoticism rather than racism that once distinguished drama about
Jewish life. Well into the second half of the century, Jewishness on stage
continued to be regarded as foreign” (1996, xvi). In Schiff ’s view, by the
second half of the twentieth century, Jews became very comfortable writing
about their American Jewish experiences. Schiff also states, “In no sphere
have Jewish artists contributed more to the Jewish image in American
culture than the theatre” (1996, xvii). Schiff also distinguishes between the
American Jewish and the Yiddish stage. American Jewish theatre has the
objective of “representing Jews or Jewish life intelligibly to the theatergoing
public,” whereas Yiddish theatre has a different style, tone, and point of
view. In her book Yiddish Empire—The Vilna Troupe, Jewish Theater, and
the Art of Itinerancy, Debra Caplan explains that Yiddish theatre emerged
in the 1870s, but it was quickly dismissed by Jewish intellectuals. However,
within decades, it became one of the most important and influential theatre
forms. Yiddish theatre was simultaneously transgressive and regressive.
On the transgressive front, the Yiddish theatre attempted to bring fewer
elite audiences into the theatre to access a broader audience, which would
include non-Jewish spectators. However, Yiddish theatre also introduced
plots, characters, and motifs of ancient Greek tragedy (Caplan 2018,
405). This replaced polytheistic Greek gods within a monotheistic Jewish
theology. Also, the writers would emphasize biblical and national themes
to make them familiar to Jewish audiences. They also revised the “morally
ambiguous material characters to align with the more familiar archetype of
the overly devoted Yidishe mame of the Jewish stage” (ibid., 406). Of course,
Yiddish theatre provided great music, performance, and humor as well and
many of the actors in this genre went on to become stars of the stage and
screen.
Later Jewish American playwrights, however, were more attracted to
the art theatre models of Euro-American theatre. The playwrights of note
such as Clifford Odets, Neil Simon, Paddy Chayefsky, Herb Gardner, David
Mamet, Wendy Wasserstein, Tony Kushner, and Jon Robin Baitz created
plays that were written in English, set in realistic settings, told Jewish
stories, and expressed the intelligence, humor, and drama of a community

25
Middle Eastern American Theatre

that continued to refine the art and create some of the greatest works of
contemporary American theatre. Schiff notes that the major themes in this
genre include the family play, a focus on Jewish heritage, an exploration
of what it means to be Jewish, the quest to be a Jew, and plays that center
Israel as their theme. In his book Acting Jewish: Negotiating Ethnicity on the
American Stage, Henry Bial writes that, from 1947 to the early twenty-first
century, performances created by Jews for mass consumption occupy the
space he calls “acting Jewish,” which is a formulation of Jewish American
identity based on “double coding.” This is a performance that communicates
one message to Jewish audiences while simultaneously communicating
another (often contradictory) message to gentile audiences (Bial 2005, 3).
In Bial’s view, Jewish Americans may have the means of production that
other groups might not have, but they must “reform” their performances
because of real, or perceived, anti-Semitism. “Acting Jewish” then is a
dialectic tension between being too specific and being universal; there is the
desire to assert the specificity of Jewish experience yet simultaneously speak
to a universal human condition (ibid., 4). Bial focuses on several historical
periods: 1947–55 (the era of Death of a Salesman), 1964–71 (the era of Fiddler
on the Roof), 1968–83 (the works defined by Barbra Streisand and Woody
Allen), 1989–97 (the era of Angels in America, The Sisters Rosensweig, and
The Old Neighborhood), and the current state of Jewish theatre, which seeks
to create an imagined community that is defined as an interaction between
the spectator and the performance. Bial reminds readers that “Jewish” and
“American” needn’t be mutually exclusive categories since they are not fixed
or static identities.

Acting Jewish as a formulation of identity should thus be understood

as a processual, provisional, and always already contested performance
that circulates between the two worlds of essentialism (insistence
on the authentic) and postmodernism (all authenticities are equal,
which is to say nothing is authentic). (Bial 2005, 15–16)

As these critics point out, Jewish American theatre is a diverse, ever-

changing landscape that continues to define the American theatre as a
whole.
Regarding Israeli American theatre, Holly Hill writes that “Though their
members may not be or may not identify themselves as Israeli-American or
Middle-Eastern-American, there are established Jewish theatres in the U.S.
that have welcomed Middle Eastern/Middle Eastern-American issues and

26
 Introduction

artists” (Hill and Amin 2009, xxvii). According to actor/playwright Danny

Bryck, there are a few important ideas that should be considered when utilizing
the moniker “Israeli American.” First, one should not conflate being Jewish
with being Israeli or Middle Eastern; to do so runs the risk of categorizing all
Jews as having Middle Eastern heritage, or of being Zionist in orientation.
There are also Jews who are Middle Eastern or have Middle Eastern roots
(such as Mizrahi/Sephardi Jews) who are not Israeli, so to conjoin all of these
communities into an Israeli identity might erase those histories. Also, Bryck
notes, there is the issue of locating Israel and Israeliness within the larger
landscape of Middle Eastern identities, given Israel’s perception by some in
the region as a settler colonial state (Bryck 2019).
Whether these plays are categorized as “Middle Eastern American” plays
is debatable. Some playwrights gladly embrace the moniker, while others
may not. Regardless, the topics that are explored in many of these plays,
especially those that focus on issues related to the Middle East, are very
much in alignment with the genre and its specific characteristics. In his
Howlround essay “Jewish Theater: Every Good Question Deserves Another
Question,” David Winitsky, artistic director of New York’s Jewish Plays
Project, attempts to define Jewish theatre. He begins by postulating that
many would first think of plays and productions like a Yiddish King Lear,
The Diary of Anne Frank, and Fiddler on the Roof, or “your orthodontist in
Little Shop at the local JCC” (Winitsky 2014). He claims that all the tools
for Jewish theatre are present: millennia-old traditions of argument and
dialogue, mysticism and magic, a love for the intellectual and the idealistic,
a deep attachment to texts, cultural history filled with great stories, tragedy,
and lots of humor. That said, Winitsky believes there are several subjects
that seem to dominate contemporary Jewish theatre: dysfunctional families
and the Holocaust, realism, and a disconnect between the artists who create
theatre and the theatre community for which the art is created.

As Jewish artists—and in some ways American Jews overall—distance

themselves from core parts of their cultural inheritance, we start to
get a Jewish theatre that is too general, too devoted to the easy joke,
the pat historical record, or the cultural stereotype to stir the kind of
emotions we want our audience to feel. (Winitsky 2014)

This, he finds, coupled with a Jewish community that has shifted right,
conservative, and with unswerving support for Israel, has led to a lack of
support for the artists that challenge the status quo. To remedy this, he

27
Middle Eastern American Theatre

proposes several solutions: a greater embrace of the mystical from the ancient
texts, an invitation to collaborate with more non-Jewish artists, a deeper
discussion about Israel/Palestine, less focus on topics of anti-Semitism and
the Holocaust, and a focus on the present over the past. Chapter 1 introduces
several important Jewish American theatres that are actively promoting
these ideas, and creating a new body of Jewish American theatre.

Turkish American Theatre

Perhaps the genre that is least documented is that of Turkish American

theatre. According to John J. Grabowski, initially there was a small
immigration of Muslim Turks from the Ottoman Empire to the United
States. The period from 1890 to 1924 saw the greatest emigration of Muslim
Turks, and members of the non-Muslim millets from the Ottoman Empire
to ports in New York, Boston, and Providence, Rhode Island (Grabowski
2008, 18). This emigration was mainly economic and political: there were
good wages found in the United States, American Protestant missionaries
encouraged their pupils to emigrate, and the Ottoman administration’s
compulsory military service for non-Muslims led many to escape (İpek
and Tuncer Çağlayan 2008, 29). The number of Ottoman subjects who
migrated to the United States was between 500,000 and 1,000,000. The strict
immigration regulations imposed after the Second World War led to very
small numbers, and since the 1970s, the number of Turkish immigrants to
the United States has risen to more than 2,000 per year. The total population
of Turkish immigrants in the United States is estimated at 100,000 to
400,000 persons. Many immigrants settled in or around large urban centers
such as New York, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco,
and Rochester (Altschiller).
In her book Towards Turkish American Literature, Elena Furlanetto
describes Turkish American writers as “binational writers of Turkish origin
with strong biographical and literary ties to the United States” who engage
with issues related to Turkey, but also the relationship between Turkey
and America (2017, 11). Although Furlanetto focuses on writers that are
oriented more toward Turkey than the Americas, she does call this a strongly
bicultural literature written in English that engages with issues regarding
ethnicity, identity, and dual citizenship. Also, the novelists she includes
such as Halide Edip Adivar, Shirin Devrim, Selma Ekrem, and Elif Shafak
write literature that do not reproduce immigrant success stories, or migrant
fiction that focuses on the balancing of two cultural traditions. Instead it

28
 Introduction

is a cosmopolitan literature of elite frequent travelers who write from a

vantage point not necessarily accessible to working, or low-income classes
(ibid., 19). For her part, Verena Laschinger writes that “Turkish American”
does not represent a timeless, static, or essential ethnic category but, rather,
a social construct that is carved out of political, social, and ideological
conflicts. Like other Middle Eastern American groups, Turkish American
authors also deal with issues of deep-seated prejudices against Turks and a
proliferation of anti-Turkish images (Laschinger 2016, 114).
Regarding Turkish American theatre specifically, there are several
prominent playwrights and directors who identify as such and have created
works of note since the late twentieth century. The most famous of these
would be Sinan Ünel, whose plays Pera Palas, The Three of Cups, and The
Cry of the Reed are fine examples of Turkish American playwriting produced
at the highest levels of American theatre. Another prominent playwright,
Melis Aker, has also written exemplary plays in this genre including Field,
Awakening; When My Mama Was a Hittite; Guilded Isle; Manar; and
Dragonflies. Turkish American director Evren Odcikin has directed at many
major American theatres, was named Interim Associate Artistic Director at
Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and is a founder of Maia Directors. In addition,
Turkish American Repertory Theater & Entertainment (TARTE) is a
Northeastern American company that is devoted to Turkish and American
classics and new works. Its Artistic Director Ayse Eldek-Richardson was
born in Turkey but immigrated to the United States in the late 1990s and
her company has produced works for decades. These are by no means the
only Turkish American theatre makers working in the American theatre,
but they represent some of the highest quality work from their community.

Issues Facing Middle Eastern American Theatre

The Middle Eastern American literature genre has been studied but rarely
within the context of theatre. In their anthology Salaam, Peace, Hill and
Amin describe Middle Eastern American theatre through the lenses of
hyphenated identities and the events of 9/11:

The tragedies of 9/11 might have silenced Middle Eastern-American

theatre artists, but voices rose through the clouds of outrage,
condemnation and suspicion that threatened them individually and
communally. (2009, xiii)

29
Middle Eastern American Theatre

For her part, Amin categorizes those who share the moniker “Middle
Eastern-American” as

artists who do not necessarily have a unified vision or constitute a

movement within American theatre so far, but have become visible,
for both positive and negative reasons, only after 9/11, because of
their ethnic background. While attention suddenly focused on them
as “the other,” many of those artists struggle with that categorization
and refuse to be studied/viewed only from that thin prism, which,
according to them, is an oversimplification of their situation, after all
they are U.S. citizens. (x)

One of the biggest issues facing this community is self-representation. The

need for self-representation has grown, and Middle Eastern Americans
believe they are the ones who are best suited to bring their historical, cultural,
social, and artistic stories to American audiences. In the book Etching
Our Own Image: Voices from Within the Arab American Art Movement,
Holly Arida writes, “Without self-definition, we are misunderstood. [. . .]
While this effort is not uniform, the artists within it have in common the
capacity to etch their own images, to use artistic media to create their own
impressions of who they are as artists and as Arab Americans” (Ameri and
Arida 2007, 1). Silk Road Rising co-founder and co-artistic Director Jamil
Khoury writes,

I believe that Arab American theatre makers and filmmakers and

writers and novelists and musicians and visual artists and dancers
and stand-up comedians are poised to lead our community and
emancipate us from our cultural dystopia and political powerlessness.
Until the larger American public connects with our stories, connects
with us on a human level, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, and
viscerally, we will remain [. . .] detested and despised. (Khoury 2013)

Khoury also cowrote an essay with Golden Thread Productions artistic

director Torange Yeghiazarian for American Theatre titled “Middle Eastern
American Theatre, on Our Terms.” They summarize the convenings of
Middle Eastern American theatre artists over two years. There are two
documents in the article: one titled “Dear Producers and Artistic Directors
of the American Theatre” and another titled “A Middle Eastern American
Theatre Artists Bill of Rights.” In the former, they address play selection,

30
 Introduction

casting, cultural competency, and facilitating conversations. They urge

American theatre producers to consider the many “excellent plays” that exist
in the genre that explore every possible aspect of contemporary theatre. They
also urge producers to reach out to the Middle Eastern American theatre
artists that are outside their established casting/hiring networks. “Bottom
line: You all should be working with more Middle Eastern American
actors, directors, dramaturgs, and designers,” they write. They also offer
their services in reaching out to these artists, and if they cannot cast the
play with such artists, they ask that the producers of the play attempt to
honor the intentions of the playwright. As for cultural competency, they
urge producers to work with culturally competent consultants that have
embodied knowledge and lived experience with the community that the
play addresses. Furthermore, they argue that the artists must have agency
to impact decision making for the production. Because plays that deal with
Islam or the Middle East are often politically charged, they believe that “a
respectful, honest, and meaningful conversation” must be facilitated despite
how difficult the subject matter may be.
In the “Middle Eastern American Theatre Artists Bill of Rights,” they
outline several “self-evident truths” regarding these artists:
1. The right to tell their own stories in their own words without the
burden of representing an entire community’s experiences.
2. The right to define their own cultural identities free of stereotypes,
coercion, policing, and the right to embrace myriad cultural
identities simultaneously.
3. The right not to conform to the preconceived notions of
cultural identity, and to resist culturally imposed political and
social judgments for stories that reflect individual truths and
understandings.
4. The right to bring complicated and nuanced interpretations to the
works.
5. The right to be free of performances of preconceived notions of
identities or acquiescence to hypersexualized or systematic violent
representation of Middle Eastern/American bodies.
6. The right to examine the less serious aspects of their communities,
religious traditions, and identity politics without being censured
or the expectation of being role models.

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Middle Eastern American Theatre

7. The right to tell stories that criticize aspects of US or Middle

Eastern governmental policies without the threat of being accused
of anti-Americanism, racism, or self-loathing.
8. The right to tell stories even if they are not necessarily about
Middle Eastern identities.
9. The right to remind “artistic decision makers” of concerns
regarding the authentication of cultural heritages, to hear
concerns related to identities, and the reminder that Middle
Eastern artist participation does not automatically denote
approval of all culturally specific choices that are made in a
production.
The document ends with a postscript that explains the problematic
colonial history of terms such as “Middle East” and “Middle Eastern.” For
clarification, they write:

We understand our respective backgrounds in terms of rich pluralism

and interconnectedness. We also define “America” and “American” in
the broadest possible ways to include the continents of North and
South America. Furthermore, at this time in history, it’s important
that we include American Muslims of all cultural, ethnic, and
racial backgrounds, as members of our Middle Eastern American
communities. (Khoury and Yeghiazarian 2017)

This article, born of several gatherings of Middle Eastern American theatre

artists, outlines the various topics, concerns, and frustrations that are
discussed in meetings that involve this genre. Of course, theatres are not
obligated to follow these guidelines, but they at least voice the concerns of
artists that have traditionally been omitted in the American theatre.
Despite the solidarity in the Middle Eastern American theatre movement,
there are still contentious issues. Casting is by far the most controversial.
Should a Middle Eastern role be played by a non-Middle Easterner? The
opinions vary. Some state that the onus is on the producer to find Middle
Eastern/American actors to play such roles, and if they cannot find those
actors, they should refrain from producing the play at all. Others believe
that every effort should be made to find the said actors, but if they cannot
be found or hired, then non-MEA actors can fill those roles. Still others
believe that it is more important that these plays are produced anywhere
than to not be produced only because they cannot be cast with the “correct”

32
 Introduction

actors. Playwright Yussef El Guindi, for instance, commends theatres that

wish to cast plays “authentically,” but has often found his plays are cast with
actors who can “pass” as Middle Easterners. He writes that he prefers to
cast the best actors for the roles in his work rather than casting actors who
may not be as trained or experienced only because they “fit” the casting
requirements.

I know that sounds rather selfish, but shouldn’t my focus be on trying

to realize what’s on the page in the best manner possible? Wouldn’t
that raise the profile of our stories, and our place in the wider cultural
conversations, presenting quality work in all areas of production, so
the audience doesn’t feel like they’re attending out of obligation to
some liberal idea of exposing themselves to different cultures and
perspectives? Which is a great impulse, but can also feel more like
homework than entertainment. (Syler and Banks 2019, 58)

El Guindi states that when he feels the pressure to only cast within
the community, it tends to drive him to write plays that do not contain
characters from communities from which he cannot “authentically” cast. In
other words, he would prefer to have his plays produced with non-Middle
Eastern American characters rather than not performed at all because the
“right” actor cannot be cast in the role.
For her part, Torange Yeghiazarian writes about how the San Francisco
Bay Area now has many good actors of Middle Eastern heritage for its
casting pool, but that in the early years that casting pool did not contain
many actors of that heritage. For her company Golden Thread Productions,
producing plays with Middle Eastern narratives has always been a top
priority due to the underrepresentation of these narratives in American
theatre. Furthermore, she believes that the Middle Eastern characters that
do exist in American theatre are often demonized or dehumanized. “But
how do we bring more Middle Eastern narratives to theater stages in the
US,” she asks, “when there are very few Middle Eastern actors?” (ibid.,
64). For the Golden Thread Productions annual ReOrient Festival, the
casting challenges increase since there are both Middle Eastern and non-
Middle Eastern characters often represented in the plays: “I sometimes
wonder if, in the fight for greater and more ‘authentic’ representation of
communities of color, we have lost sight of theater’s intrinsic ability to
help us connect by reaching beyond ourselves” (ibid., 69). Like El Guindi,
Yeghiazarian believes that if there is to be a critical mass of Middle Eastern

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Middle Eastern American Theatre

American theatre in the United States, leniency in casting is ultimately

necessary.

Of course we want more opportunities for Middle Eastern artists; but

if we are limited to only writing about or playing characters from
our own cultures, then we are creating a different kind of cultural
ghetto where a community of color is only permitted to represent its
own. We need to expand our definitions of community and artistic
purview, not make them narrower. (ibid., 70)

The debate about casting these plays is ongoing. Because this genre is
relatively new to the professional American theatre, these tensions are
inevitable. As more Middle Eastern American artists enter training
programs, universities, and find work in professional theatre these issues
may subside. For now, it seems that casting in play production will remain
problematic for the foreseeable future.

Major Themes of Middle Eastern American Theatre

In deciding how to examine these plays, it seemed best to do so thematically

rather than by national/ethnic origin. Several themes are common to most
of these works. Of course, not all plays fit these categories, and many
works contain multiple themes. However, the plays included in this critical
companion feature the following ideas:

Return to the Homeland Plays

Plays found in this genre are about Middle Eastern Americans who are
usually second- or third-generation Americans who partake in a journey
back to their ancestors’ or parents’ countries or regions of birth. This type
of “birthright” play is one that compels the protagonist to leave the comfort
(or discomfort) of their American life in order to travel overseas to their
ancestral homelands. These characters sometimes have positive return
experiences, whereas others have negative ones. In their desire to return
lies the notion that they can somehow better understand themselves by
reconnecting with their cultural heritage. However, by doing so, they often
find they are more alienated both from their “American” and “ancestral”
selves. Protagonists in these plays confront the limits of their belonging:

34
 Introduction

linguistic (being unable to fully communicate in their second language),

cultural (lacking the requisite cultural knowledge to navigate their
homelands), social (making unintended social gaffes), and political (being
seen as suspect for having allegiances to both cultures). Also, they find that
their condition living abroad, and the attitudes they bring to the homeland,
is deeply challenged by those who live their lives there. These protagonists,
in their positive desire to learn more about themselves and their cultures,
experience an epiphany—they realize they are neither fully “American” nor
are they of their parents’ culture; they are hybrids who are doomed to be
fully unaccepted in both cultures.
In the book The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday
Politics of Race, Neda Maghbouleh writes that second-generation youth
who are born in the United States are exposed to the same media depictions
of their cultural homelands as other Americans. Simultaneously, they are
raised with their parents’ stories about growing up and coming of age in
those same countries. Where the American media images of the homeland
are often of malevolent and terrible places, their parents’ deterritorialized
narratives create what she calls “inherited nostalgia,” or imaginary
portraits of life that often omit the suffering and deprivations of war and
the pain of being in the diaspora. Therefore, young people often travel
to the homeland with optimism, excitement, and anticipation. However,
after navigating the difficulties of procuring the necessary paperwork,
enduring invasive security checks both at home and abroad, challenging
social and gendered norms (especially for women and girls who must alter
their dress before arriving), and having negative interactions with family
and authorities in the homeland many discover they are “too Iranian for
America, too American for Iran” (2017, 128). When the young people
Maghbouleh interviewed returned from their trips to Iran, they were
faced with the challenge of how to navigate both homes and identities
without sacrificing either (ibid., 132). Upon return to the United States, the
racializing experience young people face changes them. They had to come
to terms with the fact that, in America, they were not fully accepted since
they were not “white” and, when traveling to their ancestral homelands,
they did not belong there since they did not contain the linguistic, cultural,
or social knowledge of that place.
The irony of this situation is that the lack of acceptance they feel fuels
their artistic production. In other words, they wrote the plays they wrote
because of and not despite their experiences overseas. This positive artistic
result born of a negative experiential one is a fascinating by-product of their

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Middle Eastern American Theatre

inner journey. In a cruel twist of fate, these playwrights find their artistic
voice while sometimes losing their cultural identities and the supposed
cultural belonging they seek.

Persecution Plays

The plays in this category are ones that depict Middle Eastern Americans
being persecuted by government and society. These plays, born of decades
of ethnic and/or religious persecution in America, often tell the stories of
those who fall victim to larger forces that seek to destroy them because of
their allegiances to their ancestral homelands, their religious practices, or
their desire to assert themselves in their American communities. These plays
reflect the fact that there has been systematic governmental surveillance,
persecution, interrogation, incarceration, and ongoing Arabophobia and
Islamophobia in the Americas.
The first major study addressing the negative representation of Middle
Eastern subjects in the media is Edward W. Said’s seminal 1970 essay
“The Arab Portrayed.” In the essay, Said writes of the misrepresentation
of Arabs specifically, but many of the assertions he makes in the essay
are completely applicable to Middle Easterners in general. He writes
about the American consciousness of the Arab, which is rife with images
of Arabs as terrorists, sexual degenerates, or regressive nomads. “If the
Arab occupies space in the mind at all, it is of negative value,” Said
wrote. “He is seen as the disrupter of Israel’s continuing existence, or, in
a larger view, a surmountable obstacle to Israel’s creation in 1948” (Said
1970, 5). Indeed, the beginnings of the transition of Middle Easterners
from benign sheikhs and harem girls to pernicious terrorists and suicide
bombers began after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Prior to this time
there were many stereotypical Middle Eastern or Muslim types found
on American stages. Barbary Pirates were among the first stereotypes
in plays like Slaves in Algiers; or, A Struggle for Freedom (1794), Slaves
in Barbary (1810), American Captive, or Siege of Tripoli (1811), and
Young Carolinians; or, Americans in Algiers (1818). Another trope was
the immigrant wishing to assimilate such as Anna Ascends (1922), and
characters added for ethnic color in The Time of Your Life (1939). In
the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! (1943), the Middle
Eastern/Persian peddler Ali Hakim is seen as a cunning businessman
and sexual inveigler who tries to have his way with the women in the
musical. Of course, there were always Orientalized dance performances

36
 Introduction

by various troupes in the 1930s–1950s such as the O.W. Pond Troupe of

Arabs or the Circassian Slaves (Salem 1999, 272–83).
The portrayals after 1967 became more pernicious. This shift in
dramatic representation represented a wider shift in anti-Arab, anti-
Muslim consciousness. Suddenly Middle Easterners that were at one time
considered exotic or sexy transmuted into violent and terroristic characters.
In his book “Evil” Arabs in American Popular Film: Orientalist Fear, Tim
Jon Semmerling writes, “The political events of the early 1970s gave the
American popular consciousness a new nemesis, villain, and culprit that
deserved to be defeated” (2006, 17). Throughout that decade, he writes,
American fear and feelings of impotence gave rise to images of “evil”
Arabs who undermined America by using democracy as a weapon against
Westerners.

The Arabs and the Middle East did not and do not always respond to
our desires as we expect them to in our political designs and schemes,
i.e., our ideologies and myths. Put another way, this ambivalence of
the “evil” Arabs upsets the entire binary system of our Orientalist
project. (23)

Therefore, images of terrorists, avaricious oil sheikhs, burqa-clad suicide

bombers, and other vile Middle Easterners infiltrated images on stage and
screen. Even in recent American dramas like Bengal Tiger in the Baghdad
Zoo, Ruined, or The Happiest Song Plays Last, Middle Easterners are
portrayed either as helpless victims or as deceptive comrades who would
mercilessly kill American soldiers or steal diamonds that could potentially
save the lives of the protagonists. When Middle Easterners are unjustly
killed in foreign wars by American soldiers in these plays, those soldiers
return home to perform acts of self-atonement rather than face charges in
international courts for their crimes.
Middle Eastern American playwrights have written plays that examine
the persecution of Middle Easterners in America, especially in the post-
9/11 context. The plays in this category are examples of how Middle Eastern
Americans view themselves as the ones that have been persecuted by
governments and societies, and how that persecution has led to what Hatem
Bazian calls “virtual internment” whereby Middle Eastern Americans
are automatically guilty by association for the actions of actual terrorists.
Bazian defines this as a mentally induced state that targets this community
through the legal system, immigration laws, and the media (Bazian 2004,
6). The playwrights in this category explore the lives of characters living in

37
Middle Eastern American Theatre

this state of fear and paranoia and explore how it affects their lives in the
diaspora.

Diaspora Plays

Diaspora plays are plays by Middle Eastern American playwrights that

take place primarily in the Americas and deal with life as “the other” in an
American society that is dismissive or discriminatory toward them. The
protagonists in these plays suffer from the traumas they experienced in the
homeland and seek to establish a new and better life in America, yet they
are haunted by the experiences they left behind. These diasporic characters
are ones who seek refuge in America from the political, social, religious,
and civil strife of their homelands. It is their belief that they can make a
new start in a new land but, in play after play, they realize that they simply
cannot forget the people and the suffering they left behind. This type of
play is one that, as Edward W. Said explained in his essay “Reflections on
Exile,” highlights the condition of “the age of anxiety and estrangement”
exiles face when being “spiritually orphaned and alienated” (2000, 137).
For Said, exile is produced by humans for humans and, like death, it tears
millions from their necessary traditions, families, and geographies. So it
is with the protagonists in these diaspora plays; no matter how much they
wish to escape the past and start anew, they are confronted with the specter
of those left behind and those lost back in the homeland. Despite this grim
backdrop, some of these plays take a darkly comic view of the situation and
rely on humor, rather than drama, to tell their stories.

Plays Set in the Homeland

In plays set in the homeland, Middle Eastern American playwrights imagine

entire stories that take place back home with the intent of reconstructing lost
histories, attempting to address political issues, or imagining a homeland
they may not know. In these plays the characters are living in the ancestral
homeland, but they are speaking in the vernacular of the communities
attending the plays in America. These plays are attempts to translate the
experiences of Middle Easterners to American audiences. For instance,
there are many Armenian American plays that reconstruct the Armenian
Genocide, Palestinian American, and Israeli American plays that address
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iranian American plays that focus on lives of

38
 Introduction

Iranians living under dictatorships, or Arab American plays that focus on the
various wars, civil unrests, and political crackdowns that are part of the lives
of those living in the Middle East. These plays are born of a desire for those in
the diaspora to reconstruct the lives of Middle Easterners. In doing so, they
relay important information to American audiences who may not know the
tragic histories that comprise some Middle Eastern American lives.

Conflict Plays

One of the largest bodies of plays from Middle Eastern American

playwrights concerns conflicts that are taking place in the Middle East.
This genre’s largest corpus is the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
These plays come from almost all of the groups and constitute one of the
most pressing issues in the minds of these artists and often include the
aforementioned categories as well. Topics include returning to Israel and/
or Palestine, being challenged as “Americans” while visiting there, and
ruminating on their inability to contribute to ending the conflict. The
amount of time and effort these playwrights have taken to focus on this
topic is remarkable. Playwrights in this genre often tend to humanize the
people caught up in this conflict and allow audiences the space to think
more deeply about these issues. However, writing about this topic, and
getting these plays produced in mainstream theatres, is a difficult task.
Many plays that concern the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are
either not produced, are censored by theatres that wish to produce them,
or they are given readings but not full productions. In addition, Middle
Eastern American theatres complain that they are not funded well enough
and they not given press reviews in their communities. Many artists believe
that there is a desire by patrons and the press to avoid the difficult topics
inherent to this work.
For Middle Eastern American artists, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a
personal issue since they have a vested interest in peace in the region. Some of
these artists have family in Israel and Palestine, have traveled and/or worked
there, and know that a wider conflict in the Middle East will most probably
impact their families in terrifyingly real terms. Therefore, the urgency to
write about this issue transcends their work as playwrights—it is a personal
issue that they must dramatize using the tools they know best—their writing,
directing, and performing. Palestinian American playwright Betty Shamieh
writes, “The cost of ignoring what is happening there—and ignoring how
those happenings affect the stability of the entire world—is unbearable”

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Middle Eastern American Theatre

(Shamieh 2003, 20, 6). Israeli playwright Motti Lerner believes writing and
producing these plays can bring about change, though not directly:

What do I expect from the production of the play? I’m not naïve. I
know that it will change neither the fate of the Middle East nor the
results of the next elections in Israel. It’s very difficult to change people
by plays in the theatre. We must be aware of that. But nonetheless,
we mustn’t lose hope. Books and plays and films do create change.
Sometimes the change is very small. Sometimes the change is hidden.
Sometimes the change is so deep that we can’t see its traces on the
surface. But even if this change is very minor, even if it’s hidden, it’s
worth attempting. (Lerner 2015, 152)

As these artists demonstrate, there is a desperate need to address this issue

through theatre. The number of plays that addresses this topic is growing,
and they come from nearly every Middle Eastern American group writing
for the theatre.
Other conflict plays revolve around the various wars and crises that have
taken place and continue to plague the region. Plays about the Lebanese
Civil War, the Syrian Civil War, and the Algerian Civil War focus on how
these wars have damaged the civil society and caused a refugee crisis. The
Armenian Genocide is also the focus of plays in this genre. The Arab Spring
uprisings also become an important topic for exploration. These are a small
sample of the works that focus on the historical and current conflicts that
have caused such grief and suffering in the Middle East for generations.
All of these categories—return to the homeland plays, persecution
plays, diaspora plays, plays set in the homeland, and conflict plays—are
by no means comprehensive of every Middle Eastern American play or
musical, but they can provide a helpful set of lenses through which we can
understand the people, plays, and styles that exist. These Middle Eastern
American artists are often working in obscurity. Many of these plays are
either unpublished, have never been produced, or have only had staged
readings. This points to the fact that the American theatre establishment
has been less-than-receptive to these works, and that these artists are often
working against great odds to stage their productions. However, as these
works prove, they are all important stories that should be experienced by
more audiences in the future.

40
C Chapter 1
MAJOR MIDDLE EASTERN
AMERICAN COMPANIES

Much of the success that can be attributed to this genre comes from the
various theatre companies and groups that have produced these works on
the stage despite lack of funding, resources, and personnel. The founders
of these companies have often worked under difficult conditions to assure
the production of these plays. In an American theatre landscape that often
values large-scale entertainments consisting of musicals or so-called straight
plays featuring major film or television stars, these companies rely on arts
grants, patron donations, and ticket sales to produce the works. They also
rely on various venues that would either donate their spaces, or provide
them a reasonable cost, in order to allow them to produce these works. That
said, some artists often work for little or no compensation in order to assure
the success of these productions.

AJYAL Theatrical Group

Dearborn-based theatre company AJYAL (Generations) Theatrical Group

was founded by producer, director, actor, and writer Najee Mondalek in
1988. According to their website,

Most of AJYAL Theatrical Group’ [sic] shows poke fun at the everyday
lives of Arab-Americans, who have recently become citizens and who
are desperately trying to blend into the mainstream of American
culture. The plays serve as a forum to help people laugh at their
mistakes and mishaps but also to come to terms with social issues
facing Arab-Americans, such as their difficulties adjusting to a new
culture and lifestyle. These performances, like music, art and other
entertainment media, are a very important piece of the fabric of
Arab-American culture. (www​.ajyal​.us)
Middle Eastern American Theatre

Mondalek was born in Marjayoun, Lebanon, before the Lebanese

Civil War. He immigrated to the United States in 1985 and received his
associate degree from Macomb Community College in 1988. He also
holds a bachelor’s degree in mass communications, and a master’s degree
in virtual reality, 3D animation, and visualization. While still a student
at Macomb Community College, Mondalek began writing plays. In all,
Mondalek wrote, produced, and acted in twelve comedies over a twenty-
five-year span: What a Shame (1989), Students Nowadays (1990), Honest
Thieves (1991), Smile You’re in Dearborn (1993), We Became American
(1996), Come See, Come Saw (1998), Happy Bairday (1999–2000), Me No
Terrorist (2001–4), Arab & Broud (2005–6), Where Does It Hurt (2012–13),
The Jubilee Show (2013–14), Ghashee w Mashee—The Dumbass (2015–16),
and Double Trouble (2018–19). The productions toured throughout North
America, Canada, and abroad to Lebanon and Australia. The plays, and
Mondalek’s alter ego Im Hussein, are well known throughout the Arab
American community, and the shows usually sell out wherever they
play. Mondalek also records the productions and sells the DVDs on the
AJYAL website. The ensemble is made up of several other Arab American
actors: Rima Amine, Nader Aoude, Aziz Charabaty, Hassan Haj, Rabih
Jaber, Rodney Karromi, Christine Mondalek, Michael Mondalek, Ayman
Safaoui, and Rita Srour.
Mondalek (in drag) plays a Lebanese matriarch named Im Hussein
(mother of Hussein), a woman who mostly dresses in a floral-patterned,
brightly colored abaya, a head scarf, and thick-rimmed glasses with caked-
on makeup. The character is married to her hapless husband Abou Hussein
(father of Hussein), who often dresses in cheap suits, an oversized knit
hat, and sports a handlebar mustache. Im Hussein’s best friends, Im Elias
(mother of Elias) and Abou Elias (father of Elias), round out the main
characters in the comedies. The rest of the cast are comprised of colorful
characters who are both Arab and non-Arab. The Im Hussein character
first appeared in a brief skit in Mondalek’s play Smile You’re in Dearborn.
The character was so popular with audiences that Mondalek rewrote the
character as a lead role in all his future plays.
Mondalek’s plays are written in Arabic and combine English and Arabic
into a hybrid language Mondalek calls “Arabeezi.” He uses this mixture of
Arabic and English to reflect the code switching that many Arabs use in
their daily lives. Mondalek uses this hybrid language to great comic effect,
especially when his lead character, Im Hussein, speaks with American

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 Major Middle Eastern American Companies

characters who neither speak nor understand Arabic. The combined use of
Arabic and English, the intermittent use of rhyming Arabic proverbs, the
colorful costumes and acting, and the use of malapropisms all contribute to
creating situations that are both comical and outrageous. Mondalek’s plays
also include interludes that contain Arabic song and dance, adding to their
entertainment for primarily Arab-speaking audiences.
Mondalek’s character Im Hussein follows in a long tradition of British and
American male actors playing older matriarchs such as Barry Humphries’s
Dame Edna, Tyler Perry’s Madea, Eddie Murphy’s Mama Klump, and
Martin Lawrence’s Big Momma. These entertainers rely on the notion that a
strong female character with agency must be large in stature, have a homely
appearance, dress garishly, and have the underlying threat of violence.
Like Perry’s Madea character, Mondalek’s Im Hussein contains important
cultural knowledge, and he often breaks the fourth wall to speak directly to
his audiences about contemporary issues facing the Arab community in the
United States.
As a character, Im Hussein has agency. She is the driving force in the
comedy and the reason the major events occur. She is also the wittiest, the
funniest, and the most forceful character. Whenever her husband talks back
at her, she either outwits him with a clever Arabic saying, de-masculinizes
him, or even tacitly threatens physical force. In essence, she is the “funny
man” and her husband is the “straight man” in this comedic duo (both
literally and figuratively). There is no doubt that Mondalek’s plays are
loved by the Arab American/Arab Canadian community based on their
widespread popularity, their packed performances, and their reputation
within the community at large. Indeed, it is one of the few live theatrical
experiences Arabs in the United States and Canada can attend that include
the Arabic language, dance, and music. These performances also provide an
opportunity for Arabs to gather, laugh, and share in the situation they are
facing living in the diaspora. For Mondalek, the plays are meant to uplift the
Arab and Arab American communities:

Whenever I write my comedies, I always insert good messages. We

try to encourage the audience to do your best to feel proud of where
you came from and proud you are American now. Follow a good
example. Show the public the side of you as Arab or Arab American.
Be thankful to this country that opened its arms to welcome you and
your family to live a better life. (Virtusio 2015)

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Middle Eastern American Theatre

According to Mondalek, the plays are performed with 70 percent Arabic

and 30 percent English, and the audiences are about one-third Arab
American. Despite the humorous nature of the plays, Mondalek inserts
some social commentary regarding infertility, drug abuse, the abusive
Arab regimes, and the conflict between generations. “Political satire and
comedy have always been one of the best tools to explore difficult topics,”
Mondalek says. “Our theatre will always speak truths for those who hunger
[for] them. It will be a cultural space where our community examines
itself in a mirror” (Guzman 2016). With full houses across North America
and abroad, Ajyal’s success is undeniable. Their use of Arabic language,
Arabic dances and songs, and the issues they address regarding life in
America make them a beloved fixture of the Arab American theatrical
landscape.

Alliance for Jewish Theatre (AJT)

The Alliance for Jewish Theatre (AJT), a nonprofit organization, exists to

“promote the creation, presentation, and preservation of both traditional
and nontraditional theatrical endeavors by, for, and about the Jewish
experience” (Alliance for Jewish Theatre). The AJT was formed in 1979 by
Richard Siegel and Susan Merson. The company focuses on developing
plays that have a Jewish sensibility, create connections between theatre
artists, empower theatre artists to tell Jewish stories, and expand the
reach of theatre that explores Jewish identity. The group also organizes
international Jewish Theatre Festivals, holds annual conferences, and
states that its membership includes 225 individuals and theatres in the
world. In 2019, the AJT hosted the largest Jewish theatre arts conference
in the United States with nearly one hundred artists in attendance. There
were workshops, artist panels, and the publication of “Twenty-Five
Newish Jewish Plays You Should Know.” According to Executive Director
Jeremy Alumna, “In Judaism there is a belief that empathy stirs us to great
acts of kindness and generosity, and that those actions can repair the pain
and suffering in the world. This is what we continuously strive for: Tikkun
Olam. And this is what I hope to do with AJT” (Broadway World 2019).
Other AJT projects include a virtual theatre project titled “The Telling
Monologues/#Passover Telling Project,” AJT Pop-Up events meant to
celebrate and attract Jewish theatre and performance, and monthly
webinars for AJT member artists.

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 Major Middle Eastern American Companies

Arab-American Comedy Festival

Founded in 2003 by comedians Dean Obeidallah and Maysoon Zayid, the

Arab-American Comedy Festival was created to “showcase the talents of
Arab-American actors, comics, playwrights and filmmakers, and challenge
as well as inspire our fellow Arab-Americans to create outstanding works of
comedy” (www​.arabcomedy​.com). Obeidallah states,

We want to show Americans first-hand that Arabs can be funny.

I think over the last few years, we have succeeded in showing to
Americans that Arab-Americans are funny through our festival and
TV appearances. But, frankly, Americans never get a chance to see
Arabs from the Arab world being funny. I can’t think of a time when
I have seen an image of an Arab from the Middle East laughing on
American TV—other than maybe when they are playing a terrorist
laughing devilishly at his maniacal plans! (Mossalli 2010)

Middle Eastern American comedy has found success since 2000 with
various comedy tours and specials such as Allah Made Me Funny (featuring
Mohammed Amer, Preacher Moss, and Azhar Usman), The Axis of Evil
Comedy Tour (featuring Ahmed Ahmed, Maz Jobrani, Aron Kader, and
Dean Obeidallah), and The Arab American Comedy Tour (featuring Ahmed
Ahmed, Dean Obeidallah, and Maysoon Zayid). In addition, many of these
comics have been able to parlay their success to find opportunities in other
types of media. Obeidallah has created a satellite radio program titled The
Dean Obeidallah Show and is a regular contributor to several news sites,
Jobrani has acted in many Hollywood films and television shows, and Zayid
has continued her comedy tours as well as worked as a disability advocate.
What started out as a desire to break into mainstream American comedy
has led these comedians to other venues, heightening their influence and
reach beyond the comedy club circuit.

Art2Action Inc.

Art2Action is a company that creates, develops, and produces original

theatre, interdisciplinary performances, performative acts, and progressive
cultural organizing. They specifically state they support women artists,
artists of color, queer or trans artists, and creative allies. The Art2Action

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Middle Eastern American Theatre

Collective is a group of interdisciplinary artists that work together

consistently over time, including the five core/founding members: Dora
Arreola, Andrea Assaf, Krystal Banzon, Meena Natarajan, and Jo Novelli.
Founding Artistic Director Andrea Assaf “envisioned” the company in
2001, and the first production titled Globalcities premiered at the New
York International Fringe Festival in 2003. The company was originally
incorporated in New York, but is based in Tampa, Florida.
The company boasts three original works: Andrea Assaf ’s solo
performance Eleven Reflections on September, Assaf and Samuel Valdez’s
Outside the Circle, and the ensemble multimedia theatre work titled
DRONE. In addition, they organize and curate the R&R Arts Festival and
THIS Bridge: Arab, Muslim & Middle Eastern Artists. They cohosted the
National Initiative for Arts & Health in the Military (NIAHM) which
focuses on the role of the arts in recovery, transition, and transformation
for veterans. In Minneapolis, they also cohost the National Institute for
Directing & Ensemble Creation with Pangea World Theatre. In 2020 they
hosted their first national online community performance event titled
“ONLINE Veterans Community Open Mic” as a means of community
building during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Darvag Theater Group

Based in Berkeley, California, Darvag Theater Group has been producing

Iranian diasporic theatre since its founding in 1985. “Darvag” is a Farsi
word that means “a frog thrashes and croaks to announce the coming
of the hoped-for rain” (Hill 2009). The mission of the company consists
of “exploring creative expression in theater arts and maintaining a
vital living connection with the group’s Iranian heritage” (Ehya 2018,
57). Many early Iranian immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s were
students who formed campus-based Iranian student organizations that
were committed to political activism against the shah’s regime. The
organizations would perform skits, short political plays, and celebratory
dramas that commemorated the Iranian New Year celebration known
as Nowruz. Those plays were usually adaptations of Iranian Farsi plays
or political plays by Iranian-based playwrights. Following the Iranian
Revolution in 1979, which led to the overthrow of the Pahlavi Dynasty
in Iran, many Iranians immigrated to Europe and the United States.
Unlike earlier immigrants, these post-1979 students were committed

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 Major Middle Eastern American Companies

to mainly critiques of the Iranian regime, addressing the Iran-Iraq war

(1980–8), and focusing on the political persecution faced by many left
behind in Iran.
Darvag Theater Group, originally established by ex-student activists
in 1984, began in the former Khaneh ye Iran (House of Iran) building
in Berkeley. In over thirty years, Darvag has produced and staged more
than fifty plays in both English and Persian. They also staged plays by
non-Iranian playwrights Chekhov, Brecht, Dorfman, and Frayn. They
have coproduced plays with Shotgun Players (Berkeley) and Golden
Thread Productions (San Francisco). Unlike the former Iranian student
organization that focused primarily on political opposition, the Darvag
artists utilized theatre, music, literature, and visual arts in order to create
an Iranian diasporic community in Berkeley (Ehya 2018, 56). The first play
produced by Darvag, Chamedan (Suitcase), written and directed by Farhad
Ayeesh, created the ethos of the early Darvag plays. Later, other Darvag
theater artists contributed plays—Mansour Taeed: Such a Dance (1986);
Sepideh Khosrowjah: The Beginning (1985), If You Leave I Will Be Lonely
(1988, 1990), A Man, His Four Wives, and His Mother (1992), Who Will
Give Us a Second Chance (1993), The Bird of Dawn (1997), The Beginning
of a Cold Season (2002), In Memory of Kazem Ashtari (2007), and It’s Not
About Pomegranates (2011); Iraj Mohammadi: The Visit (1989), A Shuttle
from North (1990); Roham Sheikhani: Three Little Piglets (1994), Image Is
Everything (1995), Satan (1995); and Hossein Khosrowjah: Remembering
the Unforgettable (1998).
There were also several seminal directors who worked with Darvag
over the years who directed plays by Iranian and non-Iranian playwrights,
including Farhad Ayeesh, Jim Cave, Zara Houshmand, Hossein Khosrowjah,
Sepideh Khosrowjah, Iraj Mohammadi, Farid Nabavi, Evren Odcikin,
Roham Sheikhani, Mansour Taeed, and Bella Warda. One of Darvag’s
founders and directors, Hamid Ehya, writes,

Through the prism of Darvag, one can see the entire spectrum of
theatrical genres performed by Iranians outside of Iran. Darvag
has remained active for over thirty years and has staged more than
50 plays—probably more than any other Iranian theatre group
outside of Iran (or even inside). (Quoted in Hill 2009)

The company, which received its nonprofit status in 1995, has obtained
several grants, yet most of their productions are funded by ticket sales and

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Middle Eastern American Theatre

donations from the local Iranian community. Their use of Central Stage, a
small black box theatre in Berkeley whose mission is to primarily promote
Persian arts and culture, allows Darvag to have a consistent performance
venue. Several of their plays have traveled nationally, but none have
been published in the United States. Given the fraught nature of US-Iran
relations, companies like Darvag provide important opportunities for
American audiences to experience works by Iranian and Iranian/American
writers and directors who can provide insights into life under the Islamic
Republic and life as Iranian Americans in exile.

Golden Thread Productions

The San Francisco Bay Area company Golden Thread Productions is

described as “the first American theatre company devoted to the Middle
East” (Golden Thread Productions). The company was founded by Artistic
Director Torange Yeghiazarian, with the assistance of Maria Zamroud,
Termeh Yeghiazarian, Gen Hayashida, and Kamshad Kooshan. The name
was inspired by the myth of Ariadne, who led Theseus out of the labyrinth
with a ball of golden thread. Since its founding, the company has “worked
diligently to probe and celebrate the Middle Eastern culture and identity in
all its complexity” (Golden Thread Productions). The company’s premiere
production, Operation No Penetration, an adaptation of the classic Greek
drama Lysistrata in a Middle Eastern setting. Since that time they have
produced the world, US, and West Coast premieres of seminal Middle
Eastern American plays including Nine Armenians by Leslie Ayvazian
(2002); Yussef El Guindi’s Back of the Throat (2005), Jihad Jones and the
Kalishnikov Babes (2008), Language Rooms (2011), and Our Enemies: Lively
Scenes of Love and Combat (2016); Karim Alrawi’s Deep Cut (2001), Hafiz
Karmali’s Island of Animals (2006), Denmo Ibrahim’s Ecstasy, A Waterfable
(2009), Mona Mansour’s Urge for Going (2013) and We Swim, We Talk, We
Go to War (2018), Amir Nizar Zuabi’s Oh My Sweet Land (in collaboration
with Corinne Jaber, 2018), Saïd Sayrafiezadeh’s Autobiography of a Terrorist,
Hannah Khalil’s Scenes from 71* Years, Hassan Abdulrazzak’s Love, Bomb
& Apples (2018), Sedef Ecer’s On the Periphery, and many of Yeghiazarian’s
own plays including Abaga (2001), 444 Days (2013), The Fifth String:
Ziryab’s Passage to Cordoba (2014), and Isfahan Blues (2015). In addition
to their mainstage productions, Golden Thread Productions has created
the ReOrient Festival of short plays, an annual Women’s Day event titled

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 Major Middle Eastern American Companies

What Do the Women Say?, the Fairytale Players touring and education
program for youth, New Threads Reading Series, and other workshops and
special events (Bakalian 2008, 89). The ReOrient Festival has produced plays
by many of the prominent Middle Eastern American theatre artists including
Melis Aker, Emma Goldman-Sherman, Ken Kaissar, Mona Mansour, Nahal
Navidar, Betty Shamieh, and Yussef El Guindi. Other prominent playwrights
produced there include Eric Ehn, Israel Horovitz, Motti Lerner, and Naomi
Wallace. In addition, Golden Thread has partnered with Silk Road Rising
and the Lark Theatre in forming the Middle East New Plays Initiative. The
company has been recognized by the American Theatre Wing and by the
City of San Francisco. Torange Yeghiazarian has been recognized by Theatre
Bay Area, the Cairo International Theatre Festival, and the Symposium on
Equity in the Entertainment Industry at Stanford University. She is also one
of Theatre Communication Group’s Legacy Leaders of Color.

Jewish Plays Project

Jewish Plays Project (JPP) describes itself as a group that “puts bold,
progressive, Jewish conversations on world stages” (Jewish Plays Project).
As a development vehicle for plays, the JPP is committed to new plays and
musicals, and playwrights, who are interested in their Jewish identities, and
they engage Jewish communities in the vetting, selection, and championing
of new voices. The JPP began in 2012 and has chosen many plays over the
intervening years by writers like Martin Blank, Lindsay Joelle, Motti Lerner,
Zohar Tirosh-Polk, Misha Shulman, and Deborah Yarchun. The submission
guidelines state, “Submissions are open to artists of all backgrounds,
denominations, faiths, creeds, religions and other ideals. We believe that
Jewish identity and culture are specific manifestations of universal human
cravings for spiritual, ethical, moral and worldly joy. ‘Matrilineal descent’
is neither important nor necessary” (Jewish Plays Project). According to
Jewish Boston, the JPP has vetted 913 plays from 650 writers in 29 states and
8 countries and has placed 15 plays on stages from London to New York
to Tel Aviv (Bolton-Fasman 2019). JPP also holds regional play contests
in Houston, Charlotte, Chicago, Fairfax, Hartford, Buffalo, Silicon Valley,
and New York as well as a national contest online. JPP artistic director
David Winitsky states that the plays JPP chooses cover “the most pressing
stories in the Jewish world. Jews taking responsibility for refugees, Jews
confronting racial injustice, American Jews and Israel, Jews in the face of

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Middle Eastern American Theatre

anti-semitism, Jews facing off with each other. This is the reason the JPP
exists—to find plays that matter, and to champion them as they move onto
the best stages in the world” (Broadway World 2020). Companies like JPP
are striving to address issues that its founders believe were not central to the
missions of previous Jewish theatre organizations, and their use of online
resources has created a virtual national network of artists.

The Lark

The Lark is an international theatre laboratory based in New York

City “dedicated to amplifying the voices of playwrights by providing
transformative support within a global community” (larktheatre​.o​rg). Since
its founding in 1994, the Lark has hosted three Middle Eastern American
Convenings which hosted several hundred attendees. The Lark was also
one of the original partners, with Golden Thread Productions and Silk
Road Rising, of the Middle East America Playwrights Fellowship, which
helped to develop plays by Yussef El Guindi, Mona Mansour, and Adriana
Sevahn Nichols. The Lark also hosted Noor Theatre’s 48-Hour Play Forum,
and presented new works by Mike Mossalam, Arian Moayed, and Lameece
Issaq which were commissioned by Noor Theatre with a grant from Pop
Culture Collaborative. In addition, the Lark created a home for the Middle
Eastern Writers Lab, which was founded by Mona Mansour and Kareem
Fahmy, and has a Middle East-US Playwright Exchange Initiative. The Lark
has a Middle East-US Playwright Exchange program, directed by New York
University Arts Professor Catherine Coray.

Mosaic Theater

Mosaic Theater was founded by the former Artistic Director of Theater J,

Ari Roth, who, according to their website, “saw an increasingly polarized
landscape filled with reactionary pushback in the face of groundbreaking
interfaith dialogue” (Mosaic Theater). After the Edlavitch DCJCC canceling
of Theater J’s Voices from a Changing Middle East Festival, Roth decided
to “deepen his commitment to intergroup dialogue through the arts by
stepping out to build a new, mission-driven theater company that would
expand upon the values of the festival and resonate more broadly within
the nation’s capital” (www​.mosaictheatre​.org). The company partnered

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 Major Middle Eastern American Companies

with African Continuum Theatre Company, and now performs in the Atlas
Performing Arts Center. The company has produced the works of many
Middle Eastern American writers including Leila Buck, Aaron Davidman,
Hanna Eady, Mona Mansour, Shachar Pinkas, and Shay Pitovsky.

New Arab American Theatre Works

New Arab American Theater Works, based in the Minneapolis-St. Paul

area, was founded in 2012 as a collective of Minnesota-based Arab, Arab
American, and Muslim theatre artists. Its founder and Artistic/Executive
Director Kathryn (Kathy) Haddad has been creating works in the area for
over twenty years, first as cofounder and executive director of Mizna (a
Minneapolis-based organization dedicated to contemporary literature, art,
film, and cultural programming centering the works of Southwest Asian
and North African artists). New Arab American Theater Works strives “to
benefit underrepresented Arab, Arab American and Muslim artists, locally,
nationally and internationally” (new​arab​amer​ican​thea​terwor​ks​.org). In
addition, the company wishes to give new perspectives to the terms “Arab,”
“Middle Eastern,” and “Muslim” which are often conflated with the words
“terrorist,” “war,” and “oppressive.” The company produces full-length plays
as well as staged readings of new works including Gaza Stories (1995),
Trapped Between Bush and Bin Laden (2002), With Love From Ramallah
(2002), Latitudes (2008), A Clown in Exile (2015), In Algeria They Know My
Name (2015), Road to the City of Apples (2015), Tales of Time (2017), The
One Who Returned (2017), Turbulence (2018), and Zafira and the Resistance
(2019). Haddad’s The Hour of Separation, part of a Jerome Fellowship
granted the playwright, focuses on one hundred years of Lebanese and
Syrian immigration history.

Nibras Theatre Ensemble

Nibras, a former New York-based Arab American theatre ensemble,

described themselves in this way:

Nibras is an Arab / American theatre ensemble that is built upon a

shared passion for theatre and is united by a common heritage. It is
our belief that by fostering an understanding of the Arab experience

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Middle Eastern American Theatre

in America, we will help to engender a greater understanding for all

communities who feel left outside the equation of American society.
Through our productions, we hope to aid in the process of inclusion,
thereby enriching the colorful tapestry of American culture. Nibras
also seeks to create a strong and viable support group for other Arab
theater artists. We will work to build a network of young and old,
acolytes and adepts, who can all benefit from one another’s talent,
experience and passion. (Fractured Atlas)

The group’s members—James Asher, Leila Buck, Maha Chehlaoui, Omar

Koury, Omar Metwally, Najla Said, and Afaf Shawwa—began exploring their
Arab American identities in the years following the September 11 attacks.
According to VOA News, the group began the documentary drama Sajjil
prior to 9/11, but “its aftermath underscored their efforts to challenge
misconceptions and present the diversity of the Arab-American experience”
(voanews​.c​om). The production, which debuted at the International Fringe
Festival in New York City in 2002, won a FringeNYC Overall Excellence
Award for Ensemble Performance that year. The members of Nibras met
online via an ArabDrama listserve. According to Said, the eventual members
of Nibras became friends online long before they ever met in person: “For
most of us, newly crowned ‘Arab-Americans’ by the agents and casting
directors we had been getting to now, it was an opportunity to dip our foot
in the waters of being Arab-American without diving all the way in” (2013,
218). For Buck, the Arab American identification was one that provided
artistic insight: “I cannot judge why people choose to identify with or write
about their Arab-American heritage. For me, it is the reason I write—not an
obligation but an inspiration” (Najjar 2004). Regardless of their motivations,
the members of Nibras found both a cultural and artistic home at a time
when being identified as an Arab American performer was hardly desirable.
After Sajjil concluded, there was a feeling of great accomplishment, but
not a desire to continue with Nibras. According to Said, “We were ready
to take over the world with our company, we felt like we’d found our own
voices, our way into our culture” (Said 2013, 228). For Buck, understanding
the complexity of her background was important to her as a writer and
performer.

What I have come to realize is that it is only by acknowledging and

confronting the negative aspects of Arab culture that we can truly
begin a dialogue about the positive ones. At the same time I feel

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 Major Middle Eastern American Companies

strongly that it is important to keep telling simpler, personal stories

because that is what is missing in American culture—positive, human
portrayals of Arabs. (Najjar 2004)

Nibras never produced another play, but they were involved in several
projects including Aswat: Voices of Palestine that was sponsored by New
York Theatre Workshop in 2007. The group disbanded due to many factors.
The artists involved were primarily focused on creating theatre and not
administration, marketing, or fundraising. Although there were some
“frustrations and frictions along the way,” according to Chehlaoui, the major
reason for ending the artistic relationship had more to do with the tensions
of trying to be an institution, especially after 9/11. “To build anything from
the ground up is a challenge,” Chehlaoui said. “But to do so in upheaval,
while grieving, and feeling threatened on multiple fronts is especially so”
(Najjar 2014). Nibras’s legacy lives on through the work of its artists, who
continued to create theatre long after the company disbanded.

Noor Theatre

Noor Theatre was founded in 2010 by Founding Artistic Director Lameece

Issaq, Executive Director Maha Chehlaoui, and Producing Artistic
Director Nancy Vitale. The theatre, based in New York City, and company-
in-residence at New York Theatre Workshop, described its mission as
“dedicated to supporting, developing and producing the work of theatre
artists of Middle Eastern descent.” The company has several projects which
include its Highlight Reading Series, Co-presentation Partnerships with
universities and other organizations, and Premiere Productions/48 Hour
Forum, where the aim is to “create exceptional work that transcends cultural
boundaries and speaks to all people” (noortheatre​.o​rg). The word “Noor”
means “light” in both Farsi and Arabic.
The company won an Obie Award in 2016. In their acceptance speech
for the award, Issaq and Chehlaoui listed many reasons for why the
company was founded, including providing a home for talented Middle
Eastern American theatre artists, to support and develop the work of
artists of Middle Eastern descent, and to create a place where playwrights
and directors could tell their own stories and be the center of their own
narratives. In addition, the company was a direct response to living in
a post-9/11 atmosphere, where Middle Easterners are regarded with

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Middle Eastern American Theatre

suspicion and fear. “We create plays that counter those stereotypes, in the
hopes that the work we do just might shift those dangerous misperceptions,
or change a heart, or mind” (Noor Theatre 2016). Since their founding
in 2010, they produced world premieres of ten plays, including Food and
Fadwa by Lameece Issaq and Jacob Kader (2012); Myth in Motion (with the
students of the NJIT/Rutgers Theater program (2013); The Myth Project,
which included Phoenicia Flowers by Noelle Ghoussaini; The In-Between by
Kareem Fahmy; I Am Gordafarid by Pirronne Yousefzadeh; and Dead Are
My People by Ismail Khalidi, Hadi Eldebek, and Patrick Lazour.

Pangea World Theatre

Minneapolis-based Pangea World Theatre’s mission states, “Pangea

illuminates the human condition, celebrates cultural differences, and
promotes human rights by creating and presenting international, multi-
disciplinary theater” (pangeaworldtheater​.o​rg). The theatre focuses its
“intercultural, sacred theater that stands for intersectionality and justice” in
multiple theatrical communities, including Middle Eastern American and
South Asian American artists. The company was founded in 1995 by Artistic
and Executive Director Meena Natarajan and Artistic Director Dipankar
Mukherjee. With a focus on ensemble-based processes interlaced with a
global perspective, Pangea World Theatre has defined itself as a theatre that
celebrates multiple aesthetics and mediums, community engagement, and
leadership in participating Immigrant, Indigenous, and People of Color
communities. Their programs include Lake Street Arts!, The National
Institute for Directing & Ensemble Creation, Indigenous Voices, Alternate
Visions, Race North and South on the Great River, and other educational
workshops and residencies.

Silk Road Rising/Silk Road Theatre Project

Silk Road Rising (previously known as Silk Road Theatre Project) bills itself
as “America’s first theatre and media arts organization dedicated to telling
stories of East Asian, South Asian, and Middle Eastern Communities”
(silkroadrising​.o​rg). Its founding artistic director, Jamil Khoury, and
founding executive director, Malik Gillani, established the company in
Chicago, Illinois, in 2003. Khoury, who describes himself as “a white Arab

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 Major Middle Eastern American Companies

Slovak Pole,” was raised in the Antiochian Orthodox Christian tradition.

His husband, and cofounder, Malik Gillani, is an Ismaili Muslim. Their
theatre, labeled by American Theatre Magazine as one of “A dozen young
American companies you need to know” in 2004, has risen in prominence
as one of the preeminent Middle Eastern American theatres. Their first
production, Precious Stones, set the tone for the works to come: plays that
focus on playwrights of Asian and Middle Eastern backgrounds that both
“enrich the fabric of American storytelling” and “advance civic engagement
and public discourse.” The company was also founded as a response to the
attacks of 9/11 with the aim “to educate, promote dialogue, and heal rifts
through the transformative power of theatre.” Silk Road Rising has been the
professional theatre-in-residence at the downtown First United Methodist
Church at the Chicago Temple since 2006.
For Khoury, theatre is a means to a specific end. He says, “We love the
art form, but that’s not where we’re coming from. It’s the desire to impact
change.” Khoury, who was shaped directly by his cross-cultural upbringing,
his sexuality, his direct engagement with the plight of Palestinian refugees,
and his personal experiences with homophobia and racism, believes in the
activist potential of theatre and social media. According to their website,
“The legacy of the Silk Road provided us the narrative from which our core
values would appear: Discovery, Pluralism, and Empathy” (silkroadrising​
.o​rg). The company has expanded from one that solely presented theatre
productions to one that now creates video plays, community-based
performances, and recorded internet and television interviews.
Since its initial production in 2003, Silk Road Rising has produced many
plays by Middle Eastern American and South Asian American writers,
including Ten Acrobats in an Amazing Leap of Faith (2005), Back of the
Throat (2006), and Our Enemies: Lively Scenes of Love and Combat (2008)
all by Yussef El Guindi; Scorched by Wajdi Mouawad (2010); Invasion! by
Jonas Hassen Khemiri (2013); My American Cousin by Jameeleh Shelo
(2015); Ziryab, the Songbird of Andalusia by Ronnie Malley (2016); Mosque
Alert by Jamil Khoury (2016); Detour Guide by Karim Nagi (2019); and
Twice, Thrice, Frice . . . by Fouad Teymour (2019).

TARTE: Turkish American Repertory Theater & Entertainment

TARTE is a Turkish American Repertory Theatre based in the Northeastern

United States “whose mission includes the sharing of Turkish culture and

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Middle Eastern American Theatre

literature with American audiences” (tarteusa​.c​om). TARTE performs

Turkish and American classics as well as new works. They have also adapted
plays, dance theatre, and have created a one-act play festival and children’s
programs. The founding artistic director, Ayse Eldek-Richardson, was born
and raised in Turkey but immigrated to the United States in 1997 where she
has worked in theatre, film, and television since. Other artists who work
with TARTE include resident choreographer Sevin Ceviker, resident writer
Ayse Alagoz, writer Ivan Faute, writer/director Yusuf Yildiz, writer Emre
Ozpirincci, and resident performers Defne Halman, Hazar Tuna, Denise
Turkan, Feryal Kilisli, Zeynep Desen Uygur, and Hannah Snow. Other
associated artists include honorary writer Tuncer Cucenoglu, honorary
actor Tolga Savaci, tap choreographer Jule Jo Ramirez, and music mixer Fuat
Caner Tokgozol. Some of the plays they have produced include Lost Sock
Laundry by Ivan Faute, Of Dogs & Squirrels by Emre Ozpirincci, Matrushka
by Tuncer Cucenoglu, and To love . . . by Ayse Eldek-Richardson.

Theater J

Theater J, based in Washington, DC, and founded in 1990 as a program of

the Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center (EDCJCC), was established
under the leadership of Founding Artistic Director Martin Blank. Its initial
space was a 40-seat black box theatre at the original home of the EDCJCC,
but in 1997 the company moved to a larger 238-seat theatre named for
Aaron and Cecile Goldman. The company describes itself in this way:

Theater J is a nationally renowned, professional theater that celebrates,

explores, and struggles with the complexities and nuances of both
the Jewish experience and the universal human condition. Our work
illuminates and examines: ethical questions of our time, inter-cultural
experiences that parallel our own, and the changing landscape of
Jewish identities. As the nation’s largest and most prominent Jewish
theater, we aim to preserve and expand a rich Jewish theatrical
tradition and to create community and commonality through theater-
going experiences. (theaterj​.o​rg)

Theater J became known for producing works from and about Israel and the
Middle East and for their “Voices from a Changing Middle East” Festival.
The company states that it produces works by Jewish and non-Jewish writers

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 Major Middle Eastern American Companies

that “investigate diverse stories about immigrants, language, assimilation,

genocide, religion, otherness and other topics that resonate with a diverse
set of communities” (theaterj​.o​rg). In 2017 Theater J inaugurated the
Yiddish Theater Lab, which was meant to revitalize Yiddish theatre and
to make those works relevant to contemporary audiences. The company
has produced works by renowned Jewish American playwrights such as
Richard Greenberg, Tony Kushner, David Mamet, Donald Margulies,
Arthur Miller, Itamar Moses, Clifford Odets, Neil Simon, and Wendy
Wasserstein. They have also produced work by Israeli playwrights like Boaz
Gaon, Motti Lerner, Savyon Liebrecht, and Hillel Mittelpunkt. Theater J
has been honored with the D.C. Mayor’s Arts Award for Excellence in an
Artistic Discipline and has garnered over seventy Helen Hayes nominations
and nine Helen Hayes Awards.

Tribute: Reza Abdoh

Reza Abdoh was an Iranian-born theatre director, playwright, and founder

of the company Dar A Luz. The company’s most renowned productions
included The Hip-Hop Waltz of Euridice (1990), Bogeyman (1991), The Law
of Remains (1992), Tight Right White (1993), and Quotations from a Ruined
City (1994), all directed by Abdoh. The productions were primarily staged
in Los Angeles, New York City, and in various European cities, and some
were cowritten with his brother, Salar. Abdoh preferred site-specific, mixed
media theatre that crossed the boundaries of theatre and performance art.
Considered one of the leaders of the postmodern avant-garde of his time,
Abdoh’s large ensemble-based productions were “queer, non-Western,
antihierarchical, political, and mystically religious” (Bell 1995). Abdoh
borrowed from many sources: BDSM, fairy tales, talk shows, video art,
classical texts, raves, and previous avant-garde theatrical productions.
Abdoh died of AIDS-related complications on May 11, 1995, at the
age of thirty-two. In 2018 MoMA PS1 held a large-scale retrospective
exhibition of his theatre and film works, organized by Negar Azimi, Tiffany
Malakooti, and Babak Radboy. In her Artforum review of the exhibition,
Jennifer Krasinski wrote, “It is not an overstatement to say that had Reza
Abdoh lived even one more year, had he created even one more production,
American theater would look very different now” (Krasinski 2018).
As this chapter demonstrates, Middle Eastern Americans have been
creating professional theatre in North America for many decades now.

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Middle Eastern American Theatre

Representing many communities, these companies seek to foster the

work of new writers, change the misperceptions many have about Middle
Easterners, offer opportunities to Middle Eastern American artists, and to
increasingly diversify the American theatre landscape. Despite their efforts,
many of these companies are still not funded sufficiently, and they struggle
to get their own communities to fully support them. However, these
companies continually defied the odds and produced high-quality works
that redefined the theatre landscape.

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C Chapter 2
RETURN TO THE HOMELAND PLAYS

One of the major types of plays by Middle Eastern American playwrights

is that of “return to the homeland.” Many of the writers in this genre are
either from the countries they write about, descendants of immigrants
from those countries, and/or dual citizens of those countries. As such, these
playwrights (and sometimes performers) find themselves writing plays that
explore their journeys from, journeys to, and experiences in their ancestral
homelands. These experiences challenge their protagonists (whether the
protagonists are themselves, or fictional creations that mirror their own
lives and experiences). In some cases, these journeys home are enlightening;
however, some are heartbreaking returns that challenge their deepest
beliefs. For in these journeys home, they realize their journey away from
home has changed them, and their desire to find a place where they belong
in their parents’ homeland, or even their own, proves that they no longer
belong there. This leads to a schism within these characters. Some return
with more wisdom, and more pain. Others return with the understanding
that they cannot find peace at home or abroad. Some playwrights decide
to end their plays with no definable conclusion—they remain in a state of
limbo, letting the audience ultimately decide what happens in their future.
When discussing the idea of transplanted immigrants from their
homes of origin to their new homelands, Victoria M. Abboud writes, “The
‘trans’ part of ‘transplant,’ I argue, is a continuous process, a difficult and
arduous task that requires immigrants continuously to negotiate their
identities through their pasts and their current situations. The children
of immigrants, too, must negotiate this identity and determine the level
at which they will acknowledge or own their cultural history and current
life’s narrative” (Abboud 2003, 373). Unlike previous generations of
immigrants, who could not regularly visit their homelands, contemporary
immigrants can regularly maintain political, economic, and emotional
connections with their home countries through relatively inexpensive
modes of transportation and communication. Internet communication has
led to a tighter global community, allowing cultural connections to remain
Middle Eastern American Theatre

stronger than ever. Abboud cites that immigrants experience a “guest-

foreigner” dichotomy when coming to a new country, but the same occurs
when immigrants, and children of immigrants, return to their respective
homelands. On that return, Abboud writes, one must reconcile the memory
of what was, with the reality of what has become of their country in their
absence. “The immigrant experience [. . .] is filled with complex issues of
identity-formation, the sense of longing for a former life, and the difficulty
of attaining cultural and linguistic fluency in the new location” (ibid., 391).
Carol Fadda-Conrey labels this phenomenon “returns and rearrivals.”
For Fadda-Conrey, Arab American protagonists experience a revisionary
negotiation of their Arab American identity through journeys to their Arab
ancestral homelands. She notes,

Renegotiating the place of the Arab-American body, specifically

the female body, in light of such political relations inscribes
transformative understandings of the Arab homeland onto the US
terrain. For instead of the homeland being regarded as the root
cause of Arab-Americans’ foreignness in the US, a more complex,
transnational, and less binary-based knowledge of this homeland
becomes an important conduit for reimagining the place occupied by
the Arab-American subject within the US. (Fadda-Conrey 2014, 68)

This lack of cultural and linguistic fluency is the very thing that makes visits
back to the homeland so fraught with difficulty. The return to homeland
leads to rearrivals that question and rewrite both the inherited and the
hegemonic ideas regarding Arab American identity. In addition, they cause
a rethinking of citizenship back in the United States. Fadda-Conrey writes
that these literary and artistic works “create transformative spaces that are
elemental for social and political justice” (ibid., 104).
Neda Maghbouleh writes about the specific issues Iranian Americans
face when returning to the homeland. These difficulties include having
two passports, and the need to swap them when in transit; young men
having to deal with being of age for mandatory military service; and girls
and young women having to cover their hair and change into appropriate
clothing after entering Iranian airspace. Upon entering Iran, there are other
challenges. “For young men in particular, to be viewed with suspicion for
being Iranian while getting to Iran only to be viewed with suspicion for not
being Iranian enough once they stepped foot on Iranian soil was particularly
vexing” (Maghbouleh 2017, 124; emphasis in original). Further difficulties

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 Return to the Homeland Plays

lie in embarrassment about one’s accent, manner of speaking or dressing,

and the need to mute one’s Americanness in public places. “This involved
conscientious choices around when to speak in public settings in order to
remove the threat of being ‘found out’ as an Iranian American” (ibid., 128).
According to Maghbouleh, young Iranian men and women are disillusioned
when traveling back to Iran because they come away with “gendered ethno-
racial experiences that rendered them liminal outsiders within” (ibid., 133).
What’s more, there have been troubling accounts of Iranian Americans
who hold dual citizenship being arrested, with some given lengthy prison
sentences. Many who wish to travel back to Iran are nervous about doing
so, but some travel agents tell them, “If they are not active in politics, they
are safe” (Etehad 2016). Still, many students, journalists, business travelers,
and academics are under the threat of arrest for espionage or posing threats
to national security. In addition, Iran does not recognize dual citizenship
so, if one is detained, it is difficult for the foreign governments to aid with
their release. Regarding travel to the United States, Iranians studying in
the United States with student visas have been summarily deported back
to Iran with little or no explanation. In the process, students are subject to
extreme profiling and aggressive interrogations.
Some of these plays focus on young Arab Americans or Jewish Americans
going to Palestine and/or Israel. This particular genre is fascinating because
it usually takes the form of a young Jewish person going on their Birthright
Trip, which is, according to Taglit/Birthright Israel, “A free Israel Adventure,
A 10-day journey for Jewish young adults aged 18–32.” The website
Birthrightisrael has a running tally of those who have taken the trip, which,
by early 2020, was at 750,000. The website claims, “Experience Israel on an
action-packed journey exploring ancient sites, local hotspots, and natural
wonders. Travel with Israeli peers who will introduce you to the vibrant
culture, and mouth-watering cuisine that makes Israel a top vacation
destination” (birthrightisrael​.c​om). For Palestinians and Palestinian
Americans, however, the journey back to Palestine has no website promising
exciting journeys, exotic foods, or sunny vacations. In fact, the journey for
these travelers is usually fraught with complications that include hours-long
interrogations at the airport, taking long and punishing bus rides across
the Allenby Bridge/Al-Karameh Bridge/King Hussein Bridge from Jordan,
or finding other ways to get to the Palestinian territories that are glutted
with checkpoints, curfews, and armed military personnel. Some are turned
back at entry points if Israeli authorities discover anything on the traveler’s
social media accounts that supports the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and

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Sanctions) movement, or any other information the Israeli government

believes “wish it harm” (Goodstein 2017).
Palestinian American solo performer, playwright, and comic Jennifer
Jajeh’s I Heart Hamas: And Other Things I’m Afraid to Tell You is another
personal journey of a Christian/Catholic Arab American woman who
journeys back to her ancestral homeland of Palestine. Jajeh, whose family
has lived in the West Bank town of Ramallah for the past 450 years,
decided to create the play because she was tired of explaining herself and
her beliefs about the conflict. In 2000 she traveled to Ramallah, staying
a year and a half, only to return to New York and the 9/11 attacks. “I
clearly had post-traumatic stress from living in a war zone,” she says.
“‘Why do these people hate us’ is what a lot of people were saying after
September 11th. There’s such a misunderstanding of Arabs and Muslims
in general. . . . There was such a need of humanization of stories” (Girmay
2010). As a Palestinian American actress frustrated with the limited
choices of roles available to her, her solo performance became the vehicle
whereby she could begin a more playful, less fearful conversation about
Palestine. She makes it clear she is not speaking for all Palestinians in the
play—only for herself.
Jajeh labels the show “a tragicomic solo show.” The play’s provocative title,
especially considering the US State Department’s designation of Hamas as
a terrorist organization, and with the ongoing violence between Hamas
and the Israeli State, makes it controversial in American theatre. During
an opening voice-over, Jajeh asks audiences to consider the conflict in the
Middle East from the Palestinian perspective. She also asks the audience
to not accuse her of being anti-Semitic because Arabs, as well as Jews, are
Semites. After explaining about herself and her family’s background, Jajeh
describes the history of Ramallah to the audience. She then relates why she
traveled to Palestine where she was going not to find her roots, but rather
because her life in New York as an actress was at a standstill and she wanted
a break and to learn Arabic.
While in Palestine studying Arabic at a university, she meets a Palestinian
Muslim man named Hakam. She encounters the same kind of resistance
many face when returning to a place their parents are from, but a place
they must now understand for themselves. Some tell her that her Arabic
is terrible, some tell her she looks Spanish and not Palestinian, and she
realizes that the occupation affects everything in her life. Her relationship
with Hakam is strained because of the cultural and religious differences
that divide them. When Hakam asks her to marry him, she objects saying

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that he’s already married, and she would have to convert and become his
second wife.
Despite her desire to find normalcy, she discovers that roads are closed,
checkpoints have endless lines of cars, and she takes her position as an
American for granted. When she finally confronts an Israeli soldier, she
realizes the limits of her privilege. Jajeh describes spitting on an Israeli
soldier during a protest and justifies this by telling the audience about the
assaults Palestinians face every day, and how they are treated inhumanely
by the soldiers. She states that living there is like living in a pressure cooker,
and that not everyone there can handle the pressure. She witnesses a child
being shot by an Israeli soldier for throwing rocks. She hears about a
Palestinian man who runs over a group of Israeli soldiers. The mounting
violence leads to her spiraling into depression. She departs Palestine after
breaking up with Hakam and coming to an awful realization. After living
there for a year and a half, she reached a point where she could actually
imagine how someone might carry out a suicide attack. The 450-year
history of her family will soon end since most of her family have also fled
Palestine, and the Christian community in Ramallah is dwindling. She feels
that she is the break in a chain that stretches back 450 years. Despite her
desire to leave Palestine behind her she cannot do so, leaving her feeling
lost and helpless.
Ken Kaissar’s play The Victims: Or What Do You Want Me to Do About
It? is the journey of a Jewish American man to Israel and Palestine. Kaissar,
a Yemenite-Mizrahi Jew, wrote the play based on his own visit to Israel.
Kaissar’s protagonist, David, is also of Yemenite Jewish heritage. Another
subplot, connected to the main plot and David’s journey, deals with two
Beckettian characters of unknown ethnicity named Jadi and Basee, who
live in a nondescript garden, and who are against their mysterious overlord
Assav. Kaissar’s primary focus on David’s journey is mirrored in the conflicts
of Jadi and Basee, and their parallel stories eventually merge for the play’s
climactic ending.
David was born in Israel but now resides in the United States. The first
indication of this dual citizenship comes when the Immigration Officer
at Ben Gurion Airport, who takes his Israeli passport, tells David his US
passport will not be of use to him while in Israel. David tells the man that
Israel is his home, but he is instantly rebuked when the Officer asks him
why he lives in New York and not in Israel. Instantly, David is confronted
with the fact that he may be welcome, but he is also seen with suspicion by
his fellow Jews there.

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David’s stay at the Chalom Herzl Hotel introduces him to Motti, a free-
wheeling and casual businessman whose hotel seems to be running on the
barest of means: the beds aren’t made, there are no towels in the room,
and hardly any running water. His experience at a local restaurant is not
much better. The proprietor there reminds him that everybody around him
is a thief or a terrorist. When David befriends a Palestinian man, Mas’ud,
who lives in Huwara within the West Bank, he is invited to dinner at his
family home. David’s theatrical detour to Palestine is one many Israeli Jews
have actually taken recently as “detours” from their Birthright trips to Israel
(Turnbull 2019). One group named Breaking the Silence arranges such
tours. This group, comprised of veteran Israeli soldiers, “have taken it upon
themselves to expose the Israeli public to the reality of everyday life in the
Occupied Territories.” They claim that their work “aims to bring an end to
the occupation” (breakingthesilence​.o​rg).
Upon their approach to a checkpoint, David experiences Mas’ud’s
humiliation. “Do you know what we hate, David?” Mas’ud asks. “We hate
living under Israeli occupation. We hate that the Israeli government targets
Palestinian civilians. We hate that there is not a moment of peace for us.
That there is no freedom. That’s what we hate” (Kaissar 2018, 203). David
is given another rude awakening when he returns from the West Bank to
Israel and is detained by soldiers. When David stands up for his Arab friend
when he is accused of potential terrorism, the soldier Yael disabuses him of
any notion that Israelis and Palestinians can coexist.

DAVID: His name is Mas’ud.

YAEL: Mas’ud? How nice. It’ll be handy to know his name when he
blows himself up on a bus.
DAVID: That’s a really ignorant thing to say, you know that?
YAEL: Ignorant? The absentee Israeli is calling me ignorant. Do you serve
in the army? Do you risk your life everyday protecting this country?
DAVID: No.
YAEL: No. So don’t call me ignorant. Enjoy your calm, peaceful life in
America. And don’t come here to teach me about terrorists. I see it
everyday. I know what it looks like. (ibid., 208–9)

By befriending a Palestinian, David transgresses. He comes to the country

in a spirit of peace building, but quickly realizes that spirit is one that is born
from a privileged position far from the conflict. Yael tells him, “It’s easy

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to be a peacenik from thousands of miles away, Americano. Try being a

peacenik here. It won’t be so easy for you” (ibid., 209–10). David is further
disillusioned when he meets his cousin Elad, who owns a bar and has a
Palestinian man named Bassam working for him. After joking and drinking,
David asks his cousin to tell him what life is like there. Despite protesting
and telling David he doesn’t really want to know, Elad explains what he had
to do as a soldier to a young Palestinian boy throwing rocks at him.

What did I do? I picked him up. I stripped him naked. And I tied him
to the top of my jeep. And then I drove him all around the village, so
that everyone could see him. Eight years old. No one throws rocks at
you with a naked 8 year-old kid tied to your jeep. And everyone got
the message that you don’t throw rocks at a soldier. (ibid., 216)

Elad tells David not to get too comfortable in America because, eventually,
Americans will also turn on the Jews. When David asks where that leaves
Israel, Elad tells him that Israelis are not going anywhere without a fight
and, with nuclear weapons, they will face defeat like Samson: “We may lose.
But we won’t be the only ones” (ibid., 217). David’s most painful experience
occurs when the Shalom Herzl Hotel is blown up by a suicide bomber, just
minutes before he was to return there. When Mas’ud finds him, David
lashes out:

DAVID: How does this happen, Mas’ud? How does a man just blow
himself up to murder others?
MAS’UD: It’s terrible, David. What can I tell you? If that man had a life
that was worth living, maybe this wouldn’t happen.
DAVID: See Mas’ud. When you say things like that, it sounds like you
think what he did was justified.
MAS’UD: No David. Please. Don’t misunderstand. Killing innocent
people is never justified. I wish these things would stop happening.
But at the same time, when people can barely feed their families,
when they have nothing, no life, no freedom, what do you expect
them to do?
DAVID: What do I expect? I’ll tell you what I don’t expect. I don’t
expect them to murder innocent people. That’s what I don’t expect.
MAS’UD: Again, I’m not excusing what he did, David. But . . . it’s
complicated. No? (ibid., 220)

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Kaissar’s subplot complicates the issues in the play since it is impossible

to tell whether Jadi, Bassee, and Assav are Israeli or Palestinian. All that is
known is that they continue to abuse one another in the garden in more
violent ways. Even the intervention of an American peacekeeper/envoy
named Paula only leads to more chaos and less peace. David finally ejects
Paula from the garden, makes Jadi, Bassee, and Assav get into a cage with
him, and he throws away the key. Instead of running away, David decides
to stay and tells them that they had better get busy dreaming together of
a solution to the problem. The final image is one of all four trapped in the
cage as the lights fade to black.
Najla Said’s solo performance Palestine is about a real-life journey Said
took with her father, the late Edward W. Said, to Palestine in the late 1990s.
There she sees signs of the Israel occupation—settlements, Israeli soldiers
at checkpoints, and her family’s ancestral home which was then occupied
by Israeli citizens. She realizes that, despite being Palestinian herself, she is
an outsider there.

And yet, I realized, they are the ones who suffer on a daily basis in a
way I never would. They were victims of the circumstances of their
birth in a way I would never be. And they are the ones who would
have to deal, not just mentally, but actually, for the rest of their lives,
with the consequences of a history that they, like me, might never
fully understand. (Said 2013, 165)

Said, who grew up in New York as a self-described “Upper West Side

princess,” was often confused by many for being Jewish herself. While
growing up in Beirut in the 1980s during the civil war there, Said survived
several bombings. Later, as an adult living in New York, she witnessed the
attacks of 9/11, and found herself in Beirut during the 2006 war. During
9/11, when some were quick to incorrectly blame Palestinians for the attack,
she realized that her anonymity was forever removed. She then decided to
embrace her Arab American identity and to speak out about the injustices
she saw all around her: “Since 9/11 I am officially an Arab, bridging the gap
between two worlds that don’t understand each other” (ibid., 251). One way
she did this was joining the Arab American ensemble Nibras, and writing
and performing works from that subject position.
Her solo performance Palestine is her way of working through her
experiences of being a Christian Palestinian American and being the
daughter of one of the most revered and influential Palestinian academics,

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writers, and activists in US history. The trip to Palestine with her family
was, at the time, a forced family vacation. As she travels through Jerusalem,
Nablus, Hebron, Nazareth, and Bethlehem, she sees Israeli soldiers
everywhere: “I found comfort nowhere but in the faces of the Palestinian
children we meet along the way. They, like me, were silent. They very
clearly had no control over their surroundings. They were simply born
into this history, and just like me, they had no memories of a Palestine
other than the one in which they lived” (ibid., 165). The trip to Gaza is
even more harrowing. There she experiences what she calls “an enormous
concentration camp” with overcrowded refugee settlements, the smell
of sewage, and a terrible lack of hope. “I tried to wrap my teenage head
around the existence of such a place in the world, where people are trapped
like caged animals in the filthiest zoo on earth, while I somehow got to
prance around in suede shoes and $150 skirts and then get on a plane and
go home” (ibid., 173). This kind of second-generation survivor’s guilt is one
that pervades many plays of this genre. There is an intrinsic connection
with the people in the homeland, but a terrible sense of shame that others
are living through difficult circumstances, while the visitor can return to life
as normal back in North America: “I wanted to know why I was born lucky.
Why didn’t I have to live here? Why was I able to pass as a Jew if I wanted?
Why did I get to go to the best schools in the world? And why, despite all of
this, did I still feel awful?” (ibid., 175). The final leg of her journey takes her
to Jordan (for a brief and strange encounter) with Yasser Arafat, and then
to her mother’s homeland of Lebanon which was recovering from the civil
war that raged there. She experiences the lively café and nightclub culture
of Beirut, but she also visits places like Al-Khiam prison where the South
Lebanese and Israeli Armies incarcerated and tortured prisoners. On her
later 2006 trip to Lebanon, she is reminded of the conflicts that embroil
the region. She was in Beirut when Hezbollah and Israel fought, and Israeli
planes bombed Lebanon. Suddenly, her beliefs as a pacifist and humanist
are challenged and she feels rage at the planes bombing the city around her.
She feels a momentary rage against the Israelis. Again, she returns to New
York, leaving the conflict behind her. She concludes that she is both Arab
and American and that she is “bridging the gap between two worlds that
don’t understand each other” (ibid., 251). Said brings a unique perspective
to her work given her family’s notoriety, her personal journeys overseas,
and her perspective as a Palestinian American woman.
Taous Claire Khazem’s one-woman play In Algeria They Know My Name
chronicles her upbringing born to an Algerian Kabyle (Berber) father

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and American mother. Khazem grew up in Minnesota and fell in love

with an Algerian man. The solo performance chronicles her subsequent
marriage and life living and working in North Africa. With only a few bins
and a bicycle on stage, Khazem begins by telling the audience about how
awkward it was growing up in America with a name hardly anyone could
pronounce (Taous is an Amazigh name that means “peacock”). Her parents
were divorced, but she recounts that her father would take her to a museum
to see a painting titled The Carpet Merchant, which was meant to remind
her of her Berber heritage. Later, while in college, she makes her first trip
to Algeria to attend her uncle’s wedding. When she visits her father’s village
of Tizi Ouzou, she realizes that she has found her people. The Kabyle are
a Berber subgroup from Algeria that inhabit mountainous regions. The
Kabyle speak a Berber language of the same name. Khazem states she was
often frustrated because she only spoke English and French, not Kabyle or
Arabic, which led to many difficulties navigating her life in Algeria.
In the play she meets an Algerian actor from Oran named Mohamed.
After a short courtship, they decide to marry but, as Khazem says, his family
wanted nothing to do with her. Like most single Algerians, Mohamed
lived with his family—a mother, three married brothers, one married
sister, and two unmarried older sisters. As she says, in Algeria you do not
just marry one finger, you marry all ten. Gradually, the family accepts
the marriage, but Khazem then faces the very different and complicated
traditions that comprise Algerian wedding customs including a massive
guest list, expectations of wearing multiple outfits at the reception, and
not being present when the Imam actually marries them. She learns of the
legal exigencies of marriage in Algeria such as virginity certificates and
pregnancy tests. Also, she experiences the charming elements of Kabyle
customs such as drinking a glass of milk (a symbol of purity and good luck)
and eating dates (a symbol of sweetness), while keeping the date pit as a
reminder of their union (another symbol of good fortune).
The next difficulties Khazem faces are professional: trying to have a
theatrical career with her husband in Algeria and Tunisia. Her inability
to speak Arabic becomes an issue, as some Algerians consider French the
language of the colonizer, and therefore speaking it there is not always
welcome. She perseveres, starting a theatre company with her husband
called Daraja (Bicycle) Theatre and teaching theatre classes to local women.
Despite her best efforts, she fails. Like many second-generation children
who travel back to the homeland, she says the wrong things and angers the
people around her. She observes the fervor of the Arab Spring and finds

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that Algerians of her generation that grew up with civil war, curfews, and
assassinations have little enthusiasm for the revolt. Eventually she finds her
place, coaching Algerian women to act and create their own theatre work.
It is in the theatre there that she finds that she has finally done something
right. By the end of the play she says her Arabic improved, she became her
mother-in-law’s favorite, and she learned to love eating lamb. Khazem’s play
is meant to give audiences an experience of her journey from a disconnected,
single Algerian American young woman to an older, married woman living
in Algeria who has learned not only to love her father’s culture but to also
fully embrace it in her life.
Leila Buck’s solo performance In the Crossing is an exploration of her
real-life experience of visiting her mother’s homeland of Lebanon with
her Jewish American husband Adam during the outbreak of war between
Hezbollah and Israel. Buck’s mother Hala Lababidi was born to a Sunni
Muslim father and a Maronite Catholic mother, and her father, Stephen
Buck, has filial roots that date back to the Massachusetts Bay Colony of
1636 (Lababidi Buck, xiii). Buck also calls herself “a bridge” in the play,
something her mother has called her, since the gift of the bridge is that it
can see both sides. Buck has written about this topic before in her other
solo works ISite and Hkeele. Like those plays, Buck evokes the spirit of
her Teta (grandmother) and Jeddo (grandfather). She recounts how her
grandmother was raised Catholic and her grandfather, Muslim. Her parents
met while working at the American Embassy in Beirut, and Leila Buck grew
up traveling the world with her parents whenever her father was given a
new assignment.
The play takes the format of a conference speech that Buck is delivering
for what is called the “National Association for Cross-Cultural Education
and Transformation.” The play has three characters—a White Anglo-Saxon
Protestant woman known as “Moderator”; Leila, a 31-year-old Lebanese
American writer, performer, and activist; and an “Audience Plant,” who
is Jewish American or possibly Israeli. The Moderator tells the audience
that Leila’s husband Adam, who is a photographer and web designer, is in
the tech booth projecting the images that appear behind her. Buck begins
with her understanding of being a bridge between cultures, how her parents
met, and how she and her husband Adam met in college. She explains that
Adam is Jewish and attended Hebrew school but does not share many of the
views of Zionist Jews regarding Israel. She also recounts the first Passover
she spent with Adam’s family and how the Middle Easterners in her life
have consistently had misunderstandings about one another’s cultures. She

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tells the audience about how she grew up hearing about the glories of the
Lebanon of the 1960s, and the horrors of the Lebanon of the 1970s–1990s.
When she and Adam receive news of a friend’s wedding in Beirut, they
decide to travel there in 2006. Many relatives worried about Adam’s
traveling to Lebanon, but he ultimately decides to go.
Arriving in Lebanon, they experience the Beirut from the bar culture, to
the stylish beach resorts, to the excitement over the World Cup happening
that year. Suddenly they are faced with the breakout of hostilities between
Hezbollah and Israel. Gradually, the vacation they enjoyed becomes one
filled with the mounting fear of being killed by air raids, and the necessity
for evacuation from the country. In recounted conversations, Buck explains
how Lebanese discuss the frustration of Hezbollah being a fixture in their
country’s politics, the anger at Israel for their punishing attacks on Lebanese
civilians and infrastructure, and the complicity Leila and Adam feel being
American citizens who, indirectly through their US taxes, are funding such
a war. Images of destruction from the war are projected behind Leila as she
embodies a host of characters. While this occurs, the Audience Plant makes
snide remarks under their breath at some of the claims Leila makes during
her speech. Leila takes the audience through the day-to-day discussions
she has with family, friends, and others who debate the justifications and
outrages of the war that has suddenly overwhelmed the nation. They urge
their friends and family to write their elected officials to call for a cease-
fire. Ultimately, they decide to leave the country, through Syria, despite
their feelings of guilt for doing so. They arrive in Damascus and later go to
Amman, all the time hearing of more bombings and death just three hours
away in Lebanon. Later, in London, while visiting Adam’s grandparents,
Leila is again faced with more complicated feelings regarding what their
family suffered from the time of the Holocaust to the events of Hurricane
Katrina. There are painful conversations that underscore the shared pain
of Arabs and Jews that have spanned over a century now, leading Leila to
conclude her speech in the play with the understanding that families are
made of blood or marriages, but the connections we make are made by
choice and that love heals all wounds.
Just when it seems the play has concluded, the Moderator opens the floor
to questions and Leila is confronted by the Audience Plant who berates
her for siding with the Lebanese against the Israelis. As the Audience Plant
becomes more angered and confrontational, all the Moderator can think
to do is sing “All You Need Is Love” by the Beatles, while more images of
death and destruction are displayed on the screen behind them. Finally, the

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character Leila screams, “ENOUGH!!!” and she is left alone to tell of the
discussion she had with Adam’s grandparents after 9/11 where they realized
that the topic of Israel was one they could not discuss with one another
because of the painful emotions it stirred for them all. Returning to the
conference, Leila tells the Moderator that she understands that both sides
have suffered in the conflict, but that the view Americans have of the wars
in the Middle East are often skewed to present an American perspective at
the expense of those who have suffered and died in the wars there. She says
that she is trying to ask audiences to picture the people living in the Middle
East, to hear their voices and stories like she does, and she questions if that
makes her biased. She returns to why she loves bridges and how hard it
is to build them. She states she wants to be the bridge that makes people
understand the journey that must be taken collectively to get to the other
side because the importance is not in the bridge itself, but in the crossing.
Buck’s monodrama is a deep exploration into her roots, her family’s
history, and the ongoing struggle she faces attempting to exist in two
very different worlds. Her return to the homeland, like that of her other
contemporaries, is fraught with conflict, war, and painful realizations that
she must straddle two very different worlds that are often at odds with one
another. Buck has the unique vantage of someone who comes from both
cultures and can see the beauty and flaws in each. As a gifted storyteller and
performer, she is able to weave the complicated Lebanese, Jewish, Palestinian,
and American narratives together in order to create the journey that allows
audiences with little experience with Middle Eastern stories “crossing” into
worlds they would otherwise never know. Furthermore, by playing all of
these characters herself, she physically embodies the conflict so audiences
can experience the journey through her and not as passive observers of
actors playing characters they may have no connection with whatsoever.
Buck writes her own experiences and performs them as well, which takes
her storytelling deeper and gives audiences a unique perspective into a
world facing unimaginable conflict.
The return to the homeland play is a fixture of Middle Eastern American
theatre because so many travel back to the homeland to find meaning in
their lives. The connections diasporic Middle Eastern Americans have with
their families overseas are deep, meaningful, and rich. As seen in the plays
by Jajeh, Kaissar, Said, Khazem, and Buck, the travels back to the homeland
have many reasons—some travel with family in a kind of pilgrimage, some
travel with a desire to reconnect with family, while for others it is to marry
and create a life. In all cases, the journey back to the homeland is often

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filled with joy and pain, frustration and understanding, fear and love. These
plays can give Middle Eastern Americans a shared experience that allows
them to have a greater understanding of their unique realities. These plays
also offer non-Middle Eastern American audiences the opportunity to
better understand the complex reality those living in the Middle East face
on a regular basis, sometimes as a result of the actions taken by foreign
governments. Essentially, these playwrights and performers are translating
their experiences for audiences who they believe should know more about
what is being done, both politically and militarily, in the Middle East, in
their name.

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C Chapter 3
PERSECUTION PLAYS

Middle Eastern Americans have dealt with different forms of anti-Semitism,

Islamophobia, Arabophobia, and other forms of xenophobia since they
arrived on the shores of North America in the late nineteenth century.
The fact that the United States and Canada were ostensibly established
as Christian nations for those of Northern European ancestry has led to
a great unease when dealing with those who espouse different religious
beliefs, or those who hail from nations outside of the European sphere.
To complicate matters further, the nation’s founders were intent on the
notion that when one became a citizen, they were to cast off any allegiances
they might have with their lands of origin. Furthermore, whiteness as the
predicating factor for citizenship was the US notion of “free white persons”
as outlined in the 1790 Naturalization Act. Therefore, in case after case,
those who were outside the bounds of these prescriptions found themselves
outside of citizenship and privilege. Middle Eastern Americans, along with
many other immigrants who could potentially pass for “white,” litigated for
their racial status in federal courts in order to gain citizenship. In the book
Between Arab and White: Race and Ethnicity in the Early Syrian American
Diaspora, Sarah M.A. Gualtieri writes,

Lawyers and applicants marshaled evidence that ranged from skin

color to national origin, culture, scientific studies, and popular
opinion—or some combination of these factors—to claim whiteness.
It was up to the courts to decide which elements should be the basis
for determining race and, by extension, eligibility to participate in the
privileges of citizenship. (Gualtieri 2009, 2)

Gualtieri writes that, despite victories in court, Middle Eastern Americans

were not considered fully “white” but rather somewhere between “black”
and “Asian.” Later, the 1924 National Origins Act severely restricted the
immigration of non-Europeans into the country. Therefore, “whiteness”
Middle Eastern American Theatre

and “Americanness” were deeply intertwined. Furthermore, one’s ability to

prove their whiteness was bound to their belonging to the Christian fold.

Particularly threatening to white southerners was the “inbetweeness”

of the new immigrants. The ambiguous racial status of Italians, East
European Jews, and Syrians stemmed from the perception that they
possessed cultures and habits that were fundamentally at odds with
southern traditions and values and that immigrants would not abide
by the “white man’s code.” (ibid., 54)

Nativism ran deep and there were multiple instances of violence perpetrated
against Middle Eastern Americans and other immigrants in the early
twentieth century. Three Italians were lynched in Hahnville, Louisiana,
in 1896: a Jewish man was lynched in 1915; a Syrian family’s home was
dynamited in Marietta, Georgia, in 1923; and a Syrian grocer was lynched
in Lake City Florida in 1929 after his wife was killed by police. Gualtieri
quotes one North Carolina senator named F. M. Simmons (1854–1940),
who referred to Syrian immigrants as “degenerate progeny of the Asiatic
hoards [sic] . . . the spawn of the Phoenician curse” (ibid., 4). These are just
a few cases of the discrimination Middle Eastern Americans faced in the
early twentieth century.
In the book Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism,
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz writes about the fact that Jews, along with
Irish, Italian, and other “ethnic whites,” were viewed as “filthy, diseased,
verminous, intellectually inferior, criminal, and morally deficient” (Kaye/
Kantrowitz 2007, 11). Although some now see Jews as the model for an
American assimilated minority, this extends only to what Kaye/Kantrowitz
calls “assimilated Ashkenazi” with stereotypes about Jews primarily
revolving around Ashkenazim. The anti-Semitism in North America is as
virulent as it is in other places in the world, with ongoing stereotypes such
as blood libel, the fear of Jewish conspiracies, and hatred based on Israeli
policies.

In the United States, sectors of the left are blaming Jews for Israeli
brutality while sectors of the right blame Jewish money, Jewish
homosexuality, and Jewish immorality for everything else. Add in
the pro-Zionist Christian Right—the ones who love Jews because the
second coming requires our presence—it’s hard to know whom to
fear most. (ibid., 209)

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There is also the ongoing Islamophobia that continues, with the racialization
of the religion of Islam. In her book Detained Without Cause, Irum Sheikh
explains that Muslims have been a part of American history as slaves and
immigrants since its outset; however, the image of Muslims as dangerous
terrorists subject to detainment and deportation has been rooted in the
American imaginary since the Cold War. There has been a long history
of anti-Muslim governmental policies including Operation Boulder,
Operation ABSCAM, the Registration Program for Iranian Nationals, the
Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, the PATRIOT Act, and the
so-called Muslim Ban regarding travel from nations deemed threats to the
United States. According to Sheikh,

The combined impact of foreign policy, global politics, domestic

enforcement policies, orientalism, and the shift from the cold war
to a holy war has increasingly contributed to creating the image of
Muslims as terrorists who are barbaric, savage, fundamentalist, and
inhumane. Some political analysts have argued that Islam is the
West’s new evil empire. (Sheikh 2011, 8)

As these examples demonstrate, Middle Eastern Americans have been

facing both governmental and societal persecution for decades. This
persecution has led many in the theatre community to write plays about
this in order to humanize those who are innocent but perceived as guilty
just by their association with their race, ethnicity, or religion.

Governmental Persecution Plays: Back of the Throat,

Truth Serum Blues, and Zafira and the Resistance

Playwright Yussef El Guindi has become one of the most prolific and
produced Arab American playwright in the post-9/11 era. His plays Back
of the Throat (2005), Ten Acrobats in an Amazing Leap of Faith (2006),
Language Rooms (2007), Jihad Jones and the Kalashnikov Babes (2008), Our
Enemies: Lively Scenes of Love and Combat (2008), Language Rooms (2010),
Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World (2012), Threesome (2015), The
Talented Ones (2016), and People of the Book (2019) have all been widely
produced, published, and awarded by the American theatre establishment.
El Guindi’s breakout play Back of the Throat not only established him
as a major Muslim Arab American playwright but heralded a series of

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post-9/11 plays that focused directly on the persecution of Arabs and

Muslims in the United States following the attacks of September 11, 2001.
The protagonist, Khaled, finds himself at the mercy of a power structure
that has predetermined his guilt, which leads to his dehumanization within
his own home. The fear, suspicion, and surveillance that hallmark the post-
9/11 era, especially against Muslim communities, are dramatized here when
two FBI agents named Bartlett and Carl visit Khaled’s small apartment and
systematically interrogate, threaten, and torture him into confessing to a
terrorist attack he did not commit. El Guindi creates a dramatic situation
where post-9/11 persecution is viewed as both legitimate and acceptable
because of the hysteria and fear of past and future terrorist attacks. El
Guindi saw the rising tide of Islamophobia and Arabophobia in the years
following 9/11, which prompted him to write the play. He writes, “In this
climate, where one feared officials needing to look and act tough and avoid
allowing more terrorists through the net, I personally, on a visceral level,
found myself fearing a knock on the door. For no logical reason, I should
add” (El Guindi 2006, 29).
In the play the agents, Bartlett and Carl, question Khaled about his
reading habits, employment history, and social relations. Gradually, the
line of questioning becomes more intense and menacing. The agents
accuse Khaled of collaborating with a suspected terrorist named Gamal
Asfoor. During a series of flashbacks, it is revealed that Khaled’s female
acquaintances, one of whom was a former girlfriend, have implicated
him as someone aiding Asfoor. After the agents violently interrogate and
physically abuse Khaled, they leave him with a threat to return the next day
to complete their interrogation.

Here’re your choices, Khaled, that you can think about. Either you’re
innocent. In which case proving that might be difficult. Or you’re
guilty, in which case telling us now would score you points because
we’ll find out soon enough. Or: you’re innocent of being guilty. You
didn’t know what you were getting into. Stumbled into it. Through
deception. Other people’s. Your own stupidity. And that would be
okay too. We can work with that. We can work with you to make that
seem plausible. (ibid., 49)

Khaled is told that the interrogation is nothing personal. They tell him
that what is happening is not profiling, but rather deduction because he

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happens to come from the place where the troubles are originating. Bartlett
tells Khaled,

You’re a Muslim and an Arab. Those are the bad asses currently
making life a living hell and so we’ll gravitate towards you and your ilk
until other bad asses from other races make a nuisance of themselves.
Right? Yesterday the Irish and the Poles, today it’s you. Tomorrow it
might be the Dutch. (ibid., 29)

The terrifying logic employed here is one that simultaneously situates

“Americans” as a central, homogeneous group that is constantly being
attacked by the foreign Arab/Muslim “other.” The fact that each ethnic
group must go through a form of state-sanctioned hazing demonstrates
that this foreign “other” will never be fully accepted until they conform to
some form of American allegiance that dictates that they must strip away all
vestiges of their former ethnicity, religion, and culture. Even when Khaled
attempts to secure his legal rights as a US citizen, he is rejected outright.
Bartlett tells him,

If I hear another immigrant spew back to me shit about rights, I

will fucking vomit. . . . You come here with shit, from shit countries,
knowing nothing about anything and you have the nerve to quote the
fucking law at me? Come at me with something you know nothing
about? [. . .] It’s galling.—Sticks in my craw. To hear these people who
got here two hours ago quote back to me Thomas Jefferson and the
founding fathers. They’re not his fucking fathers. (ibid., 36)

The evidence provided against Khaled about his connection with an accused
terrorist named Asfoor comes in the form of testimonials by several women
who had encounters or relationships with him. The circumstantial evidence
against him mounts. The more he protests his innocence, the more violent
and aggressive the agents become. Instead of realizing that they are part
of a system that creates the violence they perpetuate, the agents blame the
victim. Carl tells Khaled,

You know what I really resent? . . . What you force us to become.

To protect ourselves. We are a decent bunch and do not want to be
dragged down to your level. But no, you just have to drag us down,

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don’t you. You have to gross us out with your level of crap. I personally
hate this, you know that. I hate it when I have to beat the shit out of
someone because then by an act of willful horror, whose effect on my
soul I can only imagine, I have to shut out everything good about me
and do my job to defend and protect. (ibid., 45–6)

El Guindi’s play was one of the first protest plays that addressed the anti-
Muslim surveillance state that had developed in the years after 9/11. Its
muscular language, raw emotion, and terrifying spectacle set a standard for
the plays in this genre. The brutality inflicted on Arab and Muslim bodies
in prisons, black sites, and military camps were dramatized for audiences
in a way they were not seen prior. El Guindi held up a mirror to American
society and asked audiences to question the actions that were committed
in their name.
Palestinian American playwright and poet Ismail Khalidi has focused
his work on the plight of Palestinians both in Palestine itself and in
the United States. His plays include Truth Serum Blues (2005), Tennis
in Nablus (2010), Foot (2016), Sabra Falling (2017), Returning to Haifa
(2018), and Dead Are My People (2019). Khalidi’s plays range from
hip-hop-oriented monodramas to historical political realism. The son
of noted Palestinian scholar Rashid Khalidi, Ismail Khalidi brings a
potent combination of Palestinian history, political activism, poetry, and
playwriting to his work.
His solo performance Truth Serum Blues dramatized the governmental
persecution, intergenerational trauma, and incarceration of Arabs and
Muslims imprisoned in black site prisons and other government-sanctioned
facilities such as Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp. The play, set sometime
between 2002 and 2007, employs multimedia, a chorus of voices, and hip-
hop-inflected language and lyrics to tell the story of the protagonist, Kareem.
He says he is incarcerated in what he calls “Dubya’s Gitmo,” a reference to
the George W. Bush administration’s creation of a site on the island of Cuba
that housed suspected terrorists associated with the September 11 attacks
as well as those captured during the war in Afghanistan. Kareem jokes
about the difference between the Cuba of his imagination—replete with
rum, cigars, and the music of the Buena Vista Social Club—and the brutal
totalitarian prison within which he finds himself. He calls it a mix of Attica
and Alcatraz. Kareem knows, however, that the base is vital to US military
interests and that, even if a black site like that were slated to be closed, it
would ultimately remain open. According to National Public Radio in

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2019, in eighteen years the Guantanamo Base cost taxpayers more than $6
billion, and costs $380 million a year to operate despite only housing forty
prisoners. There has been only one finalized conviction, and because so
many prisoners were tortured there, prosecutors most likely cannot win
death penalty convictions. The appeals process will last another ten to
fifteen years which may cost billions more. “And the government argues
that even if the defendants are found not guilty at trial, it can continue to
keep them imprisoned indefinitely” (Pfeiffer 2019). Khalidi reckons that
the prison cannot be closed because the crimes committed there cannot be
exposed.
The play unfolds with graphic scenes of torture, intercut by flashbacks
to scenes with Kareem’s Palestinian cousin Waleed. Kareem talks about
Palestinian history with recitations of the seemingly endless string of wars,
occupations, and dislocations endured by the Palestinian people from the
days of the crusaders to the present. We learn that his cousin, Waleed,
is a doctor who was accused of cooperating with Hamas. He then adds
a chorus of “Intellectual Factors” who appear to be pundits that reduce
the Palestinian quest for statehood as one of pathological anti-Semitism
and a culture of hatred. In one dialogue Kareem and Waleed discuss why
Waleed left the United States. He says that the American inside of him
began hating the Arab inside of him, so he smuggled his Arabness back
home for safekeeping. For Kareem, born and raised in the United States,
there is no going to live in Palestine and no way to go on living in the
United States, a country that views him as a terrorist by virtue of being
Palestinian alone.
Kareem describes, in detail, the torture he endures in the camp including
sleep deprivation, verbal abuse, physical exertion, and broken bones. This
is consistent with what is known about how prisoners were treated in US
black sites. In her article “The Black Sites: A Rare Look Inside the C.I.A.’s
Secret Interrogation Program,” New Yorker columnist Jane Mayer writes
about the use of waterboarding, keeping prisoners for prolonged periods
in “dog boxes” or small cages, extreme sensory deprivation, and systematic
dehumanization (Mayer 2007). Therefore, Khalidi’s play accurately reflects
the cruel and inhumane methods deployed by the United States against
those suspected terrorists.
In Khalidi's play, Waleed tells how he was verbally attacked and beaten
while living in the United States. Kareem begins to look back on US history
through the lens of the history of the Black Panthers, the Chicano Movement,
the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and the history of

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slavery and the genocide of the Native Americans. The use of “truth inducing
drugs” on the protagonist allows for poetic stream-of-consciousness rants
about how Arabs and Muslims have faced discrimination for decades, and
how Islamophobia and Arabophobia are plaguing society. By the play’s end,
we learn that Waleed’s clinic is obliterated by a US missile strike, and that
Kareem feels guilt through his complicity in his cousin’s death by being
an American taxpayer that indirectly funded the military means of his
cousin’s murder. Kareem turns himself in to authorities because if he had
not, he might have acted out angrily after hearing of his cousin’s death.
Plays like Truth Serum Blues expose the layers of guilt and shame Middle
Eastern Americans feel knowing that their tax dollars are funding so many
militaristic missions that directly affect their homelands. Khalidi has
become one of the leading Palestinian American playwrights who has made
it a priority to chronicle the Palestinian experience, and he has consistently
done so despite the negative ramifications to his career.
Kathy Haddad’s Zafira and the Resistance is another play that highlights
anti-Arab, anti-Muslim persecution. Haddad is the founder of Mizna, an
organization devoted to promoting Arab American culture, a founding
member of Pangea World Theatre, a board member of the Loft Literary
Center, and the artistic director of New Arab American Theatre Works. Her
plays With Love from Ramallah (2004), Zafira the Olive Oil Warrior (2011),
Zafira and the Resistance (2019), and The Hour of Separation mine Arab
American existence in the United States, and how that group deals with
issues of separation, exile, and governmental persecution.
Zafira and the Resistance focuses on Zafira, a Minneapolis schoolteacher
of Christian Lebanese descent, who must contend with a growing tide of
Islamophobia and Arabophobia following a fictional 9/11 scale attack.
She is ostracized by her colleagues for eating Middle Eastern foods and
scorned by her students who blame her for assigning literature by “dead
old foreigners.” She has found herself in a climate where teachers are giving
extra credit for wearing red, white, and blue to school and her fellow
educators are assigning so-called American books for class. An ominous
figure called only “The Great Leader” pipes in patriotic music and video
messages to the class about fulfilling their duty to country and his special
plans to transform public schools into detention centers for detainees.
Zafira is called into the principal’s office and reprimanded for teaching
Arab literature and attempting to convert students to Islam. The principal
of the school demands that Zafira spend less time on politics and more time
on poetry that is about truth and beauty. Zafira is secretly writing a play

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about an Arab American superhero whose superpower lies in her olive oil
and a belief in her Arab American heritage.
Zafira soon discovers that there are roundups of various Arab and
Muslim women occurring in her community. After she confronts a student
for recording in her classroom and potentially exposing a young Latinx
dreamer named Elisa, she is incarcerated and placed in a converted room
in the school with three other women: Noor, a young Palestinian American
student; Leylo, an expecting Somali American activist; and Samira, an older
Syrian refugee. The women are expected to cook for the school while Zafira’s
former students are serving as guards. Kenji Tanaka, the child of Japanese
Americans who were imprisoned in camps during the Second World War,
and who now works as a janitor at the school, joins forces with Elisa and
another sympathetic student Marcus to release the women after discovering
they will be moved to a potential death camp. During their incarceration,
the women confide in one another and find commonalities as women from
the Middle East and Africa. Eventually Kenji, Marcus, and Elisa release
the women, and they all go on to create a new resistance against the Great
Leader’s forces that sought to eliminate them.
Haddad’s dystopian vision of a nation that becomes consumed by its fear
and loathing of Arabs and Muslims is one rooted in the real concerns many
Arabs and Muslims in the United States face amid heightened xenophobia,
surveillance, and even calls by an American president who wants many
immigrants sent back to their home countries if they dare to criticize the
government. Haddad’s protagonist, Zafira, was born and raised in the
United States, yet her proximity to her Arabness and her desire to teach
resistance literature are met with scrutiny and contempt by the government-
sanctioned powers that run her school. The Great Leader’s speeches are
rife with calls for students to take back their country and to reclaim their
future by working as “resistors.” On the other hand, Zafira calls for an Arab
American renaissance—a movement to take back those things that define a
rich Arab American heritage. In a pivotal monologue, Zafira pleads to the
Arab Americans in the audience to join her in a group action and does so
by recounting the foods, activities, and population centers that are central
to Arab American identity in the United States. Haddad’s play is calling for
a resistance to the power structures that wish to suppress Middle Easterners
living in America in the name of blind patriotism.
Najee Mondalek’s comedy Me No Terrorist is the story of Im Hussein,
a Shi’ite Lebanese Muslim female character living in Michigan with her
husband Abu Hussein, her Lebanese Christian friend Im Elias, and her

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husband Abu Elias. The play was originally scheduled to perform in the fall
of 2001 but was postponed by the events of 9/11. The production, directed
by Ray Alcodray, was staged in 2002 and toured fourteen cities around the
United States, Canada, Lebanon, and Australia.
Me No Terrorist is a comedic take on what happens when an Arab living
in America is charged with terrorism. The play opens with FBI agents casing
Im Hussein’s house while Abu Hussein, Abu Elias, and Im Elias are inside
“mourning” her passing. They have all decided to pretend Im Hussein is
dead in order to get the FBI to finally leave them alone. Along the way
the characters have multiple interactions that involve jokes, puns, play on
words, and physical humor. Both lead females—Im Hussein and Im Elias—
are played by the two male Mondalek actors. The husbands are hapless,
foolish old men who serve as the foils to Im Hussein’s incessant insults.
Her daughter-in-law, Sharon, arrives and discovers the ruse. Im Hussein
is eventually discovered by the agents and, after a case of mistranslation
from Arabic to English, she and the others are incarcerated on terrorist-
related charges. The next act flashes back and forth between Im Hussein in
prison and the various scenes of her arrival in America, her receiving her
citizenship, and the various protest scenes outside the courthouse where
media and protesters gather to decry her incarceration. The final scene takes
place in a courtroom where an Arab American judge hears Im Hussein’s
pleas and decides to release her due to lack of evidence.
Despite the comedic tone of Ajyal’s theatrical productions, there are
deeper cultural and political messages within. Mondalek uses multiple
opportunities to speak out against the way Arabs are persecuted, attacked,
and maligned by foreign governments and the media. He is also critical of
his own culture. He speaks about how the Arabs once had a glorious past,
but now only seem to know how to fight with one another. He laments
the terrible situation facing his native homeland, Lebanon, and how
the politicians there are robbing the people of their livelihoods. He also
condemns US foreign policy for actions that have left Arab nations occupied,
bombed, and ruined. His character Im Hussein dreams of a future where
the children will learn from the mistakes of the current generation and
change the way Arabs live and interact with one another. Toward the end of
the play, a chorus of children draped in white enter carrying the flags of the
Arab nations, with traditional Arabic music playing. Mondalek’s character
praises the life lived in the United States, but also speaks out against foreign
policies that have caused such destruction in the Middle East.

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Societal Persecution Plays: Autobiography of a Terrorist, Me

No Terrorist, Roar, Mosque Alert, and Lubbock or Leave It!

Saïd Sayrafiezadeh is a memoirist, novelist, and playwright whose plays

include New York Is Bleeding (2001), All Fall Away (2003), Long Dream in
Summer (2005), and Autobiography of a Terrorist (2017). Autobiography
of a Terrorist includes a protagonist, also named Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, a
director, and two actors attempting to stage a play about the Iran hostage
crisis of 1979. Through a convoluted series of events they inadvertently
stage a play about 9/11 instead. Sayrafiezadeh, a writer of Iranian-Jewish-
American heritage, places a fictional version of himself as the playwright
of the play within the play. The setting is simply a stage with an oven.
The metatheatrical play puts the playwright, Saïd, as the main character
having to negotiate his own play with the non-Middle Eastern director
and actors.
The play opens with Saïd addressing the audience. He tells them it is
not a finished play, but rather “An Iranian-Jewish collage of scenes,” and
how important it is to speak out now about what is going on in the world.
He then thanks the theatre for giving him the opportunity to bring the
diversity of Middle Eastern perspectives to the audience as an invitation for
discovery. He claims the play is a story about his own unfinished life, what
it is like to grow up as a Middle Eastern American in the United States, and
how he came to realize and accept that he was an American like everyone
else. As he continues to introduce the play, the actors begin discussing his
name, how it is pronounced, what it means, and ask him what it is like being
Arab in America. He then must explain the difference between Iranians and
Arabs, Aryans and Semites, those born overseas versus those born in the
diaspora. The character Saïd says that he never intended to be Iranian and
that he always accepted that he was a “white” American. In the book The
Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race,
Neda Maghbouleh writes that Iranians harken back to an Aryan heritage
that she calls “the Aryan myth,” a notion that the word “Iran” is derived
from the word “Aryan.” She writes, “some Iranian immigrants and their
offspring believe themselves to be at the top of a racial hierarchy vis-à-vis
other immigrant and minority groups in the United States” (2017, 60).
Therefore, many second-generation Iranian Americans are raised believing
they are “white,” yet they are confronted with their “otherness” by the
American society around them. Maghbouleh adds,

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The idea that Iranians are racial Aryans remains pervasive in Iran and
its diaspora, despite a century of successive revolutions, governments,
and uprisings opposed to the very regimes that concretized the
myth. Perhaps most disturbing to some second-generation Iranian
Americans, the myth remains pervasive despite absolute refutation of
the racial science on which it was constructed. (55)

Given this historical and cultural background, it is little wonder that the
character Saïd is confused by his identity as opposed by his fellow actors in
the play within the play.
Saïd recalls how things changed in 1979 with the hostage crisis in Tehran
and, and when his Iranian father abandoned him to live with his Jewish
mother. He takes the audience through different scenes in his professional
life such as having to audition and being asked to have an accent when
speaking, wearing cultural clothing like turbans, and having to turn down
terrorist roles even when it jeopardizes his career. He finds himself acting
out a scene about why the US hostages were abducted and the reasons
for the Islamic Revolution in Iran. A scene then plays out where a CIA
agent named Kermit Roosevelt interrogates a woman attempting to hide
Saïd in an oven. Suddenly, the director appears and introduces himself
to the audience, stating that the audience have filed complaints against
the playwright. The director assures the audience that the theatre has no
desire to offend them, and that the playwright has been removed from his
own play. The director then assigns the role of Saïd to one of the white
actors on stage and, after a comedic scene ensues, Saïd confronts the
director. He tells him the play is about what it is like to be Middle Eastern
in America and his journey toward resolution. The director then pulls out
Saïd’s journal and shares private facts about him with the audience which
reveal his sexual habits and other embarrassing events from his life. The
director and actors rewrite the script and change everything that Saïd was
attempting with his play. Saïd says that Americans pride themselves on
speaking out about injustice in other countries, but somehow when that
injustice is done in America itself, there is little action or introspection to
be found.
The play devolves further with the director, actors, stage manager, and
Saïd all debating the veracity, history, and truthfulness of the play being
presented. The actors read even more personal events from Saïd’s journal
including his fear and sadness growing up as an Iranian American, the
painful alienation he felt from his father who lived in Iran and who he

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barely knew, the way children teased and taunted him growing up, and
how he was envious of boys and girls with “American names.” The actors
then start singing “Bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys song “Barbara
Ann.” This leads to a more heated debate about American military might
and the desire for military intervention overseas. The actors then bring up
9/11 and the time when Saïd’s father was incarcerated in Iran by the regime.
They begin taunting Saïd about whether he cried on 9/11 and mourned the
victims, and whether his play was justification for the attacks. Saïd is forced
to justify the words in the journal that are misinterpreted to sound as if Saïd
himself agreed with, and was an apologist for, the attacks. The final scene
flashes back to his childhood, to the racial epithets hurled at him by his
classmates, and how he was forced to urinate on a map of Iran. In a desire
to retell the truth, Saïd takes over the role of Saïd in the play and recreates
the final scene, only this time he tells of how he was a boy playing with
his friends who brutally attacked a young Iraqi boy on a playground. The
director and actors chastise him for ruining the life-affirming resolution of
the play they created by staging a scene that depicts his own self-loathing
and how he persecuted a child just for being Middle Eastern. The play ends
with the cast dancing together and Saïd offering to buy drinks for everyone
involved.
Despite being a hilariously metatheatrical take on a Middle Eastern
life in America, the play takes an interesting and complicated look at how
Middle Eastern Americans attempt to negotiate their identities in a country
that offers confusing messages that celebrate diversity while simultaneously
creating an atmosphere of fear and loathing of others. The protagonist of the
play searches for resolution, but as the play progresses, he is Orientalized
and transformed into a grotesque version of a Middle Easterner in direct
contradiction with his own wishes. On this journey, he also exposes his own
innate inner hatred and cruelty toward other Middle Easterners. The word
“terrorist” in the title refers not to a Middle Eastern American who commits
a violent act in the name of some “jihad,” but rather Saïd’s own terrorism
of a small Iraqi boy who he attacks out of a misplaced and misguided
need to “fit in” with his friends. His self-loathing, cultivated by decades of
ostracization, prejudice, othering, and personal pain, finds itself unleashed
on a small Iraqi boy who just wanted to find a friend on a playground. The
play’s humor masks the deeper pain of its revelatory ending and creates
an inverted tale of persecution—one where one Middle Eastern American
persecutes another Middle Eastern American out of a perverted sense of
their own misplaced need for belonging.

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Palestinian American playwright Betty Shamieh’s play Roar takes place

in the immediate aftermath of the invasion of Kuwait by Iraqi forces in
1991. The play focuses on a family of diasporic Palestinian shopkeepers
and landlords in Detroit. Ahmed and Karima Yacoub own and operate
a “party store” in Detroit, above which they reside. Their daughter Irene,
a Palestinian American teenager, has dreams of becoming a famous
American singer. When Karema’s sister Hala comes to visit from Kuwait
following the invasion of Iraqi forces in 1991, the family dynamic unravels.
Ahmed begins longing for the relationship he and Hala once had, and
for his life as a musician back in Jordan. Hala, traumatically damaged
from the events of Black September and the Gulf War, cannot seem to
find a place anywhere, especially in Detroit. Abe, Ahmed’s brother, is a
record producer who passes as Jewish but has lost all ties with his family.
The play’s resolution comes when Ahmed and Hala run away together
to Jordan leaving Karema and Irene searching for a way forward with
Abe’s assistance. In a recognition of her own post-trauma, Hala tells her
niece Irene, “what happened to your mother and her sister affects you in
a thousand ways that you yourself will never be able to explain” (Shamieh
2005, 47). Karema copes with this trauma by devoting herself tirelessly to
securing financial security. Hala, on the other hand, acts out her trauma
by filling her life with meaningless affairs and endless wandering. The
diasporic experience for the Palestinian American characters in the play
is rife with contradictions. For instance, Karema and Ahmed wanted
Irene to be raised in the United States so she could escape the misery
of Palestinians living in refugee camps in Jordan. In doing so, Irene has
embraced her Americanness and denied her Arabness completely. When
Hala first tries to teach Irene Arabic music and song, Irene dismisses the
gesture altogether. She tells Hala, “Arabic sounds so ugly. I never speak
it in public. It sounds like spitting” (ibid., 30). Later, when Hala tries to
teach Irene Arabic music, Irene constantly evades her, preferring instead
to sing English songs. Karema also internalizes her own oppression,
telling Ahmed not to inform the tenants that he is the owner of the
building while on repair calls since people would not rent the apartments
if they knew Arabs owned them. Similarly, Abe passes himself off as an
Egyptian Jew in order to further his career as a music producer. Ironically,
despite the compromises Karema has made in her own life, she considers
Abe’s actions reprehensible. Gradually, Abe admits that his actions were
mistaken and that it cost more than it gave to deny his heritage. Abe tells
Irene not to mask who she is because, by doing so, nothing she achieves

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will be of any worth. As seen in other Arab American dramas, Shamieh

is positing that, in order to succeed in America, one’s identity as a Middle
Easterner must be sublimated.
Only the characters Hala and Ahmed decide that the alienation they face
in America becomes too much to bear, which compels them to return to
Jordan. The fragmentation of the Yacoub family, first through violence and
exile, and then through adultery and dislocation, is complete. Edward W.
Said once said, “In a way, it’s a sort of the fate of the Palestinians not to end
up where they started but somewhere unexpected and far away” (Said, “In
Search of Palestine” 2010). The characters are scattered once again, much
like the Palestinian diaspora, which has been scattered after the wars in
1948, 1967, 1973, and onward.
Jamil Khoury’s play Mosque Alert was inspired by the mosque
controversies that centered on the Cordoba House/Park 51 Mosque
(pejoratively labeled the “Ground Zero Mosque”) in New York
City. Khoury spent five years writing the play and, after 9/11, he was
concerned with the challenges facing America’s Muslim communities,
especially resistance to the building of mosques in US cities. Khoury
sites two Naperville-based mosque controversies as his primary
inspirations. Khoury sought “to wed playwriting with public discourse,
to blend a 4,000-year-old art form with modern-day digital technology”
(Khoury 2016, 3). Khoury solicited input on character development,
plot, narrative, civil rights, Islamophobia, and religious pluralism. Out
that material a ten-minute play, two video essays, twenty-four video
blogs, several digital scenes, live screenings, and other productions were
created. In his playwright notes, Khoury expresses his positionality as a
playwright focusing his attention on Muslim issues:

First and foremost I am an artist. I have a particular interest in

the dramatization of ideas, theories, and debates, and in creating
characters for whom social and political activism informs identities
and relationships. I am not Muslim. I’m a mixed blood Arab
American of Syrian Christian heritage, raised in the Antiochian
Orthodox Church. My husband Malik is Muslim. I write this play as
an anti-Islamophobia activist, a supporter of Muslim American civil
rights, and an ally to progressive Muslim, feminist Muslim, and queer
Muslim communities. Mosque Alert belongs to an emerging body
of Arab American plays that intersect lived politics and discursive
arguments within the everyday lives of characters. (ibid., 5)

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The characters include three families: The Bakers, comprised of Ted (the
father) and his brother Daniel, Emily (a stay-at-home mom), Carl (a
graduate student), and Jen Baker (a college senior). The Khalils family is
comprised of Mostafa Khalil (an Imam) and his wife Aisha. The Qabbani
Family is comprised of Tawfiq (chairman of the Al Andalus Mosque Board
of Directors), Aminah (his wife, and aspiring designer of contemporary
fashion for Muslim women), Samar (their daughter, a graduate student who
occasionally wears a hijab), and Farid (the son, a recent college graduate).
The play begins with Mostafa giving an address about the proposed Al
Andalus Library and Community Center to the town’s Planning and Zoning
Commission. We later find that Ted and Tawfiq are cutthroat businessmen
who see the mosque as a sure thing in the eyes of the planning and
zoning officials, and they expect the same from the City Council. Tawfiq
is concerned that the proposed mosque will face the same controversies
the Park 51 Mosque faced in New York, and his fears are confirmed when
he finds that Daniel has launched a site called “MosqueAlert​.c​om” that is
against the proposed mosque using vitriolic and anti-Islamic sentiments
online. Aisha, Mostafa’s wife, is very concerned and does not trust the
city planners the way her husband does. Where Mostafa believes he
represents his community, and that Muslims are partially to blame for
their predicament in America by not coming to the proverbial table, his
wife Aisha tells him that Muslims have never been invited to the table, and
never will be. While Mostafa shaves his beard to appear less threatening
to non-Muslims, Aisha cannot remove her hijab the same way. Meanwhile
Emily and Aminah are making plans to launch a new Muslim women’s
clothing line. Aminah, a Syrian refugee, is concerned about Isis and the
destruction of Syria. Carl, who is an “out” gay man, and Samar discuss how
parents are trying to matchmake for them when Jen, who has been studying
in France for a year, arrives to greet them. Once they all learn of Daniel’s
website, they decide to confront him and attempt to take the site off the
internet. Khoury portrays Samar and Farid as very hip, contemporary Arab
American Muslims who join a “coalition of the hated” with Jen and Carl to
stop the anti-Islamic website.
Meanwhile, Ted and Daniel discuss the mosque and Daniel reminds Ted
that there have been Muslim threats to the country and that he believes
the mosques are breeding grounds for anti-American hatred. When Aisha
and Mostafa arrive and confront Daniel, both sides realize neither will back
down and that the fight to build the mosque will be a long and ugly one.
Khoury then takes the audience into an intra-Muslim dialogue about the

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mosque, which raises the complex issues the characters are facing. Samar
wants a progressive mosque while Tawfiq just wants to build a new Islamic
center. Farid says he is “unmosqued,” and that the mosque isn’t for young
people. Aminah is trying to hold on to tradition in order to pass culture
down to her children, and to be surrounded by those who understand
her. Emily, Carl, Jen, and Ted discuss racial profiling of Muslims and their
changing relationship to their uncle Daniel. Where Carl sees opposing
mosques as un-American, Jen says it is fundamentally French. Ted blames
the opposition to the mosque as a community’s fear of change; he tells his
kids that Naperville was once a place with no minorities and now that more
have come, the town has become unrecognizable to them.
It becomes clearer that there are more divisions among the different
groups than there are similarities. Aminah says that the “Muslim rainbow,”
as she calls it, is splintered along religious, ethnic, and national lines. She
believes that Muslims need to change their public image by reducing
accents and changing from traditional dress to more modern clothing.
They begin a mock town hall where they role-play while Mostafa tries to
fend off the group’s hostile questions. In this scene Khoury brings up all
the negative connotations some have about Arabs and Muslims in society
which include racial epithets, apprehensions about Muslims with beards
and hijabs, and fear of the broadcast of the call to prayer at the mosque. By
doing this, Khoury dramatizes that there are such negative stereotypes and
that Arabs and Muslims are privy to them and feel the need to constantly
explain themselves. Ted and Daniel are also preparing for the town hall, but
Ted is coaching Daniel on how they will disagree in public and wait out the
process that will eventually defeat the mosque’s approval.
The town hall meeting descends into chaos as audience members shout
each other down, Mostafa attempts to assuage the crowd, and Daniel uses
the opportunity to foment anti-Muslim sentiment and turn public opinion
against the mosque. He accuses the Muslims of playing the victim and race
card. He then evokes the attacks on 9/11, which leads the audience to start
chanting “U.S.A.!” thus ending the act and the hopes of the mosque’s future.
After the meeting Emily discovers that Ted is a silent investor for a gourmet
market that wants the same site as the mosque developers. The loss of the
mosque also puts a terrible strain on Aisha and Mostafa’s marriage. Mostafa
tries to convince her that the loss was not against them but against the
ideals of America itself. For his part, Daniel tries to convince Carl and Jen
that he did what he did to protect their future from radical Islam, political
correctness, and Muslim hatred against gay people. Carl meets with Mostafa

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asking him to be his ally but realizes that a conservative Islamic cleric
cannot support Carl as a gay man; where Carl sees discrimination against
gays and Muslims as similar, Mostafa sees a clear difference. Carl cannot
understand how Mostafa can propagate notions of coalition building and
remain bigoted against gays in the community; yet Mostafa is not willing
to change his beliefs regarding homosexuality. Ultimately, Carl sees this as
mendacity, stating that a conviction only has value if it’s applied consistently.
Mostafa tries to convince Carl that he cannot accept his help, and, if Carl
does attempt to write something that connects the Islamophobic backlash
the Muslim community faces in Naperville with the homophobic sentiment
in that community, he would condemn him publicly. Jen also rejects Farid,
telling him that after the Paris Charlie Hebdo attacks, she can’t be a good
ally to the mosque either. Gradually Tawfiq realizes that Ted has been
working against the mosque all along as a silent investor on the property.
Tawfiq dares to reveal Ted for undermining the mosque with his business
dealings and his connection with his brother. Aminah also breaks ties with
Emily because of her knowledge of the scandal as well, and Aisha wants to
break all ties with the Qabbanis and to get Mostafa to take more of a leading
role in the Muslim community by starting a small house mosque instead of
the massive downtown mosque he had been planning. Her desire to return
to what she calls “Real Islam” is one that recaptures the spirit of why they
wanted to build a mosque in the first place—not for prominence and glory
but rather for spiritual fulfillment and connection to God (Figure 1).
The final scene has Farid, Jen, Samar, and Carl preparing protest signs
together. They decide that they must find a way forward since their parents
had made such a mess of the mosque situation. Carl realizes that he can
support the right to build mosques and what he calls other “gay-hating
houses of worship,” but with the knowledge that they are political enemies
to his cause as an out gay man. Jen realizes her white privilege and the
fact that she is an implicit accomplice to her uncle’s hate. Samar tells Carl
Muslims are neither angels nor demons and that they have a spectrum of
beliefs like any other group. They protest outside of the city hall, celebrating
the democracy they share as Americans to speak out against anti-Muslim
hate, Islamophobia, and homophobia in Naperville and in America.
Khoury’s play takes a specific event that crystalized the anti-Muslim
sentiment of the time—the so-called Ground Zero Mosque controversy—
and focused his attention on the various sides in the debate against mosques
in American communities. By doing so, he dramatizes the many arguments
for and against the building of mosques, and he exposes the hatred and

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Figure 1 Mosque Alert by Jamil Khoury, Silk Road Rising, 2016. Sahar Dika
­(Samar) and Frank Sawa (Mostafa). Directed by Edward Torres. Photograph by
Airan Wright.

bigotry that exists in many communities. By complicating the narrative

and exploring the various communities that are affected by these debates,
he provides audiences with a dramatic, astute, and informed drama. Like
many of Khoury’s plays, the play focuses on the intellectual arguments
that are often emotionally debated. The play received many strong reviews
through its theatrical production, its videos that accompanied the play’s
development, and the various national and international presentations
Khoury held to promote and discuss the work.
A more comedic take on societal persecution is Leyla Modirzadeh’s
solo performance Lubbock or Leave It! The play, which was created in
association with Ping Chong & Company, involves a single female actor
playing Roxane Khodambashi (also known as Rocky), and a puppet. Rocky
is from New York and takes a teaching job in Lubbock, Texas, because she
needs a tenure track-teaching job and the economy is bad. This revelation
is much to her friends’ surprise who are horrified that she would try to
find a job in the Lone Star State. As her friends predicted, Rocky runs into
all sorts of strange people. One man, Dub, cannot pronounce her name
and does not know the difference between an “A-Rab” and an Iranian. The
city hardly impresses her either; she finds that Lubbock is the second most

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conservative town in the United States behind Provo, Utah. Her puppet,
Daisy, serves as her inner voice, which Rocky tries in vain to silence. Daisy
tells Rocky’s sad story about divorced parents, an absent father who became
the American Dream immigrant success, a life of poverty with her mother,
and her abandonment at the age of thirteen. Rocky tells the audience she
took the job for security, and that security means giving up and giving in,
for the comfort of being called middle class.
As she teaches her new students, she encounters more homophobia,
a sexist faculty, and colleagues that verbally attack one another in faculty
meetings. At one point, her department chair tells her he hates his job, hates
theatre, and dreads coming to work. Her Iranian Cinema lecture is met
with more misunderstanding and Islamophobia. One ROTC student asks
her why Iranian women are so ugly, and openly states that America should
“nuke them all.” When Rocky tells Daisy she wants to quit, Daisy tells her
to stay and deal with the problems because she can’t afford unemployment.
Rocky believes things will get better, but each day brings another round
of insults and offenses. Finally, at her first-year review, she gives her
resignation. Her chair tells her that whatever she dreamed of when she was
younger is unrealistic and that compromise is the key to adulthood. Rocky
decides to go back and visit Iran, a place she has not seen since the age of
six. The play ends with Rocky on her way back to the homeland.
A comedy like Lubbock or Leave It! demonstrates the cross-cultural
misunderstandings that many in the diaspora face when attempting to
negotiate their place in American society. Rocky is harassed for having
a different name, teased about the foods she eats, and finds she does not
share the same values as others who espouse American supremacy over
foreign countries in the Middle East. The play has a humorous subtext with
the Daisy puppet as she chides Rocky for being too fragile, but Rocky’s
displeasure with living in a place that is anathema to her and her values
makes staying there untenable. The idea that Rocky should “grow up” and
stay in the job despite the sexism, homophobia, and anti-Iranian sentiment
she encounters there makes her feel even more alienated. Like Rocky, some
Middle Eastern Americans are caught between the freedoms they enjoy
in America and the painful reminders that they are both different and
unacceptable to their society. This dichotomy makes some want to return
to the homeland in order to find a place where they are not as abject, not as
reviled—a place where they might, finally, find acceptance.
The playwrights in this genre are attempting to focus their attention
on the social and governmental persecution Middle East Americans

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face daily. By dramatizing these events, they attempt to explore the deep
and painful wounds carried by those who face racism, xenophobia,
Islamophobia, and other forms of ethnic and religious discrimination. They
also highlight the fact that Middle Eastern Americans come from a variety
of nations with a multiplicity of sects, religions, and political affiliations
that are misunderstood by the society they inhabit. These factors cause
Middle Eastern Americans to withdraw from jobs or situations where
they find they do not belong because their “outsider” status makes them
feel unwelcomed. The persecution can be governmental or societal, yet
both cause tremendous unease within a community struggling to find
acceptance. Through dramatic and comedic means, these playwrights and
performers dramatize the societal unease their community faces in a time
of heightened fear and surveillance.

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C Chapter 4
DIASPORA PLAYS

Another genre of Middle Eastern American drama deals with living in

the diaspora. Like the previous persecution plays, these plays deal with
many complicated issues, but they are more personal and less about the
outside persecution they feel around them (though many have this aspect
as well). In these plays, we see diasporic Middle Eastern Americans dealing
with issues such as US interventions in Middle Eastern conflicts, having
to contend with difficulties concerning identity and immigration, foreign
events that directly and indirectly affect Middle Eastern Americans living
in the diaspora, and issues regarding perception in the media.

Middle Eastern Americans and the Entertainment Industry:

It’s Not About Pomegranates! and Browntown

Middle Eastern Americans in the entertainment industry face a host of

problems. These range from being Orientalized, stereotyped, misrepresented
and sexualized to being ignored altogether. In his groundbreaking books
The TV Arab (1984), Arab and Muslim Stereotyping in American Popular
Culture (1997), Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People (2001),
and Guilty: Hollywood’s Verdict on Arabs after 9/11 (2008), Jack G. Shaheen
critiqued the Hollywood studio system for decades of Orientalizing Arabs
and Muslims onscreen. Shaheen chronicled how movies that include
insidious images of Arabs and Muslims are consistently depicting this group
as a threatening cultural “other.” By examining hundreds of films made from
1896 to 2008, Shaheen writes that he was “driven by the need to expose an
injustice: cinema’s systematic, pervasive, and unapologetic degradation and
dehumanization of a people” (Shaheen 2003, 172). He writes that Arabs
are repeatedly portrayed as heartless, brutal, uncivilized religious fanatics
focused on terrorizing Westerners—especially those who are Christians
and Jews. The image is always the same—harems, oil wells, camels, flying
carpets, hate-filled terrorists, and oppressed burqa-clad maidens. Shaheen
Middle Eastern American Theatre

reminds readers of the proud heritage of Arab intellectuals and others who
contributed to human civilization, and how they have been stereotyped
in ways like other groups such as Asians, American Indians, African
Americans, and Jews. He calls this “The New Anti-Semitism,” because
Arabs are Semites, and because this occurred mainly during the last third
of the twentieth century.

Why is it important for the average American to know and care about
the Arab stereotype? It is critical because dislike of “the stranger,”
which the Greeks knew as xenophobia, forewarns that when one
ethnic, racial, or religious group is vilified, innocent people suffer.
(Shaheen 2001, 4)

In his later book, Guilty: Hollywood’s Verdict on Arabs After 9/11, Shaheen
continued his analysis of Hollywood films but also focused on the effect of
typecasting of Middle Eastern Americans in the entertainment business.
Shaheen calls for more Arab American imagemakers to enter the industry
and for individuals and organizations to assist them with their careers.

[T]oday’s Arab American actors also have a tough time. Unlike other
performers, they rarely are given opportunities to play humane,
diverse characters, roles that would contest stereotype. Some
directors contend there’s a demand for young Arab-American actors.
Sure, a demand to play billionaires, bombers, bundles in black, and
belly dancers. Casting directors toss them stereotypical scraps and
bones. (Shaheen 2008, 58)

Many contemporary Arab American playwrights look to the scholarly works

of Edward W. Said and Jack G. Shaheen to contest the ongoing stereotyping
Hollywood perpetuates. By doing so they attempt to demonstrate in
their plays how their community is often misread and misrepresented as
“authentic” Middle Eastern American lives onstage.
Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin write that while there is a
proliferation of images of Middle Eastern Arabs, there is a scarcity of Arab
Americans on screen. Hollywood films portray Arabs as bloodthirsty,
sexualized, or exotic while Arab Americans barely exist. They write, “The
linkage of sex, violence, and (non-Christian) religion continues to mark
more contemporary stereotypes of Arabs and Arab Americans” (Benshoff
and Griffin 2009, 72). Furthermore, they write that many Americans make

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no distinction between Arabs, Arab Americans, and Muslim terrorists.

“Against this complex socio-political backdrop, it is perhaps no surprise
that Arab and/or Arab American actors in Hollywood have not had an
easy time finding challenging or complex characters to play” (ibid., 74).
They conclude that if actors of Middle Eastern heritage often play terrorists
or sheiks, they are compelled to change their names and sublimate their
identities.
In a 2015 GQ Magazine interview by Jon Ronson with Muslim American
actors Anthony Azizi, Ahmed Ahmed, Sayed Badreya, Maz Jobrani, and
Waleed Zuaiter titled “You May Know Me from Such Roles as Terrorist
#4,” the actors lamented the many times they were cast in roles as plane
hijackers, infidel slaughterers, holy warriors, and any other assortment of
terrorists in Hollywood films. Ronson writes,

I’m sure practically all actors, Muslim or otherwise, feel degraded.

Most have no power over their careers—what roles they can play,
how their performances are edited. But Muslim actors are powerless
in unusually hideous ways. The last time one became a big star in
America was back in 1962—Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Arabia.
These days they get offered terrorist roles and little else. And we—the
paying public—barely even notice, much less worry about it. Where’s
the outrage? There is none, except from the actors themselves. These
roles are ethically nightmarish for them, and the stress can wreak
havoc on their lives. (Ronson 2015; emphasis in original)

The interviewed actors recount how the roles involve all of them dying at
the hands of an action hero and being paid handsomely to do it. When
they accept these roles, they are ostracized by family and members of
the community, and when they refuse these roles, they find very little
acting work. These actors have responded by subverting the situation and
performing stand-up comedy that satirizes their travails in the Hollywood
system (Ahmed Ahmed, Maz Jobrani), or writing, producing, and acting in
films that counteract stereotypes (Sayed Badreya, Cherien Dabis). In past
decades non-Middle Eastern American actors would be hired to play these
stereotypical roles and were given brown makeup and some sort of costume
to denote their Middle Eastern background, and they would often mumble
some gibberish that was meant to sound like Arabic. What is most troubling
now is that actual Middle Eastern American actors are being hired who not
only “look” the part but speak the languages required of them fluently. This

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gives these films a kind of cultural authenticity and veracity that producers
in the past wanted but could not achieve. These actors now look, sound,
and act the part perfectly. Lebanese American actor Haaz Sleiman says,
“It’s moving in the right direction for Arab actors but very slowly. Look at
African-Americans. It took them forever to move ahead. Arabs are the new
blacks. We took their place and moved up” (Fleishman 2016). An Egyptian
Canadian actor of Coptic Christian background, Mena Massoud, who was
cast in the titular role in Disney’s 2019 film Aladdin, found no opportunities
awaiting him after the film was completed. “There’s always a wild card or two
when you’re casting,” Massoud said. “I’m usually the wild card. In a room
of Caucasian guys, a director might be like, OK, let’s see, like two guys who
aren’t. And maybe they’ll be the wild card choice” (Fallon 2019). Despite
several actors like Massoud given leading “breakout roles,” they find that
once Hollywood is through utilizing them for their look, they have little use
for them afterward. The plays discussed here are about actors and writers
who also endure the fickle nature of theatre, film, and television in America.
Iranian American playwright and actress Sepideh Khosrowjah’s play It’s
Not About Pomegranates! is a romantic comedy between Roya, an Iranian
American playwright, and Sean, an Anglo-American theatre producer that
takes place in a theatre in San Francisco. Roya meets Sean to discuss her
play, which Sean’s theatre wishes to produce. During their dialogue and
monologues, they break the fourth wall to share their inner thoughts about
one another. Initially, Sean likes Roya’s play, and Roya is attracted to Sean.
However, Sean begins to make assumptions about the playwright, and the
situation quickly devolves into an essentializing view of Iranian American
women. He assumes that Roya, a first-generation immigrant, has challenges
speaking English. Then he discusses how there is a large market for “Middle
Eastern stuff ” as he puts it, and that he is intrigued because the play has a
lesbian couple as its protagonists. Sean then goes on to explain how he, too,
has Persian friends which gives him insight into her culture. He then insults
Roya by telling her that her play is not authentic enough. When she protests
his changes, he asks the audience why Middle Easterners are so combative
and deduces this is because they have been fighting with one another for
centuries. Sean urges Roya to use her Muslim and Iranian background as
assets in writing her works. Roya tells him she is a “non-Muslim Muslim,”
and that she is not interested in writing about pomegranates (a fruit
commonly connected with Persian culture), or a “mysterious Persia.” Sean
gradually accepts her work, but she is convinced he is only interested in
issues regarding diaspora and lack of authenticity in her writing. Roya tells

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Sean that Tehran is a loud, polluted city with good and bad people, just like
anywhere else. She loves her home city but there is nothing magical about it,
and there are similarities between the United States and Iran where people
fall in love, suffer loss, and love their children.
In Act 2, which takes place the next morning, the audience discovers that
they have slept together the night before. Roya claims she was completely
drunk and does not know how she got to his apartment, though Sean claims
she insisted on joining him. After they argue, Sean tells her that Americans
want to understand what is happening to Middle Easterners. Roya tells him
that Americans do not really want to understand Iranians, only to confirm
their negative views of them that include oppressed Middle Eastern Muslim
women. She goes on to say Americans are not at all interested in discovering
the truth behind the generalizations they hold.
Sean tells her the world is regressing because of notions of “Otherness”
and the rise of fanaticism and fundamentalism. Roya insists that if the
world is going backward, it is because humanity has stopped dreaming of
a better world. She tells him writers need to create beautiful realities, not
give in to “the market” and a desire to give consumers what they want to
see. She fears Sean is what she calls a “WAMCCP” or “white American male
capitalist chauvinist pig.” Roya tells him that she has also been disillusioned
by the decades of CIA coups and sanctions that have plagued Iran. It is
ironic, she says, that she must defend the Islamic regime in Tehran because
of her fears that the United States might invade her country. Her people
have suffered enough without the United States dropping bombs on them,
and Iranians don’t want American interference. Based on what happened in
Iraq and Afghanistan, she doesn’t believe the United States means well by
bringing democracy to foreign lands. In Act 3 they return to the theatre for
another meeting. We discover that Sean broke up with Roya because of his
fear of an intense relationship. He also tells her the theatre wants to produce
her play. Roya tells him they could be friends, but they are two different
people from two different worlds. After reciting many clichés about what
her future Iranian American play might be, the play ends with the notion
that they might be able to be friends after all.
Khosrowjah’s play may be a romantic comedy, but it contains many
political messages that attempt to educate American audiences about the
Iranian American condition. The American character, Sean, is so caught
up in the Orientalism he has known his entire life that he cannot see Roya
as a fully realized Iranian woman. She, on the other hand, has such trauma
after decades of animosity she has experienced from her life in America

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that she cannot seem to give in to a relationship with someone who cannot
overcome his preconceived notions of what an Iranian woman is or should
be. The play Roya offers him is a metaphor for the relationship between
Americans and Iranians—a contested territory that is both misunderstood
and fought over.
Another play that illustrates the Orientalization of Middle Eastern
Americans in the film industry is Sam Younis’s play Browntown. Younis
explains that his play is his reaction to his audition experiences as an Arab
American actor after earning his MFA in acting and looking for work in
New York. He asked himself, “Why am I routinely a candidate for terrorist
roles? Why are these terrorists always named ‘Mohammed’? Why does
that Indian guy keep getting the Arab terrorist parts over me? Why should
that upset me? Am I a sellout?” (Hill and Amin 2009, 225). As the play
demonstrates, Younis’s fears were not unwarranted.
Younis states his play is deliberately set after the US-led invasion of Iraq.
The play features two Arab American actors, Omar Fakhoury and Malek
Bizri, and an Indian American actor named Vijay Govindu. There is also
a casting director named Ann Davis, an actress named Sherry Holloway,
and a senior vice president of casting for a major studio named Hamilton
Jeffries. The play is set in a casting office in New York City in 2003. The actors
are in the office to audition for a film titled “The Color of Terror.” Omar and
Malek know one another, as they are the ones that are consistently called
for the same roles in what they ironically call “Browntown.” They call the
films they audition for “scary brown-guy” movies where all the characters
are named “Mohammed.” After reading the script they are auditioning for,
Omar says,

I’m just saying you gotta draw the line somewhere. For Chrissake, this
Mohammed’s got four wives, he hates all Jews, he drives a Mercedes
that he bought with his family’s oil money, and he’s conspiring with
a guerilla group called “Allies for Allah.” They may as well put him
on a camel and strap a bomb on to him in the opening scene. This
is basically the same shit as True Lies or Not Without My Daughter!
There are consequences for perpetuating these stereotypes. (Younis
2009, 235–6)

Malek reminds Omar he was an actor in True Lies, but Omar protests that he
just wants to play a regular bad guy. When Vijay enters the room to audition
for the same part as Omar and Malek, they quickly get upset that an Indian

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American actor is auditioning for Arab roles; however, Omar himself was
once cast as an Indian character in a play. When Malek reads a stereotypical
part replete with an Arabic accent with Sherry, Ann tries to side coach him
but does so by getting all sorts of facts wrong about the character (such as
Afghanistan and Pakistan as Arab countries, backward moral codes, and
societally pervasive misogyny). Meanwhile, in the waiting area, Omar and
Vijay discuss South Asian actors they know, and Omar himself makes many
stereotypical and culturally inappropriate assumptions about South Asians.
Malek enters, disgusted that he must audition for roles that call for what he
calls “Brownsploitation,” but Vijay tells him actors of color must work and
they should quit being too overprotective of their culture. Vijay admonishes
them telling them that everyone of color in America must play denigrating
roles.

Blacks have to play gangsters, Latinos play drug dealers, Chinese play
tourists, and we both play Al Qaeda operatives on 24. All actors deal
with this shit. Get over it and do your job. (Younis 2009, 243)

Vijay tells them that terrorists exist, and people find them interesting;
hence, they are being represented in films and TV. Unwilling to believe
Vijay, Omar and Malek resolve to write their own script instead of being
forced to act in films that demean them. Omar’s audition is also fraught
with more of Ann’s misperceptions and misdirections regarding “what is
really going on in those countries.” Ann is most interested when the actors
show fury, rage, and fierceness (i.e., her perception of the “angry Muslim”).
When they tell Vijay he should audition for Ann with an Indian accent,
he tells them he doesn’t know one. When they tell him to use his parents’
accent, he tells them his parents are from Queens. When they ask him
to sound like the character Apu from The Simpsons, he tells them he has
tried but ends up sounding like an Arab character from Raiders of the Lost
Ark. Vijay’s audition script is filled with angry monologues about revenge,
jihad, and violence against infidels. Ann offers Sherry a part as the main
character “Chemical Ali’s” wife Jumana (who she mistakenly refers to as
“Jumanji”). When Ann auditions the actors with one another, she remarks
with amazement how well they “delved into the Arab mindset.” The casting
director Hamilton Jeffries, on the other hand, wants a star playing the lead
role, so he opts for casting Colin Farrell. Ann dismisses Omar, Malek, and
Vijay who still believe one of them will be cast in the terrorist role, not
knowing it was given to the famous Irish actor instead.

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Younis’s dark comedy highlights how Arabs and South Asians are
misperceived by casting agents, how roles written for these actors are
typically shallow and rife with ugly stereotypes, and how actors of color
turn on one another in an attempt to land roles that they don’t even want
but are forced to audition for just to keep working. The play is a comedy,
but the situation Younis dramatizes is not necessarily that unrealistic.
There are many other Middle Eastern American plays, and stand-up comic
routines, that directly deal with the difficulties of being included in the
American entertainment system including Yussef El Guindi’s Jihad Jones
and the Kalashnikov Babes and the comedy specials Allah Made Me Funny,
The Arab American Comedy Tour, and The Axis of Evil Comedy Tour. In
the decades since Younis wrote Browntown, a few Arab American actors
like Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody), Tony Shalhoub (Monk), and Ramy
Youssef (Ramy) have achieved some prominence in Hollywood. That said,
there are still only a handful of actors of Middle Eastern descent who can
find consistent work playing multidimensional roles.

Living between “Here” and “There”: 444 Days; This

Time; Twice, Thrice, Frice . . .; Reading Hebron; Noura;
Dragonflies; Suitcase; and Living in the Hyphen-Nation

Another playwright who explores the difficulties of living in the diaspora

is Iranian Armenian American playwright, director, and actress Torange
Yeghiazarian. Yeghiazarian was born in Iran of Armenian heritage to a family
of theatre performers who were musicians, actors, and night club proprietors.
Her family moved to the United States in 1978. Yeghiazarian worked as a
clinical microbiologist for fifteen years before obtaining her master’s degree
in theatre arts from San Francisco State University. She has authored many
plays including Abaga (The Future), Dawn at Midnight, Publicly Resting,
Behind Glass Windows, Operation No Penetration, Lysistrata 91!, TORCH!,
Isfahan Blues, 444 Days, The Fifth String: Ziryab’s Passage to Cordoba, and
Call Me Mehdi. In 1996 she founded Golden Thread Productions in San
Francisco. The company has been recognized by the American Theatre
Wing and the City of San Francisco. Yeghiazarian was honored by the Cairo
International Theatre Festival in 2016 and by the Symposium on Equity in
the Entertainment Industry at Stanford University in 2017.
Yeghiazarian’s play 444 Days is set in December 2006 at Lucile Packard
Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto, California. The cast includes Laleh, an

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Iranian woman in her forties who is a former hostage taker from Iran; Harry
Rubin, an American professor from Columbia University in his fifties, and
a former hostage himself; Olivia, a hospital nurse in her fifties; and Hadyeh,
a 25-year-old woman in a coma. The play reflects on the 444-day hostage
crisis of 1979 and the Iranian group named “Students Following the Imam’s
Line” who took sixty-six Americans hostage at the American Embassy in
Tehran. The Islamic Revolution toppled the Iranian Monarchy. With the
fall of the shah and the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini, US and Iranian relations
immediately deteriorated and has remained unsettled since that time. In the
play, Yeghiazarian writes that the play is inspired by actual events, though
the story is fictional.
At the opening the audience sees Hadyeh lying in bed after being in a
coma for three weeks with Laleh sitting by her side. Harry enters and chides
Laleh for being in town for a month without contacting him. Protesters are
outside the hospital protesting Laleh’s presence there. Olivia, the nurse, is
upset that Laleh, a former hostage taker, is at the hospital, and laments that
Laleh comes from a place where people chant “Death to America.” Harry
went to Iran in the 1960s as a Peace Corps volunteer. Amin, Hadyeh’s father,
is an offstage character that is not seen. We discover that Harry is Hadyeh’s
biological father, and that his older son, Michael, could be a possible bone
marrow transplant candidate. Harry begs Laleh to allow Michael to be a
bone marrow donor, but Laleh (who has never told her husband Amin
about Harry) is unwilling lest Amin find out about Hadyeh’s true parentage.
Olivia and Harry discuss the hostage crisis and Harry tells her about
the 1953 coup that ousted the then Iranian prime minister Muhammad
Mossadegh known as Operation Ajax. Mossadegh, who nationalized Iran’s
oil industry, became a pariah to the United States and the United Kingdom
so they conspired to overthrow him and restore the monarchy under the
shah. The coup was successful and there was a return to foreign control
of Iranian oil. Many blame the coup for radicalizing the Iranian populace
against the United States, and for leading to the eventual rise of the Islamic
Republic (Allen-Ebrahimian 2017). Olivia has no knowledge of the coup,
and supports the US invasion of Iraq, blaming the Iraqis for not being
more grateful for the US removing their president. When Harry reminds
her things are more complicated, she responds that regular Americans
only need a roof over their heads and food on their tables, not political
discussions. Laleh informs Harry they found a donor and will proceed
with an operation, which happens to be on Christmas Eve. It is Michael,
Harry’s son, who Laleh had been in contact with for years without Harry’s

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knowledge. Michael does not show up on time, which makes Laleh panic.
Olivia chastises Laleh for the revolution and the anti-American sentiment
Iranians hold. Laleh responds that the United States holds the power and
expects other nations to bow to its wishes or suffer the consequences. Laleh
compares the United States to a giant elephant that is so big, strong, and
remote which consumes the world’s resources while others pay for that with
their lives. In her view, the United States ruins other nations’ futures in the
name of security and justice while leaving foreign lands destroyed.
In a surprising turn, Hadyeh rises from her bed and delivers a monologue
to the audience. She tells of her mother teaching her soccer when she was
younger, how her father Amin refused to move to the United States, and
how she likes Harry with his Persian spoken with a funny American accent.
Harry tells Olivia that he believes Amin is a spy who is trying to pass on
master codes of Iran’s nuclear program to the Chinese. Laleh discovers
that Harry has stopped Michael from coming to the hospital unless Laleh
admits that she and Amin are passing on the nuclear codes. Amin dies in
the hospital, and Laleh tells Harry she must return to Iran to bury him
there. Harry and Laleh reconcile. Harry asks her to promise that she,
Hadyeh, and he can stay together and start a new life. She does. After Harry
leaves, Laleh burns a piece of paper and disconnects the tracheal tube that
connects Hadyeh to the ventilator. The lights fade to black as the monitor
continues beeping.
444 Days attempts to reconcile the present situation many Iranians face
with the past actions committed during the revolution. Through the love
triangle, Yeghiazarian dramatizes an American hostage and an Iranian
hostage taker whose time together yielded a young woman now dying
of cancer. The play subtly educates audiences about the US interventions
in Iranian history including the 1953 coup, the US-sanctioned chemical
weapons attacks by Iraq on Iran during the war from 1980 to 1988, and the
hostile takeover of Iranian oil fields by the US and UK companies (Regencia
2018). Yeghiazarian attempts to complicate the history surrounding the
US hostage crisis and to depict America (via Harry) and Iran (via Laleh
and Amin) as nations that were caught up in geopolitical struggles that
ultimately led to an acrimonious and antagonistic relationship that has
lasted decades. The complicated nature of Iranians living in diaspora and
having to contend with the violence that has been perpetrated is reflected
in the painful relationship that Laleh, Harry, and Hadyeh share. By utilizing
a present-day trauma with flashbacks that illuminate the past relationships,
Yeghiazarian attempts to reframe the debate regarding the Iran Hostage

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Crisis. 444 Days is a human story that reminds us that there are a multitude
of factors that determine how, and why, the acrimony between the United
States and Iran has increased. The play also demonstrates that there are real,
devastating human consequences to foreign interventions committed in
the name of democracy.
The play This Time by Sevan K. Greene, which was inspired by stories from
the book Not So Long Ago by Amal Meguid, and developed in collaboration
with Egyptian Canadian director Kareem Fahmy, is a play that takes place
in different time periods and different nations. The protagonist, Amal, is
seen both as a sixty- to seventy-year-old woman living in Toronto and as
a forty- to fifty-year-old woman living in Egypt. Her daughter Janine and
her son Hatem are dealing with her present difficulties, which they realize
are deeply rooted in her past. Other characters are Nick, a thirty-year-old
Canadian who woos a younger Amal while she lived in Egypt; Monsieur
Joseph, a thirty-year-old Middle Eastern owner of a fabric store; and Tom, a
twenty-year-old man. We meet Younger Amal in 1962 as a married mother
of two at a socialite party in Cairo. She meets Nick, a handsome Canadian
teacher who is obsessed both by women and liquor. Nick instantly falls for
her despite her protestations, and the couple are destined for a tortured love
affair. In the present, an older Amal is living with her divorced daughter
Janine (who was born of Amal’s broken marriage). Janine, separated from
her own husband, has decided to move out of her home and start anew,
consumed by anger toward Amal for leaving her father and brother decades
earlier. For her part, Amal is now an elegant older woman who swears Nick
is hiding in the bushes outside her daughter’s home. As the play progresses,
we see the passion and dysfunction of Nick and Amal’s love affair and
marriage, and how Amal’s decision to leave her children has permanently
ruined her adult relations with both of them.
The play follows the characters living through the various Egyptian
regimes from Nasser to Sadat to Mubarak. Amal chooses her affair with
Nick, leaving her husband and her son Hatem and daughter Janine behind,
and moving to Canada. As an older woman, abandoned by Nick and left
with two children who are spiteful for the way she left them behind when
they were young to be with her lover, Amal contends with being alone as
an older woman living in a country she barely understands. Janine’s hatred
for her mother leaving her as a young girl finally erupts. Amal tells her
daughter that, eventually, she will have to balance regret with freedom. The
play’s climax intertwines the past and the present as Janine and her mother
Amal finally learn to recognize and love one another. Greene’s play offers a

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fascinating view into an Egyptian woman’s life of the past and the present: a
woman who gave up her filial and societal expectations regarding marriage
and the role of “a good Arab wife” in order to run away with the man she
loved. Although Amal’s life did not work out the way she intended, she
decides to live her life without regrets because her freedom was ultimately
more important to her. Greene’s portrayal of Amal dispels facile stereotypes
some might have about Arab women as oppressed subjects in a patriarchal
society. Amal is a bold and courageous female character that defies all
expectations put upon her by her society, and by the audiences who would
like to view her as an oppressed Arab woman.
Fouad Teymour is a Chicago-based Egyptian American playwright and
professor of engineering. His play Twice, Thrice, Frice . . . is an all-female,
three-character play that explores Islam and marriage. Amira is a forty-
year-old Iraqi American visual artist and real estate agent. She is married to
a doctor named Hassan who travels to Iraq to volunteer to help refugees. The
couple has been unable to conceive children. Khadija is a forty-something
Palestinian American woman who is a conservative Muslim mother of two
married to a professor named Ramzi. Samara is a thirty-year-old Egyptian
American woman who wears a hijab and believes in Islam as a guiding
factor in her life. At first, the three women get along very well and form a
tight intra-cultural group. The play is set in “America pre-Trump election”
as late as mid-2016.
At the start of the play the women discuss their career ambitions and their
family life. Samara wants to return to school for an MBA while Khadija tells
her how it is important for her to be married and have children. Khadija
is a mother figure for Samara, who was orphaned at a young age. Amira
and her husband Hassan are strictly anti-polygamy, while Samara and
Khadija are more open to the idea. Samara believes in polygamy because
there are interpretations of Islam that condone the practice, while Khadija
believes in polygamy for other reasons including the couple’s inability
to produce children. Regardless, Khadija dismisses the notion because
the practice is unlawful in the United States. When Amira discovers that
Khadija’s husband is seeing another woman, and that other woman is
Samara, the women’s relationships are strained to a breaking point. Samara
accuses Amira of being unfaithful for painting nude women and sending
the paintings to other men, while Amira is outraged that Samara would
marry Khadija’s husband at a mosque. When Khadija discovers Samara and
Ramzi’s marriage, she questions everything about her life, including the
Islamic precedent that would allow such a marriage. The plot becomes even

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more complicated when Samara reveals she is pregnant with Ramzi’s child.
By play’s end Khadija decides to divorce her husband, Amira and Hassan
decide to adopt an Iraqi child, and Samara raises her child with Ramzi.
Teymour’s play explores the ramifications of Islamic tenets that are
sometimes practiced in the Middle East yet banned in North America.
By personalizing this notion of Islamic polygamy, Teymour takes an
abstract conversation and dramatizes it in a way that is not often reflected
in American theatre. He brings together three Muslim Arab women from
three different cultural contexts (Iraqi, Palestinian, and Egyptian) and finds
the commonalities among the women including their love of Arab food,
smoking the argeeleh (or hookah), and their devotion to the religion of
Islam. However, the way their devotion to the religion manifests is vastly
different. For instance, Amira does not wear hijab, while Samara and Amira
are strict about their adherence to covering. Also, the play wrestles with
the notion of adherence to Islam within a vastly different context than it
was originally prescribed, namely in the diaspora. How does one contend
with religious tenets that are perfectly acceptable in the homeland, but not
permitted in the diaspora? The three women are trying to negotiate their
allegiance to culture, religion, and homeland in a place and time when
those things are not only unknown but often completely discouraged. This
leads to painful personal negotiations and conflicts that tear relationships
apart and cause deep distress. The play ends on a hopeful note, however,
when we see the three women content in their new lives: Amira excited
about the prospect of becoming a mother to an adopted child; Khadija
ready to become a single-mother divorcee; and Samara eager to start her life
with a new baby and a marriage to Ramzi. At a time when women wearing
hijab are looked at with suspicion, Teymour’s play gives these characters
dimension and allows audiences who may never personally know Muslim
women a view into the interpersonal conflicts that this community faces.
Canadian playwright Jason Sherman’s 1996 play Reading Hebron
concerns a specific event that occurred in 1994—the Cave of the Patriarchs/
Ibrahimi Mosque/Hebron Massacre of Muslim worshippers by American
Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein. The massacre claimed the lives of 29 and
injured 125 other Muslim Palestinian worshippers. Goldstein was killed on
the spot by the survivors. The play takes place in Canada. The protagonist,
Nathan, is a Canadian-born Jew who struggles with the dissolution of his
marriage to his non-Jewish wife and his struggles as a father to two young
sons. The play begins with Nathan on a personal mission to discover the
facts that surround the massacre. Along the way he is confronted by a flurry

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of different characters—some notable and others less so—who challenge,

provoke, attack, and question everything Nathan knows and believes. The
play oscillates between eyewitness testimonies and Nathan’s own real, and
surreal, experiences.
Sherman’s play explores not only a single massacre but also Nathan’s
conflicted feelings about the State of Israel itself. On the one hand, he is
grateful for a state that has harbored his persecuted people; on the other,
he has great difficulty understanding how Israel has treated the Palestinian
people and why violence has permeated the complicated history of that
land. He must contend with how some Israelis and some North American
Jews have completely contradictory views of the same events, how some
find ways to justify the violent acts of some extremists, and how people in
the diaspora are entrenched in their views. Despite his desire to remain a
somewhat neutral questioner of the events of the massacre, Nathan is told
he is either a self-hating Jew or a delusional person who is less interested
in the facts of the case than in his own feelings of guilt over his association
with Israel. Nathan is repeatedly confronted for his self-imposed inquiry.
Even the real-life community leaders and scholars who appear in the play—
Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Hanan Ashrawi, Cynthia Ozick, and A.M.
Rosenthal—attack his motives for the search. Nathan also suffers from his
mother’s disapproval for marrying a woman she did not approve of, his
wife’s anger that he does not spend enough time with the children, and
his Jewish employers who detest his critical views regarding Israel. The
play digs deeper and deeper into facts, counter-facts, arguments, rebuttals,
testimonies, conflicts, and debates surrounding the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Nathan, who never visited Israel before the events of the play, finally visits
Israel and is put on trial by the very judges who presided over the inquiry
into Goldstein’s actions. Nathan tells the judges,

I fear that/ if the Jewish state/ and the Jewish people/ continue to act
as we do/ we will disappear as surely/ as the Palestinian people/ whose
homes we have taken/ whose families we have dispersed/ whose
dignity we have denied/ whose dreams we have ended. (Sherman
2006, 356)

The judges retort that, since Nathan does not live in Israel, his concerns
are of no value to those who do live there. The play ends with the judges
deciding that Goldstein committed a murderous act and that future acts
like his should be prevented.

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Sherman’s Reading Hebron is a long, complicated, and compelling look

at how a Jew living in the diaspora tries to cope with the actions of a Jewish
state that, in theory, represents him. He wrestles with a long and conflicted
history that he is associated with yet is so distant from. He tries to reckon
the varying and contradictory histories and accounts that constitute a long
and violent century, and to make sense of the seemingly incomprehensible
horrors that take place, perpetrated by people representing all sides of
the conflict. Plays like Reading Hebron leave many more questions than
answers, but in doing so they attempt to bring understanding to events that
are so horrifically incomprehensible that the only recourse is to ask why
they occurred and how they can be avoided in the future.
Another play that deals directly with the costs of war survivors living
in diaspora is Heather Raffo’s Noura. Her first play 9 Parts of Desire (2002)
was a one-woman show that dramatizes the experiences of nine Iraqi and
Iraqi American women who contend with the fallout from the First Gulf
War and with life in the aftermath of the American invasion of Iraq. She
followed the success of 9 Parts of Desire by writing the libretto for the opera
Fallujah (2012), with music by Tobin Stokes. Fallujah followed the story of
American veteran Christian Ellis, who suffered from PTSD from his tour
of duty in Iraq. Her play Noura (2018) is a rumination on a Christian Iraqi
family that has fled Iraq to live in the United States yet are haunted by the
memories of their displacement and the rise of the so-called Islamic State
in Iraq.
Noura/Nora is a Christian Iraqi American architect from Mosul, Iraq,
who lives in New York City with her husband Tareq/Tim, a former surgeon
from Baghdad. They have a child named Yazen/Alex, who is eleven years old
and very Americanized. Their colleague Rafa’a, Noura’s childhood friend
from Mosul, is a Muslim American OBGYN. Maryam is a young physicist
from Mosul in her twenties. The play takes place during Christmas Eve and
Christmas Day at Noura’s home in New York City.
The fact that the characters have both Arabic and “American” names is a
display of the dichotomy many Middle Eastern Americans live with. Many
in this community have their birth names, and the names that are either
given or chosen in order to “fit in” with American society. Noura says they
changed their names to make them pronounceable and relatable, though
she prefers her real name “Noura.” Tareq wants to have another child, a
daughter, with Noura. Noura instead wants to sponsor an Iraqi orphan
from Mosul who was raised in her ancestral church there. Tareq tells her
they cannot support every Iraqi refugee, and Noura reminds him that they,

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too, are refugees. When Maryam arrives unexpectedly, she tells Noura she
has an internship with an American weapons contractor with the hopes
of a future hire by the US Department of Defense after graduation. She is
also visibly pregnant but is without a husband or boyfriend. Noura tries to
convince her that having a child will not protect her from her loneliness,
but Maryam tells her that everyone she knows is a refugee, or dead,
reminding Noura that she wouldn’t survive a day in Mosul after Isis has
destroyed it. Noura fears that Tareq will not accept Maryam in their house
as an unmarried, pregnant woman, yet Rafa’a reminds Noura that she, too,
has passed judgment on her. Noura feels the weight of the loss of Mosul,
as does Rafa’a. Noura reminds him that her grandfathers carved half the
city of Mosul, which was destroyed by the Isis forces. Noura blames Rafa’a
for not admitting that there was a genocide in Mosul carried out by Iraqis,
but Rafa’a tries to convince her that nowhere is safe anymore for them as
Christian Iraqis. New York, she says, may be the only place they can still
celebrate Christmas together in peace.
Rafa’a admits he only loved one woman, Noura, yet he could never
speak of his feelings for her. The next morning, as the television blares the
latest Isis atrocities in Iraq, Noura becomes upset and agitated. She asks
why no one defended one another or spoke out when the war crimes were
committed. She laments spending a month preparing a Christmas dinner
when no one will arrive to celebrate with them. Tareq is grateful for his new
life in America, even though he can never practice surgery again because of
his shaking hands, a product of his own post-traumatic stress disorder. He
asks her what is wrong with being safe and having a place where they can
forget their painful past, but Noura tells him she does not want to forget.
When Maryam and Rafa’a finally arrive for dinner, they have an awkward
meeting. When Rafa’a asks why she left Iraq, Maryam tells him that the
neighbors burned the convent and killed the head mother. As Noura
suspected, Tareq is not pleased with Maryam and with supporting an
Iraqi woman who is unmarried and pregnant and who wishes to work for
defense contractors that had a hand in destroying his homeland. Maryam
replies that everywhere she goes, she’s a scandal. Unlike Rafa’a, Noura feels a
kinship with Maryam since they survived the war in Iraq together. Maryam
tries to convince Tareq that Isis is also comprised of Iraqis, no matter how
much he and others want to deny it. Noura loses her composure at dinner
and divulges the truths no one was willing to admit. After everyone leaves,
Tareq tells Noura he no longer wants to support Maryam, who he deems
a profligate woman. Tareq and Noura also have their difficulties, wrapped

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up in notions of shame and sexual desire. Noura realizes that Tareq has
also seen her as too free with her sexuality and chastity, and that he does
not think she is honorable. Tareq tells her he is tired of feeling ashamed of
being Arab in America. The day he changed his name, he says, was the day
that Iraq could finally be behind him. The play climaxes when the audience
discovers that Maryam is Noura and Tareq’s child, who she had when they
were young and unmarried. She gave the child to the orphanage rather
than bring shame on Tareq and his family. Noura sees millions of people
fleeing Iraq with nothing, leaving behind ancient libraries and languages.
It is no wonder they are drowning, she says, because the responsibility of
being erased is simply too much to bear. Noura wants to tell Yazen about
Maryam; she wants to return to Iraq and help rebuild it, but she also knows
she cannot do so. Noura’s inability to let go and hold on to her homeland at
the same time is a condition so many Middle Eastern American immigrants
feel being torn away from their countries and forced to make a new life in
America. The wounds of their past are still a part of them, while they are
expected to restart and rebuild in a new land without any of the hallmarks
of home. Tareq, Noura, Rafa’a, and Maryam are victims of a painful history
that is scarred with war, displacement, and cultural loss. The Iraq they
knew will never be the same after their communities were uprooted and
destroyed. Now, they must contend with a new life in a new land and try to
heal the wounds that they carry with them every day.
Raffo’s play grapples with the horrific rise of Isis in Iraq, and the aftermath
of the horrendous atrocities they committed there and throughout the
Middle East. She also focuses on the Iraqi Christian community, one with a
2,000-year history, which, according to Aid to the Church in Need (ACN),
has, “within a generation, declined 90 percent to below 250,000. Some
reports suggest that the actual figure may be lower than 120,000” (Pontifex
2020). The play Noura gives insight to those who survived the scourge of
Isis yet are left with unseen trauma that affects their lives in the diaspora.
Turkish American writer, actor, and musician Melis Aker has written
several plays including Manar, 330 Pegasus: A Love Letter, Azul Otra Vez
[“Blue Revisited”], Scraps and Things, When My Mama Was a Hittite, and
Dragonflies. Her plays deal with many issues facing the Turkish American
community living in exile including internet radicalization of youth,
Turkish American alienation, and cultural, familial, and immigrant identity.
Her play Dragonflies, which she subtitles “a memory play,” takes place from
2005 to 2018 in Brooklyn, and in several undefined locales that include a
group therapy session, cyber space, and what she calls a “liminal memory

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Figure 2 Manar by Melis Aker, LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, 2017. Michelle
Tailor (Leslie), Freddie Stevenson (Henry), Layla Wolfgang (Najla), and Tom Waal-
and (Benji). Directed by Isabelle Kettle. Photograph by Juan Zapata.

space.” The four characters of the play include Lale, a female Turkish girl
who we see from eight to thirteen years old; Selma, her mother with a
slight Turkish accent; her father Henry; and Najla, a Syrian tutor and friend
(Figure 2).
Young Lale presses her mother to tell her what an alien is, and if Tarik
was one because he went away. Her mother, Selma, does not want to hear
about Tarik prompting Lale to leave to be with her father. In a flashback
to 2005 in the Financial District in New York, Selma is watching a video
of Osama Bin Laden’s speeches. Henry is horrified that Lale would watch
such barbarity, especially since she is pregnant with a child who he wants to
call Lale, the Turkish word for tulip. A flash forward to the same apartment
in 2018 shows a thirteen-year-old Lale reminding Henry that it is Tarik’s
birthday, and we learn that Lale has never met Tarik before. Meanwhile, in
Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, Lale and her tutor Najla discuss Tarik, and how he
has been gone for thirteen years with “no trace.” Lale discovers her mother
Selma (now wearing a hijab) watching more violent videos online. Lale
was a successful journalist back in Turkey, but she was forced into political
exile. Selma believes she sees Tarik as an Isis executioner in an online video,
something Henry vehemently denies. After a violent confrontation, Selma
tells Henry she is leaving and taking Lale with her. Later we see Selma and
Lale reminiscing about Tarik as they flip through old photos of him giving

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Lale a dragonfly for a present. When Henry discovers Lale is watching

the execution videos and believing her mother about Tarik being an Isis
executioner, he demands that she move in with him. Lale refuses. Henry
refuses to believe his son is a terrorist. Selma joins a group therapy session
for mothers of sons who fight with Isis. She tells the group that she used to
teach her son Turkish, but she would not risk the same with her daughter
because she is so afraid of her daughter’s involvement with the region. Lale
begins dressing in Tarik’s old clothes and cuts her hair short. She tells Najla,
who is troubled by her behavior, that she does it to get into Tarik’s character.
In a strange turn, Lale, dressed as Tarik, speaks to the audience in Tarik’s
persona while sending an email to Selma. In the following scene, we find
it was Lale that sent the email disguised as Tarik, with Najla’s help. Lale’s
identity crisis spirals until she alienates Najla and her mother Selma. Najla
decides to leave New York for Dearborn because in Dearborn she will not be
surrounded by what she calls “neoliberal fucks” who pretend she is just like
them, when she is not. Lale and Selma reconnect, deciding they will visit
Turkey someday together, and they sing the Turkish song “Uzun İnce Bir
Yoldayim” (“I’m On a Long and Narrow Road”). They reconcile, learning
that they need one another more than they ever thought they might.
Aker’s play Dragonflies is a deep exploration of the fraught time period
between the events of 9/11 and, like Raffo’s Noura, also explores the rise of
Isis throughout the Middle East. Thousands of young people from Europe
and North America traveled to Syria and Iraq to fight with the group, and
some became proselytizers and executioners for the cause. This led to a crisis
in families whose children were lured into terrorism by online materials that
promised them a life of acceptance, a life of traditional values, and a place
where they would find themselves within a twisted interpretation of the
Islamic faith. In Dragonflies, Henry and Selma’s relationship began well but,
gradually, the tensions between her Turkishness and his Americanness tore
them apart, especially when Selma suspected their son had left to fight with
the jihadist army. Lale, the Middle Eastern American child stuck between
them, must negotiate how to live her life as a bicultural girl who also must
contend with living in her brother’s shadow. By cutting her hair, donning
his clothing, and sending emails in his name, Lale attempts to recreate a
person she never really knew, and a person who joined a group that has
caused such human catastrophe. Lale’s relationship with Najla, a Syrian
refugee who also cannot find acceptance in America, brings her closer to
her understanding of what it means to grow up Middle Eastern in America
where one is never fully accepted, and where one must move from place

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to place to finally land in a spot where there is some sense of belonging.

Selma, Najla, and Lale are contending with the forces that shaped them,
exiled them from their homelands and their families, and made them the
rich and complicated women they are.
Iranian American playwright Farhad Ayeesh’s play Suitcase, translated
by Iranian American playwright, actress, and director Bella Warda, is
a nonlinear play that also dramatizes the plight of the immigrant. Set in
a waiting room that is more like purgatory, the play features characters
carrying suitcases they never release. Archetypal characters with names
like “Psychiatrist,” “Tailor’s Wife,” “Civil Engineer,” “Military Man,” and
“Military Man’s Wife” wander on stage, looking at each other in horror.
The characters move in “false and exaggerated” ways and are directed to act
non-realistically. At one point, the Psychiatrist cries out asking if anyone
knows where they are.
The play has strange and circular dialogues that mirror the characters’
lives in the diaspora. The Military Man’s son is accused of odd behavior
due to a lack of love and the neglect of his sexuality. The characters break
into short poetic speeches and live in a state of self-contempt and loathing.
The Man says they are helpless, they always have been, and they will always
stay that way. Suddenly, a wedding breaks out, and the Girl and Tailor’s son
marry. They all begin to dance but trip over the suitcases strewn across the
stage. The Psychiatrist asks if they are all dreaming. The Military Man tells
of a man who placed his wife in a suitcase. When she died, he went mad
because they were in love. At the end a large group enters, the door slams,
and a man with a violin—an artist—plays a melody. The unifying element
of the artist attempting to make order in the chaos of the room full of
immigrants is akin to what Ayeesh is attempting with the play itself. What
stands out is that these immigrants are disjointed, discombobulated, and
caught in a state of utter turmoil. Ayeesh is attempting, through absurdism
and dissonance, to capture the ruptured lives immigrants experience
attempting to transit from their homelands to their newly adopted homes,
wherever they may be.
Laila Farah’s solo performances include Shaping the World with Our
Hands and Living in the Hyphen-Nation. Farah, an associate professor of
women’s and gender studies at DePaul University, merges her critical theory
and her personal experiences to create works that examine her diasporic
understanding of living as a woman who was born in the United States,
but raised in the Middle East. Her works focus on the depiction of Arab
women’s lives, their multiple and complex identities, and she challenges the

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racial constructions ascribed to Arabs in the Western media. “I map the

routes many women, as described in their localities, choose or are forced to
take in a global context,” she writes. She performs as a “bicultural, biracial,
bilingual woman” using what she terms “auto-ethnographic diasporic
performance” (Farah 2005, 317). She states that she employs this reflexive,
auto-ethnographic perspective using moderation, and positions herself as
American Lebanese rather than Lebanese American in order to draw her
US audiences into a liminal space that appears less “foreign” to them: “As a
diasporic subject, I utilize my hybridity to expand audience understanding,
foster further exploration, and dispel negative stereotypes” (ibid., 318). Her
performance text for Living in the Hyphen-Nation includes “Sheherazade
Don’t Need No Visa,” “Stars and Stripes Forever,” “Adolescence in
‘Absentia,’” and “Resisting Arrest: Arresting Resistance.” She utilizes four
axes of analysis for her diasporic performance—reflexivity, agency, political
dissent, and activism—and believes her work is both pedagogical and
coalition building in nature (ibid., 318–19).
The first section titled “Sheherazade Don’t Need No Visa” explores
checkpoints Farah has traversed both during the Lebanese Civil War and
in US airports. In both spaces she is a woman being scrutinized by men
with weapons who wield power over her ability to cross from one border
to another. Syrian soldiers occupying Beirut, Christian Phalangist officers
controlling the infamous “Green Line” during the Civil War, and US
immigration officers at Logan Airport all demand papers, answers about
where she has been and who she has been with, and about her political
affiliations. She recalls having to cross the US-Mexican border, being
evacuated on an American Marine helicopter during the evacuation of
Beirut in 1984, and even having to answer post-performance questions
about her sexual orientation. With each of these “colonizing frameworks”
she becomes more and more aggravated and annoyed, finally shouting
“KHALAS . . . ENOUGH.” During the section titled “Stars and Stripes
Forever: Sheherazade’s Sequel,” she examines institutional racism against
racialized “Others” which is found in government-sanctioned policies
that target Arabs and Arab Americans entering the United States. She
asks, “Does America prefer order over justice?” (ibid., 326). The constant
categories, stereotypes, and lists that either keep people in or keep people
out leave her with the desire to either act out or internalize her anger after
constant harassment by passport control officers who create lists that
alienate passengers with exotic sounding names. She recounts Arab and
Iranian passengers being interrogated, made late for their flights, having

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their luggage rummaged through, and being detained: “You think about
where this places you on the hyphen this time . . . where does this experience
fit in the schema of alienations . . . of hypen-nations . . . of ‘One nation
under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all’” (ibid., 328–9).
Her “Adolescence in ‘Absentia’” monologue focuses on the years she
spent in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War and the Israeli invasion of
Beirut in 1982. She recounts her apartment building rocking with each
bomb landing, of glass flying, and panic-stricken people rushing into
hallways for supposed protection. She tells of buildings torn in half, body
parts jutting from smoldering rubble, and the survivors’ shattered lives. She
connects this to the countless wars and destruction in New York, Kandahar,
Ramallah, Baghdad. A last image: suntanning on the beach when jets drop
bombs, obliterating soldiers: “Smoke and dust swirl and spiral as metal and
rock and bones fall onto my towel on the cement below” (ibid., 333). Her last
section, “Resisting Arrest: Arresting Resistance,” focuses on the notorious
Karakol Hbeesh, Al-Khayam, and Abu Ghraib prisons where people were
tortured and raped. She tells of how resistance is impossible under the
cruelty of torture and how there is no accountability and no possibility
for justice. She cites the Geneva Conventions, the UN Convention against
Torture, and Amnesty International, and how nothing seems to stop the
proliferation of torture in all the wars, including those carried out by the
United States. “It wouldn’t be so bad if the U.S. government hadn’t been
holding up a higher moral code and a superior sense of democratic process
and justice for the Iraqi people. In our quest for accountability,” she asks,
“how arresting will our RESISTANCE be?” (ibid., 341). Farah connects the
brutality of multiple sites of conflict, attempting to create an act of political
resistance and dissent. Her work attempts to understand the transnational
diasporic subject through performance-centered research, and to bring
humanity to our understanding of the suffering of people who must traverse
borders and survive countless wars.

Keeping Tradition Alive: TRAYF, A People:

A Mosaic Play, and Detour Guide

Lindsay Joelle’s play TRAYF explores the experiences of two Chabad

(Lubavitcher) Chasidic Jews living in Brooklyn in 1991. The Jews of the
Orthodox order, known as the Haredim, follow strict piety, “fastidious,
retro attire” of Poland, Ukraine, and the Carpathian regions of Hungary

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and Slovakia, religious dietary restrictions, and specifically prescribed

Sabbath rituals. This group also primarily speaks Yiddish at home and in
their daily communications, and they live in clustered communities. Their
traditionally large families are composed of arranged marriages for their
eligible children. The Chabad-Lubavitcher Hasidic community, however,
“missionizes energetically within the wider Jewish population, taking
their inspiration from their late leader, ‘the Rebbe,’ Menachem Mendel
Schneerson (1902-94)” (Lederhendler 2017, 267–8). The Rebbe (also
known as “the Lubavitcher Rebbe”) is viewed as the seventh and last leader
of the Hasidic Chabad-Lubavitch movement (Dine 2017, 776). As the
Messiah (or Moschiach), and his followers, “went about singing in public
places, ‘We want the Messiah now,’ in the hope that God would reveal to
the Rebbe his true identity as the hoped-for redeemer, to the consternation
of most of the other Hasidim and traditional Orthodox Rabbis” (Jacobs
2003). Chabad sponsors soup kitchens, charities, orphanages, and rehab
centers around the world and Schneerson was awarded the Congressional
Gold Medal for acts of charity. In order to “bring the messiah,” the Chabad
conducts significant outreach among unaffiliated and nonobservant Jews
with the hopes of increasing their numbers and to bring more Jews into
Orthodox practice (ibid., 776). One way this outreach occurs is through
what is called “Mitzvah Tanks,” or recreational vehicles that are “mobile
temples” in a secular world.

In much the same way that bloodmobiles roll into a shopping mall
and offer to check people’s blood pressure, Mitzvah tanks carry the
good news about Jewish observance, and the Jewish soul, in college
campuses and selected sites in midtown Manhattan. They approach
(some would say “accost”) men on 53rd Street and ask them, point-
blank but politely, if they are Jewish. Say “No” and the Lubavitchers
quickly move on. However, say “Yes” and the next question will
invariably be, “Have you put on tefillin today?” And pretty soon the
man, reluctant or not, finds himself inside the tank, winding leather
straps around his arms and reciting the ancient blessings. (Pinsker
2000)

A Mitzvah is considered both a precept (or commandment) and as a good

deed done for religious duty. Some contest the fact that mitzvot are meant
to be “good deeds”; rather they are considered the 613 mitzvot derived from
the Hebrew Bible. Therefore, a “Mitzvah tank” is a vehicle that provides

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spiritual outreach, beneficial acts, and an opportunity for Jews to “tip the
universal scale of justice toward good” (Joelle 2019, 11).
The two protagonists in TRAYF (which is a Yiddish word for things not
in accordance with Jewish dietary laws) are Zalmy and Shmuel, nineteen-
year-old males from the Crown Heights neighborhood in Brooklyn, New
York. They are dressed in the traditional black fedora with large brim turned
down in the front. They also wear yarmulkes, beards with no sidecurls,
white button-down shirts, tzitzit (or tassels) worn long, black suits, and
black shoes. Their white RV displays a painted sign stating, “Mitzvahs on
the Spot for People on the Go.” Zalmy (the navigator) and Shmuel (the
driver) are good hearted, fun loving young men who are as confused by
secular culture and music as they are about dating and women. In the tank
they listen to many Jewish artists including Mordechai Ben David, Avraham
Fried, Shlomo Carlebach, and the Miami Boys Choir.
They attempt to find fellow Jews by asking, “Excuse me, are you Jewish?”
but find little success until they meet a record producer named Jonathan.
Shmuel believes that Jonathan is a goy, or non-Jewish person, but Zalmy
is convinced he is a Yid, or a person of Eastern European Jewry. Jonathan
tells them that his father’s biological parents were Jewish, but his mother is
Catholic. This poses an immediate problem since Jewish identity is based
on matriliny, or the tracing of descent through the mother’s line of a family.
When Jonathan has difficulty articulating what makes a Jewish person
Jewish, Shmuel is even more suspect of Jonathan’s connection to Judaism.
Shmuel tells him that it does not matter what a person eats or how they pray
but that one is a Jew if they have a Jewish soul, and has a mother who is a
Jew. Shmuel tells Jonathan plainly that he is not a Jew.
Meanwhile, Zalmy and Shmuel’s families are trying to set them up with
potential wives. Naturally, they are nervous about speaking to women since
they have not had interactions with women outside of their own family.
The things they hear about what occurs on a wedding night are equally
bizarre, and their knowledge of sexuality is hilariously incorrect. The fact
that Jonathan has had multiple sexual partners is both astonishing and
bewildering to both of them (Figure 3).
Zalmy and Jonathan’s friendship grows, eclipsing Shmuel’s connection
with his best friend. Jonathan becomes absolutely committed to living his
life as a Hasidic Chabad-Lubavitcher, learning prayers, dressing in the
traditional ways, and eschewing much of his previous life to the chagrin
of his girlfriend, Leah, a Jewish woman who is tired of Jonathan’s religious
appropriation, making everything kosher, and unscrewing all the light bulbs

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Figure 3 TRAYF by Lindsay Joelle, Theater J, 2018. Tyler Herman (Zalmy) and Josh
Adams (Shmuel). Directed by Derek Goldman. Photograph by Teresa Wood.

in their apartment on Fridays. Leah, whose grandparents were Holocaust

survivors, and who is atheistic, says she had to endure the embarrassment of
growing up Jewish, which included attending over a hundred bar mitzvahs,
wearing hand-me-down clothing from her cousins, and attending Hebrew
school. She wants Shmuel to stop his mission converting Jonathan because
she believes Jonathan is diving into his Jewishness as a way of grieving
his father’s loss. Gradually, both Leah and Shmuel realize they have been
replaced as Zalmy and Jonathan have grown closer. Shmuel discovers that
Zalmy is creating secular music mix tapes and attending “scandalous”
Broadway plays like Fiddler on the Roof. As Jonathan goes “all in,” Zalmy’s
faith waivers. He quits the tank. Eventually, Zalmy and Shmuel reconnect,
and their friendship survives the test of secular ideology into their lives.
The play ends happily with the two men listening contently to the Miami
Boys Choir.
Joelle’s lighthearted play takes audiences into a very traditional society
and, by doing so, exposes them to a subculture that is rarely seen or
understood. While confronting serious issues such as Jewish identity and
intra-faith conflict, the play also provides a humorous portrait of two young
men navigating a confusing world together. It is rare to encounter characters
like Zalmy and Shmuel on American stages. To see this subculture with

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all its humor, love of Yiddish language and music, and the desire for the
spreading of mitzvahs, is a fascinating glimpse into a world that further
expands our understanding of yet another minority community living and
thriving in the United States.
L M Feldman’s play A People: A Mosaic Play is subtitled “For Anyone
Who Comes From a Long Line of Someones” (Feldman 2019, 1). Featuring
a cast of six to ten actors meant to play over fifty characters; the playwright
states that the production should feel like an experience, or special event,
to the audience. The play contains Jewish poems, prayers, songs, and
music. The script is nonlinear and reads more like a musical score than a
playscript. Audience interaction is part of the experience of the play. The
archetypal characters are from all walks of Jewish life—Klezmer ensembles,
Yeshiva Teachers, Hassids, Yiddishkeits, and Rabbis; however, there are also
famous personages such as Martin Buber, Anne Frank, Abraham Koralnik,
and even Moses. Characters marry, dance, debate the Torah, discuss the
stages of womanhood, philosophize, and sing strains of Bob Dylan songs.
Feldman attempts to create a massive tapestry of Jewish/Yiddish life, tying
together previous generations with current generations as a celebration of
all that these people have endured over the millennia. The characters also
debate what makes one Jewish and whether trauma is a defining identity.
They also fight over the status of Israel, and whether there should be a two-
state solution. This debate comes down to an existential fear of loss and
why some Jews struggle to be so observant while others are comfortable
foregoing traditions and cultural norms.
The second half of the play begins after the Yiddish world dissolves (ibid.,
57). Suddenly talk shifts to refugees, the building of walls, Islamophobia,
human rights, and Christmas. Many of the characters talk about the work
that it takes to be Jewish, to study Torah, and to live a traditional life in
order to retain the bonds with their faith and their people. Rituals permeate
the play, providing guideposts to usher the characters along through
their journey in the diaspora far from their homeland(s). Feldman’s play
encapsulates so much of the Jewish experience that it demands a cast of
diverse Jewish characters that can bring to light the complexity of this
culture. Plays like A People are extremely ambitious, yet deeply moving.
They are an attempt to reclaim, in drama, what might have been lost in
faith.
Karim Nagi’s tour de force, Detour Guide, is described as a “One Act
Musical” in which Nagi performs as a solo performer. Nagi, a multi-
instrumentalist performing and teaching artist, was born in Egypt to a

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Cairine father and an Alexandrine mother who later immigrated to the

United States when Nagi was a child. He has led the Sharq Arabic Music
Ensemble since 1999 and has taught at major educational institutions
across the United States as a drum and dance teacher. His expertise is in
Arab hand percussion, music ensemble performance, and Arab folk dance.
He has created several solo live performances including Arabized, Arabiqa,
Turbo Tabla, and Detour Guide.
The characters in the play—Guide, Tony Dabeek, Sheikha Iman, Hani,
Bashir, Marwa, and Amu Rezq—are all played by Nagi, who also sings,
dances, and plays all the instruments during the performance including
the tabla, bendir drum, finger cymbals, and buzuq. Nagi acts as a guide,
but rather one who is going to provide a different tour of the Middle East.
The new alternative trip around the Arab world he promises is one that
will refute stereotypes, defy audience expectations, and inform audiences
of what the actual lives of Arabs consist of, rather than the perverted and
distorted view that has been handed down to Americans from the media. As
someone who is representing what he calls “The Ministry of Detourism,” he
says he has experience in the region, and he has studied his own psyche. He
explains his life journey that took him from birth in Egypt to adolescence
in the United States where he had an unpronounceable foreign name and
a love for heavy metal, mix tapes, and music. His love for music changed
upon returning to Egypt and discovering the tabla/derbeke/dumbek drum
that is central to so much of Middle Eastern music. He says that discovery
of Arab music “re-rooted” and “rerouted” him. Instead of visiting well-
traveled tourist sites, he visited the places where people lived and worked,
and learned their music, songs, and dances instead. During the “detour” he
explains dancing a zikr at a saint’s street celebration, learning how to dabke
dance from a Levantine Arab friend named Tony, understanding envy from
a religious woman (sheikha), learning how to dance from the Nayli women
of Algeria, the music of Saudi Arabian drumming teams, and the tarab songs
of Syria. In each instance, he demonstrates his embodied knowledge of the
music and dance of the region, and by doing so, he introduces audiences to
Arab culture.
As Nagi inhabits the various characters, he tells us about the lives
of Arabs living in the Middle East and in the diaspora. He recounts his
Egyptian friend, Bashir, who immigrated to America but returned after
two years to start his own “Tuktuk” business (the tuktuk is an automotive
rickshaw). Bashir’s Syrian girlfriend, Marwa, was a great musician forced
to leave her musical instruments behind in Syria during the war and now

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works in a kitchen dreaming of playing her beloved instruments by using

kitchen utensils instead. He also inhabits the character of Amu Rezq and
performs a “raqs assaya” (cane dance) for the audience while wearing a
galabayya and kufiyya.
Nagi provides maps and graphs that demonstrate Arab American
census statistics and Syrian refugee numbers. His approach is multifaceted;
he entertains, he instructs, he confronts, and he elicits empathy for those
that are deemed by some Americans as too Muslim to travel and too Arab
to be trusted. The alternative view of the Middle East exposes audiences
to the pernicious nature of Orientalism, how Hollywood has distorted
the culture’s view of Middle Easterners, and how those distortions lead
to realistic consequences. He likens the Hollywood racist portrayals of
Middle Easterners to blackface, and he asks why Middle Easterners are not
expected to feel offense at ugly images of racist and ethnic stereotyping.
The images are seductive and dangerous, he says, and yet they are leading
to anti-Arab, anti-Muslim violence. Nagi concludes his performance by
playing a rhythm from each of the twenty-two nations that comprise the
so-called Arab world. His virtuosic display highlights the similarities and
the intricate differences between these rhythms. This dizzying display of
cultural knowledge provides audiences with a musical, and cultural, tour
of the region. Nagi humanizes the dehumanized and, in the process, he
entertains and instructs.

Searching for Roots: Baba and (dis)Place[d]

Egyptian American playwright Denmo Ibrahim’s 2014 play Baba is a solo

performance that is based on a true story involving an Egyptian American
man named Mohammed who is desperately attempting to take his daughter
for a trip to Egypt to visit his homeland. Ibrahim is the founding artistic
director of Mugwumpin, a performance group based in San Francisco, and
she is also the playwright of Ecstasy: A Water Fable. The first act of Baba is
set in 1983, where Mohammed is stuck in endless lines at governmental
offices trying to get his five-year-old daughter’s passport. He tries to keep
from utter boredom by telling jokes, speaking to other people in line, and
entertaining his young daughter. Repeatedly he is rebuffed by the officials
for not having the proper documentation. He tries to understand the
American system, but the entire bureaucracy confuses and eludes him. He
even breaks out into a hilarious rap song about how red tape defines the

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American system. He also muses on how he tried to “wash away the brown”
by changing his accent but it was not successful. Even his name “Mohammed
Abdullah Yusuf Omar Ahmed Tarik Karim” must be shortened simply to
“Moe.” Monologues flash back to how Mohammad came to America, first
found work, he and his wife went from eating traditional Egyptian meals
to eating American food and McDonald’s happy meals. He remembers
how he and his wife met, married, had their daughter Layla, and how their
marriage deteriorated after his wife endured several miscarriages. After
the marriage dissolved, Mohammed wanted custody of his daughter. The
audience learns that he is in the airport because he decided to kidnap Layla
and take her back to his native Egypt. The second act shows Layla is seen
three decades later traveling to Egypt to see her father. Her mother has
become an assimilated American while her father returned to Egypt and to
reclaim his original nationhood. Layla, on the other hand, is a hybrid of two
worlds who does not speak any Arabic since her parents only spoke English
with her. She is a first-generation Arab American who is expected to have
a completely different set of behavioral norms from the other girls around
her regarding dating, sex, drugs, and religion. She returns to Egypt to meet
her father and her family, both of whom she had lost touch with over the
years. She arrives at the gate calling out her father’s name with the sound of
the Islamic call to prayer in the background.
According to Hala Sayed, Ibrahim “used the transformative power of
her body and relied upon gesture and movement to perform a play that
covers thirty years and two continents and tells the story of both love and
forgiveness between an American-born daughter and the memory of her
estranged Egyptian immigrant father who failed to adjust to the New York
City life” (Sayed 2016, 22). A play like Baba is a Middle Eastern American
woman’s attempt to bridge the gap she felt between her and her immigrant
father, as well as a show that demonstrates her own longing for connection
to her parents’ homeland. By physically embodying her father herself,
Ibrahim creates a psychic and physical connection with her father, and her
cultural background. Playing both the father Mohammed and the daughter
Layla allows Ibrahim to fully embrace the parts of herself that desired this
connection, and to find an empathetic link to the man who would stop at
nothing to have his daughter in his life.
Debórah Eliezer is a writer, performer, playwright, and co-artistic
director of foolsFURY, a San Francisco-based performance ensemble. Her
play (dis)Place[d] is a one-woman performance about an Arab Jewish woman
whose father hails from an ancient Jewish community in Iraq. The play is a

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daughter’s reflection on her Iraqi-Jewish father’s life as he deteriorates with

dementia in a nursing home. There is also a nonhuman character, simply
titled “Land,” that sings a song of the Tigris and Euphrates in Arabic. We
learn that the father has two names: “Edward” (his given name) and “Uri”
(his “underground” name). In flashbacks we meet a younger Edward living
in Baghdad as a boy, with a beautiful and peaceful life. In 1941 Hitler tried
to influence Iraq and pro-Nazis took over. Then “the Farhoud,” or pogrom,
against Iraqi Jews took place. Edward recounts how, in the Jewish Quarter,
there were hangings, shootings, and murders of Jews. In forward flashes we
see The Daughter living in America, sharing a contemporary life with her
friends who have little understanding of The Daughter’s history, culture, or
memory. The Daughter tells her friends that her father was an Israeli spy,
one who even carried cyanide in his sock. She reminds them that Jews had
an ancient, 2,500-year history in Iraq, but that there are no more Jews there
now. Edward and his family survive the horrors of the Farhoud, where he
eventually fought to escape Iraq in order to arrive at the newly established
Israeli State. The character “Land” tells Edward that he may eventually avoid
the map, but the map will always find him. Gradually, The Daughter realizes
the painful, complicated, and disparate life her father lived—wondering
about how he chanted in the synagogue, how he spoke Arabic and Hebrew,
and how he might have killed other people as a spy. She tells him that each
part of her knowing him complicates the person she believes herself to be.
In another flashback, the Iraqi Jews struggle with the fact that the Iraq they
knew was changing, and that they gradually realize that they must leave.
One of them, Abu Hajjar, says that in the future Palestinian Arabs and Jews
might live in peace, God willing.
The final push factor for the Jews in Iraq came with the 1948 Arab-Israeli
War. Young Edward realizes that the Jews must immigrate to Palestine or
die in Iraq. Aba recounts how, once again, Jews were being stabbed to
death and buried in mass graves and how suddenly the Jews there realized
that Iraq was no longer their home. Edward becomes a member of the
Haganah—a Jewish paramilitary group in Mandatory Palestine between
1920 and 1948. Edward’s repeated saying was, “We were Israel before Israel.”
The Daughter tells her friends that she wants to write a play that will shed
light on Iraqi-Jewish history, but her friends find the notion ridiculous. In
trying to understand who she really is, “Land” tells her that the Middle
East is a long story of people being displaced from their homelands. Finally,
The Daughter realizes that she is not one thing—she is a mixture of all the
various influences and histories that make her who she is now.

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Eliezer attempts to reconstruct her father’s Iraqi-Jewish-Israeli history as

he himself is losing that history to his dementia. As another Middle Eastern
American of Arab Jewish parentage, the protagonist watches helplessly as
her father’s mind deteriorates. In (dis)Place[d] Eliezer captures that liminal
state where Middle Eastern Americans live their lives in America, while
knowing their parents lived long and eventful lives filled with tragedy,
displacement, war, and loss. Her desperation to understand her father’s
history before he is gone forever is captured in flashbacks and flashforwards
that contrast her peaceful, comfortable life in America with the turbulent
and violent life he lived in Iraq after the pogroms, in Palestine as a soldier,
in Israel after statehood, and as an immigrant to America. In this deeply
personal play, Eliezer reclaims her history and creates a loving tribute to her
dying father in the process.

Diaspora and Its Discontents: Stunning, Deep

Cut, and The Man in the Sukkah

Of course, there are those diaspora plays that highlight the negative cultural
aspects of certain Middle Eastern American communities. In plays like
David Adjmi’s Stunning and Karim Alrawi’s Deep Cut, the negative social
constructs some diasporic Middle Eastern American subjects endure
are exposed for dramatic purpose. These plays highlight the traditional
norms and overbearing patriarchy that can be found in some Middle
Eastern American communities. Specifically, they focus on how females
are directly affected when they grow up in conservative communities that
have overwhelming expectations that are brought to bear on young women.
In plays like these that explore the discontent suffered by women in these
communities, the constricting religious and filial expectations are examined
and dramatized in order to highlight the complicated negotiation women
face living in religiously conservative cultures.
Playwright David Adjmi was raised in the close-knit Syrian Jewish
community in the Midwood section of Brooklyn where he attended the
local yeshiva. Adjmi, who calls himself “a gay, eccentric, arty person,” felt
“Other within this Other” growing up there (Cote 2009). The Syrian Jewish
community of Midwood, with an estimated population of 75,000 people, is
considered the largest Syrian Jewish community in the world (Myers 1992).
This diasporic community is dominated by Orthodox Sephardic Jews, most
of whom emigrated from Syria. The community there was once dominated

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by Ashkenazi Jews, but as they steadily moved to Long Island and New
Jersey, the Sephardim became the prevailing population (Friedman 2010).
This group speak English colored by Arabic expressions, and they consume
Arabic food such as kibbe and saubousac. In 1992 the Assad government in
Syria lifted a travel ban imposed on Syria’s Jews to allow them to immigrate.
Since that time the Midwood community has gradually embraced the
Sephardic community and integrated them into their fold.
The play Stunning is the story of two couples living in Midwood. Adjmi
writes the neighborhood is a “very affluent, largely Jewish area; one that
exerts a centripetal force on the people who live there” (5). The main
couple in the play are the Schwecky family—Lily, a sixteen-year-old bride,
and Ike, her mid-forties husband. Lily’s sister Shelly is married to JoJo, a
thirty-something entrepreneur who sells JoJo Jeans. The other pivotal
character is Blanche Nesbitt, a forty-something African American woman
who is employed as the Schwecky’s housekeeper. From the beginning we
see that Lily and Shelly are at the mercy of their husbands, who are the
only ones working outside the home. The young women are preoccupied
by fashion, popular culture, and community gossip. By contrast, the older
men are obsessed with work and money. Lily and Ike’s home is comprised
of an all-white minimalism with reflective surfaces. Blanche tells Lily that
despite holding a PhD in semiotics, she has taken the housekeeping job to
pay off student loans. Blanche also tells Lily she doesn’t look Jewish, but
rather Middle Eastern, which Lily discards as the result of overtanning on
vacation in Aruba. Lily tells Blanche she’s white, demonstrating that she
does not fully understand her own ethnic background.
During the play we learn of Ike and Jojo’s boorish behavior with one
another and their dominating patriarchal views of their wives. With
Blanche’s help Lily gradually realizes how trapped she is in a marriage she
was destined for since the age of twelve, and how she might have feelings
for Blanche. As Lily and Blanche grow closer to one another, Ike feels more
threatened. Through her affair with Blanche, Lily realizes her Sephardic
roots, her sexual desire, and how her family and community have cornered
her into a loveless marriage where her primary function is to procreate and
raise her children. When Lily gives Blanche $8,000 to pay off her student
loans, and when Blanche makes it clear that she will not run away with
Lily, the truth about Blanche’s history is exposed by Ike. The play then takes
a dark turn where Lily remains with Ike and, after being attacked by Ike
and almost drowned in a bucket of white paint, Blanche realizes she has no
outlet other than suicide.

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Adjmi’s play does not deeply explore the diasporic condition of these
Syrian Jewish characters, but he does touch upon the notions of whiteness,
Jewishness, and Middle Eastern heritage that serve as a backdrop for the play.
He adds what he calls “Syrian-American Terms” throughout their dialogue,
using words like “dibeh” (slang for idiot), “ibe” (a comment on shameful
behavior), “shoof/shoofie” (a command to look somewhere), among others.
The main theme is the crushing patriarchy in this community where some
young girls are married and are expected to produce large families without
question. Lily’s awakening due to Blanche’s tutelage and love opens her eyes
to a wider world that she has never experienced. Unlike other plays that
celebrate minority Middle Eastern communities, a play like Stunning takes
a critical view of this small, tight-knit Syrian Jewish community, telling a
disturbing tale about the negative aspects that circumscribe women’s lives
there.
Playwright and novelist Karim Alrawi’s play Deep Cut begins in a
pleasant holiday home on an island of the Pacific Northwest. Jennifer,
an English woman, is engaged to Andrew, an American academic. Their
friend, Bertrand, is a wise-cracking multilingual professor who banters
endlessly with his friends. A young doctor named Michael Chan arrives to
work with his professor, Andrew. Chan was a doctor in China during the
Tiananmen Square protests where he cared for the wounded. When he was
pressed by authorities to give names of those he treated he refused, and he
was later mercilessly tortured by Chinese government officials. Andrew’s
daughter, Farah, is the child of Andrew’s first marriage to his Sudanese wife,
Nadia, who he met living in Egypt. After Nadia’s death, Andrew and Farah
moved to the United States and settled in Washington State.
The play centers on a moral argument about when it is necessary for one
to intervene while living in a foreign country and witnessing an unethical
act. As the play unfolds, the audience discovers that Andrew paid for a
clitoridectomy for his then servant’s daughter. Farah, haunted by nightmares
about the girl being circumcised, reveals that she, too, had been partially
circumcised as a girl at her mother’s directive. This revelation leads to a
conflict between the characters where they debate the merits of intervening
in another culture’s practices versus remaining passive out of respect for
that culture. Andrew believes it is not the role of outsiders to intervene in
other cultural practices, be they torture of doctors by Chinese officials, or
circumcisions by traditional practitioners. For Farah and Michael, Andrew’s
silence is assent; yet for Andrew remaining silent is one way of extending
cultural respect. Farah confronts Andrew, blaming him for his passivity in

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the face of the trauma she endured in the decades since the clitoridectomy.
Meanwhile, Michael cannot tolerate Andrew’s belief that he would have no
right to stop Michael’s torture had he seen it take place while in China. The
final reckoning outside under the tree where Nadia is buried is one of deep
anger and forgiveness. Farah and Michael find solace only after they enter
the sound and swim with the Orcas under the moonlight.
Alrawi’s play confronts the trauma of second-generation Middle Eastern
Americans coping with the suffering they endured living in a place where
ancient traditions dominate daily existence. Farah and Michael’s abuse
overseas complicates their attempts at creating a normal life in America.
For Michael, Andrew’s belief in a hands-off approach is a matter of
ethical malfeasance. Farah believes Andrew’s actions were a fundamental
betrayal of the father-daughter’s sacred bond. Where Andrew believes that
American interference overseas has led to too much war, colonialism, and
oppression, Michael and Farah see a perfidy of basic humanity. What began
as an enjoyable social gathering descends into an evening of uncovering
past sins, exposing terrible deeds, and discovering truths that were meant
to be buried forever. Alrawi forces audiences to confront the complicated
moral dilemmas they most likely would rather not think about. However,
a play like Deep Cut asks how far any of us would go if faced with the same
complicated moral conundrums faced by his protagonists.
Deborah Yarchun’s drama The Man in the Sukkah takes place in the
year 2000 during the last three days of Sukkot (Festival of Shelters or
Tabernacles). Sukkot is one of three biblically based pilgrimage holidays
as thanksgiving for the fruit harvest. The play is set in Greenwood, South
Carolina, on a once-thriving slave plantation in a place known as “Jew’s
Land” where dandelion weeds and trees infested with laurel wilt cover
the land. The four characters Aviva (14), Elaine (39), Harris (40), and
Nate (36) are interconnected through their family history and Jewish
traditions. A sukkah, or hand-built hut with three walls, stands in the
backyard of the Harris home with a menorah, a Kiddush cup, and other
Jewish ceremonial items dangling from the ceiling. Aviva has planted
herself in the sukkah with only a blanket and candy. Elaine and Harris,
her new foster parents, are having a very difficult time adjusting to Aviva’s
anger toward them. Elaine is haunted by dreams of her father, who was
interned as a boy in the Buchenwald Concentration Camp; however,
now she has nightmares of her brother being interned there and being
executed by a guard. Her father had achromatopsia, which made it
possible to see the red in the Nazi guards’ armbands. Her father’s death

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anniversary coincides with Sukkot for the first time in twenty years, and
the trees named after her missing brother Nate are diseased with laurel
wilt. Elaine collects broken birds, while Harris (who is color-blind) finds
this habit disturbing. Aviva tells Elaine and Harris there is a man in the
sukkah, who turns out to be the long-lost Nate. Harris believes Nate killed
Elaine’s father, and was responsible for a little girl’s disappearance in the
community. Elaine has sublimated her trauma, which appears only when
she recalls her past and leaves dark red bloody crescent-shaped marks in
her skin from her fingernails.
Meanwhile, Nate and Harris begin a dangerous relationship, cutting
dead trees with axes in the forest together, while Elaine attempts to grow
closer to Aviva through old Hebrew songs and reciting family names pulled
from the Tzedakah box. Elaine views parenting Aviva as a test of her faith
while Harris views Nate’s presence as a test of his fatherhood. As Nate and
Aviva conspire to run away together, Elaine evicts Nate from her home.
Harris, discovering Nate’s plan, takes him to the woods with an axe for
a final reckoning. Aviva runs away but is found by Elaine. They share a
last song together and let a red-winged blackbird fly from its cage. After a
violent fight, Nate refuses to kill Harris. Nate flees and never returns. The
final image is of Aviva, Elaine, and Harris finally sitting together in the
sukkah with a vibrant sunrise washing over them.
Yarchun’s play, set on a piece of land that had been inhabited by Jews after
the Revolutionary War, by white slave owners on plantations where Black
slaves were incarcerated there, and a land soaked with blood from the Civil
War, creates a haunted landscape for all of these characters embodying their
own traumas. The time—Sukkot—which coincides with the anniversary
of the death of a Holocaust survivor, creates the backdrop that sets the
menacing tone for characters trapped in a desperate struggle for the present.
Elaine’s post-trauma as a daughter of a survivor of Buchenwald Camp and
Aviva’s trauma as a young Jewish girl desperately trying to find her place
in the world intersect at the place where Harris is struggling with his test
of fatherhood. Yarchun’s drama ties together ancient names of lost souls,
haunting Hebrew songs, a recollection of the wandering Jews searching for
the Promised Land, and the hope for a better future in the diaspora for a
new family. With a deep pathos and understanding for all her characters,
Yarchun creates a world where healing can finally replace the suffering that
has crippled her characters’ lives. The play ends with a beautiful sunrise
and a family finally reconciling their troubled past. This metaphor of new
beginnings provides a hopeful future for a community that is dealing with

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the horrific history of the Holocaust, and the inevitable loss of the survivors
of that unimaginable event.
Diaspora plays contend with the notion that Middle Eastern Americans
are inextricably tied to their countries of origin, yet they are expected to
eschew their connection to these places in order to be fully accepted in
their new homelands. These plays address the manner by which American
theatre and Hollywood tend to Orientalize actors and Middle Eastern
cultures, how Middle Eastern Americans contend with the aftermath of
catastrophic events like the European Holocaust, the Islamic Revolution in
Iran, the persecution of religious minorities in Iraq, and the uprisings of the
so-called Arab Spring. These works take a searing look at the state of those
in the diaspora, contending with momentous events that preceded them
and attempting to create a better and more hopeful future going forward.

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C Chapter 5
PLAYS SET IN THE HOMELAND

Many Middle Eastern American plays and musicals are set in the
homeland. This dramaturgy is the desire to recreate the homeland they left,
or the homeland from which their ancestors emigrated. Some take place
in the distant past while others are dealing with issues that are currently
relevant. Regardless of the setting, the characters are in that place and the
action is rooted specifically within a time period the playwright wishes to
explore. This reimagining of a lost homeland or of a homeland that is being
destroyed, occupied, or under siege is an attempt by these playwrights to
reclaim a lost history or heritage. These plays are also usually political since
they attempt to address issues including colonialism, occupation, genocide,
and life under dictatorships.

Plays Exploring the Refugee Crisis: Urge

for Going and Not My Revolution

Mona Mansour’s Urge for Going is part of “The Vagrant Trilogy” she
wrote which also includes the plays The Hour of Feeling and The Vagrant.
While many writers have approached the situation of Palestinians living in
Palestine, few have dramatized the situation of millions of Palestinians living
in refugee camps scattered throughout the Middle East. These permanent
residences in exile began following the suppression of the Arab uprisings
of 1936–9 but were hastened by the founding of the State of Israel in 1948,
and with the subsequent wars between Israelis and Palestinians. According
to BBC News, the Palestinians comprise “one of the biggest displaced
populations in the world” (Asser 2010). The resulting Israeli contention
that all refugees should relinquish the right of return has only aggravated
an already desperate situation. According to the United Nations Relief and
Works Agency (UNRWA), there were 475,075 Palestinian refugees living
in 12 camps in Lebanon as of 2019. Palestinians in Lebanon are denied the
right to work in certain professions, are unable to claim the same rights as
Middle Eastern American Theatre

other foreigners living and working in Lebanon, and often live in abject
poverty (unrwa​.o​rg). According to Al Jazeera, “Today, Palestinians in
Lebanon continue to suffer from draconian measures which the Lebanese
state claims are there to prevent them from becoming permanent guests”
(aljazeera​.c​om 2009). To make matters worse, there have been massacres
of these refugees in their Lebanese camps such as the Sabra and Shatila
massacre in 1982, the massacre of civilians during the Black September war
in 1970, the deaths during the Nahr al-Bared Camp conflict in 2007, and
the suicide attack on the Burj el-Barajneh camp in 2015 to name only a few
(Figure 4).
The main character in Urge for Going, Jamila, is a seventeen-year-old
Palestinian girl who dreams of a life far from the squalor of the Palestinian
refugee camp she inhabits. She looks up to her father, Adham, who left
Palestine to pursue his studies as a young man in England. Her mother Abir
and her uncles Ghassan and Hamzi are all doing their best living under
the most difficult circumstances. Jamila’s brother, Jul, who was beaten by
Lebanese soldiers, and who is mentally handicapped because of it, is her
only confidant. They are living in limbo since they cannot fully integrate
into the Lebanese state as citizens, and they cannot return to Palestine.

Figure 4 Urge for Going by Mona Mansour, Golden Thread Productions, 2013.
Terry Lamb (Adham), Camila Betancourt Ascencio (Jamila), and Tara Blau (Abir).
Directed by Evren Odcikin. Photograph by David Allen Studio.

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The play opens with Palestinians themselves debating how the crisis began
with each citing historical facts to prove their positions. Urge for Going also
focuses on the urge to flee the camps for a better life elsewhere. This urge
to leave is strong, given that life in the refugee camp is untenable: from lack
of sanitation and electricity to beatings from Lebanese soldiers that have
left family members physically and mentally injured. The only clear way
out for this family is through academic opportunity, yet even Jamila knows
that no matter how much one masters their intellect, without innate talent
she will not succeed. For Jamila’s father, Adham, the opportunity to escape
came when he was invited to London in 1967 to lecture on Wordsworth’s
“Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the
Banks of the Wye During a Tour. July 13, 1798.” Although the lecture’s
reception grants Adham a fellowship to study in London, the defeat of the
Arab armies in 1967 forces his return to a homeland that is ultimately lost,
leaving him and his wife as refugees in neighboring Lebanon. For his young
daughter, Jamila, who was born in the camps, however, the opportunity
arrives thirty-six years later when she tests for her baccalaureate. She
passes and, unlike her father who returned with the hopes that someday
his Palestinian homeland might be liberated, and he might be allowed to
return, she decides to leave the camp and forge a better life elsewhere. The
play ends with Jul and Jamila reciting statistics about the painful situation
Palestinian refugees face. Therefore, the family in Mansour’s drama, like
many Palestinian families living as refugees since 1948 and 1967, have a
Hobson’s choice: either stay put in their refugee camps or rely on the hope
that a better life exists elsewhere. Mansour allows audiences to take a
moment to empathize with those Palestinians who are living in the ongoing
purgatory known as exile.
Elizabeth Huffman’s play Not My Revolution deals specifically with the
Syrian Civil War through the eyes of a displaced woman who, in her own
way, finds a deep connection with France’s Marie Antoinette. Huffman, a
Syrian American writer and performer, plays all of the characters in this
monodrama which begins with Displaced Woman in the lobby of the
theatre wearing tattered burlap clothing and asking audience members
where she can find refuge in multiple languages: Arabic, English, and
French. The setting is comprised of a small wooden table, two wooden
chairs, a platform, a folding chair, an old used card table, and a hard box.
She tells the audience she is not a beggar, but rather an educated woman
who was once living like a queen but is now left to roam the world pleading
for food and money.

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The opening scene is set in what Huffman calls “A Five Star Ghetto
in Istanbul” with a small bed, her children’s picture, and a table with a
teacup and a saucer. She is visibly upset by a verbal assault she suffered on
the street outside and she performs a small ritual with her scarf, lantern,
thermos, towel, and lotion. As she prays, she hears Marie Antoinette’s
voice overhead. She is interrupted by rats that run through the shelter and
over her feet. She tells the audience she is not afraid to die, only to die
without honor. The Displaced Woman living in her rodent-infested shelter
is meant to mirror the horrid conditions Marie Antoinette experienced
in prison while awaiting her execution. Both women lived lives of luxury
before their respective revolutions. The Displaced Woman was married in
Syria to a man named Shadi, and together they were successful art dealers
under the Assad regime. They lived well and had two children named Rami
and Nina. They vacationed in Europe and the United Arab Emirates, and
she lived like royalty with servants, despite her mother-in-law’s constant
verbal abuse.
The Displaced Woman tells of how she and her husband were caught
up in the Syrian street protests that preceded the war and, when violence
broke out, her husband was killed. A young protester named Adila reminds
the woman that people are suffering, living on less than two dollars a
day, and that they are demanding the fall of the regime and the release of
tortured political prisoners. The Displaced Woman and Adila are captured
by government forces and taken to prison. Huffman’s script then alternates
between the actual words of Antoinette and The Displaced Woman’s
monologues.
After being released, The Displaced Woman is given money and told she
must leave Syria immediately. She is forced to leave without her children;
all she can take with her are some jewels, clothes, her passport, a picture
of her children, and her mother’s teacup and saucer. She is taken to Beirut
and then smuggled to Turkey. Her plans to escape to Europe are thwarted
when she is robbed and forced to go to a refugee camp where she lives in
squalor with no privacy, with disease, and little food or clean water. She
meets a motherless child and considers taking care of him as her own but
realizes she can barely care for herself. She discovers that she is living in the
same lawless and brutal situation Antoinette found herself under the Reign
of Terror in France. She feels guilt over her lost children and for leaving
the child in the camp, but she resolves to start a school for the children in
the camp, making a contribution with the little time she has left. The play
ends with captions that contain statistics of those killed during the Reign of

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Terror, those killed during the Syrian Civil War, and the number of people
forcibly displaced from their countries due to wars and famine.
Huffman’s drama connects two completely different women from
two disparate eras yet finds the brutal commonalities between them. By
highlighting the plight of the Syrian people who have suffered in a horrific
civil war, Huffman attempts to humanize refugees and she also humanizes
the Syrian people suffering from almost a decade of war. Few American
plays have dealt with this topic. Huffman’s play reminds viewers that the
refugees we see on the news suffering in squalid camps throughout the
Middle East, the Aegean, and Europe came from all walks of life. Huffman
confronts her audience from the moment they enter the theatre when
audience members think they are dealing with a beggar from the streets,
to the end of the play where we see a single refugee woman who resolves to
make the world better despite living in conditions few could ever imagine.
Huffman asks audiences to make an empathetic connection with those who
are living in the most difficult conditions imaginable at home and abroad.

Plays of the Holocaust and Plays Set in Israel and Palestine:

The Zionists, Abraham’s Daughters, and Food and Fadwa

Zohar Tirosh-Polk’s play The Zionists is set in 1930s–1940s Warsaw, Poland,

Palestine, and Israel; 2006 in Jerusalem; and 2007–8 Jerusalem, Tel Aviv,
and New York City. The play centers around the Goldenberg family living
in Tel Aviv, their relatives in Poland living under Nazi persecution, and
contemporary Jewish settlers in the West Bank. The trans-generational
trauma is first experienced in Poland during the pogroms, then in Israel
during the early days of the founding of the Israeli State, then later during
the war in Lebanon, and finally in the present day. The female protagonists—
Sonya in the past and Sheila in the present—are the ones that carry the
brunt of the family’s pain. Sonya Eylon (née Goldenberg) opens the play
with a letter she is writing to her Tateh explaining why she is leaving
Poland. In it, she explains what it means to be a Jew and a Zionist. She
reasons that “the way I see it, being a Jew means one must also be a Zionist.
It is the same thing” (Tirosh-Polk 2018, 84; emphasis in original). In her
mind, the Mashiach has arrived in the form of Theodor Herzl, the father of
contemporary Zionism. Sonya leaves Poland for the land of Israel, leaving
behind her brothers Morris and Shemel (who is crippled). She arrives in
Israel and begins working at a kibbutz where “everything is shared,” even her

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husband Menachem. She says the Arabs make them feel unwelcomed, and
the British make their lives miserable. Back in Poland, Morris and Shemel
are in the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Nazi purge is underway. Morris tries to
convince his crippled brother that it is better that he, not the Nazis, kill him.
He gives him a poison pill and tells him to swallow it. When Morris comes
to Israel he is changed, unable to find his way in the new land, and unable to
relate to the new Israelis he meets. Sonya must contend with his news that
none of their family survived the Holocaust. Morris, unable to find his place
in the new Jewish state, leaves Israel permanently for Argentina.
Sheila, Sonya’s daughter, an ex-teacher turned painter, is racked with
anxiety. Her daughter Dory and son Boaz are both serving their compulsory
military duty in the Israeli Defense Forces. Her husband, Avi, is a psychologist
but all his training cannot help his wife who obsessively carries their son
Asaf ’s ashes in a box. Asaf was killed in the Israeli-Lebanese war, and Boaz is
accused of murdering a Palestinian villager. Dory hates the occupation and
her brother’s part in it, but Boaz contends he rightfully killed the Palestinian
man. After a trial, Boaz is acquitted of the murder. Dory has lost patience
with the Israeli State’s reasoning for the occupation and for the wars it has
waged, especially with using the Holocaust as a justification.

DORY: All I’m saying is that if I hear one more person bring up the
Holocaust as an excuse I’ll explode, that’s all!
BOAZ: It’s not an excuse. It happened.
DORY: Exactly, happened, past tense, it’s over. Did you hear about Burg’s
book The Holocaust is Over; We Must Rise From Its Ashes?
BOAZ: Well, you know, some people say that a trauma like that would
take decades—
DORY: It’s been decades, it’s fucking time they put it/
AVI: centuries to heal.
DORY: Sorry, I don’t have centuries. I want to live my life. (ibid., 21)

After his acquittal, Boaz decides to visit the settlements in the West Bank
where he befriends another Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) ex-soldier named
Yoram, a Russian-Moroccan-Jew who served in the same unit. Yoram has
no sympathy for the Palestinians. He tells Boaz, “I would kill one every day
if they let us. I have no problem just (he motions) taking one out” (ibid.,
32). Boaz decides to leave the army and live with his friend Yoram in the
settlements. Yoram says the settlements are home, far from Tel Aviv and “all
the sinners.” We find later that the band we have seen throughout the play

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called The Zionists is one that includes Yoram and Boaz wearing yarmulkes
and carrying guns. They scream “I’m HERE” over and over during their
rock songs.
Sheila, meanwhile, presents a lecture about flowers found in the area,
to the Bereaved Families Circle which is a group of Palestinian and Israeli,
Jewish and Arab bereaved mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, children, and
grandchildren. She speaks about her loss of Asaf, her grief and inability
to paint, and her gradual healing which allows her to pick up her brush
and paint again. She tells them, “It took me a long time to understand
that we are all bereaved. I realized that if I could find the courage to join
this Circle, maybe together we could transcend something, the pain, the
perpetual pain” (ibid., 83). Dory leaves Israel to live in New York City with
her husband Dan. In her final speech, she explains how she envisions her
“New Altneuland”:

DORY: Maybe there will be bridges instead of walls

Maybe we’ll learn to forgive
Maybe there will be no more fighting
Maybe we’ll learn to share.
Maybe there will be— (ibid., 270)

Her writing is interrupted by the cry of her baby at the end of the play.
Tirosh-Polk’s play attempts to bridge the divide between the Holocaust,
the establishment of the State of Israel, and the tragedies of the occupation.
By rooting the play in the condition of Jews being murdered by the Nazis in
Poland, she provides the psychological motivation for the Zionist claim to
Palestine, but she also contrasts the Zionist ideal of “A land without people
for a people without a land,” with the crushing weight of the realities of
the creation of a state at the cost of lives from all parts of the region. Sonya
represents the Aliyah, or immigration of the Jews to Israel, while Sheila is
meant to be the Sabra, or the Jew born in Israel. The contrast between them
is stark; Sonya believes that there is little time for grief and tears when one
is fighting to establish a state in a place where everyone is hostile. Sonya is
devastated by her son’s loss in Lebanon, her other son’s actions in the West
Bank, and her daughter’s lack of faith in the Zionist project altogether. The
three generations of women contend with their own sense of grief and
loss, and the Zionist ideal means different things to each of them. What is
clear is that they have all suffered and that the future that Boaz and Yoram
believe in—the settlement of the West Bank—is the new Zionist ideal.

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The titular Zionists of the play are now the militant, metal-rock loving,
gun-toting soldiers who believe that the settlement of Judea and Samaria
is their new birthright no matter the cost. For Sheila and Dory, however,
the cost of losing family is too high a price to pay for Sonya’s vision of a
homeland.
Emma Goldman-Sherman’s play Abraham’s Daughters is set in
Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Nablus in 1993. The play revolves around Abraham
Abramowitz, a seventy-year-old Jewish American man from Queens
who fought for the United States in the Second World War, then for the
Haganah during the 1948 war. His forty-year-old daughter Maxine and her
eighteen-year-old daughter Racie all live in Long Island, New York. The
other characters are Huda, a 44-year-old Palestinian Muslim woman, and
her 19-year-old daughter Amel. The play opens during the first Palestinian
intifada with a horrific scene of Abraham bleeding and dying on the ground
surrounded by Maxine, Racie, Huda, and Amel. His bloody kufiyah is
handled with care as the characters reveal their histories.
The story flashes back to earlier that summer when Abraham, Maxine,
and Racie are burying Abraham’s wife Sarah, while Huda is simultaneously
burying her mother, Haajar, with her daughter Amal by her side. Their
normal Tel Aviv day is interrupted by Huda, who arrives at their door with
a request to meet with Abraham. Huda tells Maxine that she is Abraham’s
illegitimate daughter when he was younger and loved her mother Haajar.
Maxine is completely opposed to Abraham meeting Huda. Huda’s family
were displaced from their home in Jerusalem and eventually ended up in a
refugee camp in Nablus. Huda tells Maxine that it was not strange to grow
up without a father, but rather to grow up without a country. When Racie
is taken aback by the militaristic feel she gets walking in the streets of Tel
Aviv, Maxine tells her that everyone must defend themselves because they
are surrounded by Arabs. Racie does not want to live in a world filled with
guns and does not feel safer in Israel because of them. Abraham starts the
play with fierce pride for Israel because he first arrived in 1946 and fought
in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Abraham believes that, despite spending his
entire life in America, he fought for Israel and it is his land which he won.
For her part, Racie is more interested in the freedom in Israel and for the
ability to live her life openly as an outed lesbian.
Abraham admits to Maxine and Racie he did once have a love affair with
a Palestinian woman named Haajar Barakat, and that it was possible that
Huda is his daughter. Abraham, who keeps referring to himself as “Father
of Nations,” is very welcoming when Huda arrives, leaving Maxine to deal

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with her anger and fear about the woman who claims to be her stepsister.
Huda recounts the sorrowful story of when her family was forced from
their home in Jerusalem only to find themselves in a refugee camp in
Beirut, then to Damascus, Amman, and finally to another refugee camp in
Nablus where every day is worse than the day before. Amel, who like Racie,
is a peace maker; she believes Israelis and Palestinians must recognize and
live in peace with one another. They eat dinner together and Huda invites
Abraham, Maxine, and Racy to her home in Nablus the following day.
Arriving in Nablus, Maxine is shaken by the experience of having to
travel through an Israeli checkpoint. They arrive during “Closure” or the
Palestinian protests that shuts down their towns in opposition to the Israeli
occupation. When Huda tells Abraham of her five sons, he is initially
excited to meet his grandchildren; however, he learns that all five have
been killed by Israeli forces at different times in their young lives. Racie
and Amel form a fast friendship while Abraham and Maxine learn more
about Amel’s difficult life in the refugee camp. Abraham wishes for peace,
and Huda feels reborn now that she has found her father. Dancing with her
father, Huda feels a great release, but it is short lived. When Israeli soldiers
fight with Palestinian children in the camp, Abraham tries to get between
them and stop the violence. He is shot dead. The women gather around
him, comforting him in his final moments. Abraham’s Daughters retells
the biblical story of Abraham and his two wives Hagar and Sarah, set in a
contemporary Israeli and Palestinian setting. It is only in later age, when
Abraham returns to Israel and discovers he is the father of a Palestinian
woman living under occupation, that he understands the true nature of
the occupation and how it has severely curtailed the lives of Palestinians
living in refugee camps. All the characters in Abraham’s Daughters are
protagonists, but they are victims of a history that left the Israeli people
victorious occupiers, and Palestinian people as the occupied living on their
own land.
The play Food and Fadwa by Lameece Issaq and Jacob Kader is also set in
Palestine during the occupation. The pall of occupation weighs heavily on
the characters, who reside in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The two “sites”
the play inhabits—Bethlehem and New York City—represent the ancestral,
and the adopted, homeland of the characters. Within the dynamic of the
play, occupation in Palestine equals stagnation and death, while exile in
New York offers the promise of fame, fortune, and escape.
As with other Middle Eastern American plays, food plays a central role
in Issaq and Kader’s drama. Along with the Arabic language, the foods

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prepared by Arabs are another hallmark of what defines Arab culture. Issaq
and Kader center their protagonist’s life on her love of cooking, eating, and
serving food. Fadwa’s only escape is her imaginary cooking program, in
which she makes a range of Arabic dishes from Baba Ghanoush to Tabbouli.
Her loving descriptions of the foods, and her brief explanations about how
to prepare them, bring levity to a story that, despite its comedic moments,
has all the weight of a classic drama. For Fadwa, food is everything: “No
food, no respect. Bad food, bad reputation. You will be the laughingstock
of Bethlehem. It is vicious” (Issaq and Kader 2014, 143). Food also has
negative powers as well. For Fadwa, the food she prepares takes on the
mood she finds herself feeling. All of this makes her relationship with her
cousin Hayat more complicated since she not only stole her lover Youssif
away from her but has also perverted traditional Arabic recipes in order
to create “fusion” cuisine. Hayat has made a fortune with her New York
restaurant, her cuisine, and her cookbooks. For Fadwa, Hayat’s perversion
of traditional Arab dishes is offensive—and her taking Youssif away from
her is repugnant. Like Palestine and New York, Fadwa and Hayat are
opposites of one another—the old world and the new world, the rural and
the cosmopolitan, the traditional and the contemporary—and there is little
common ground between them. It is not only food that separates them but
also the fundamental question of which life is best for the ailing Baba. For
Fadwa, uprooting Baba and taking him to New York is like uprooting an
ancient olive tree from the earth.
The dichotomy of rootedness versus exile is a major theme of the play.
For many Middle Easterners, leaving and starting a new life overseas was the
only option worth considering. However, for those Middle Easterners who
stayed behind, there is great pride in remaining in the face of the difficulties
of life in countries scarred by perpetual wars and occupations. For, if food
is the cultural backdrop for the play, occupation becomes the political one.
The checkpoints, summary searches, and seizures, as well as the “separation
wall,” all create a sense of imprisonment for the characters. In the play, the
characters mock the separation wall with a humor that is part cynicism, part
absurdism, and mostly anger. The wall, which is three times longer and 14
feet higher than the Berlin Wall, is called a “separation fence” by Israel and
an “apartheid wall” by some Palestinians. Like the occupation itself, the wall
becomes both a source of division and frustration between Palestinians and
Israelis. The situation turns even darker when the characters are confronted
with a curfew that traps them in untenable conditions and leads to Baba’s
disappearance.

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Perhaps the greatest indignity that Fadwa and her family must endure
is the loss of their precious olive groves. Olives are considered one of the
most important symbols of Palestinian culture, and the decimation of
many olive groves during the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been a great
issue of contention, especially with Israeli settlers living on the West Bank.
The olive tree is a metaphor in the play for both the Faranesh family and
the Palestinian people. Baba tells the story of Adam and Eve’s expulsion
from the Garden of Eden, and how the Archangel Gabriel gifted Adam
with an olive tree, instructing him to plant and harvest it as a panacea for
all afflictions. Baba, whose actual name is Zein, spent his life as an olive
farmer, creating olive oil. For Baba, the olive tree is blessed. He tells Fadwa,
“To appreciate God’s great bounty, simply look, Fadwa, at the blessed olive
tree. Its very branches a symbol for peace, its fruit a holy gift” (ibid., 182).
During the curfew, the characters turn to olive oil for survival, since they
have no more water available to them. Baba’s entire existence is tied to the
olive groves; when they are destroyed, so is he. Baba’s death beneath an
olive tree is a fitting end to his life—he was born beneath an olive tree and
he died beneath one as well. Everything changes by play’s end—Baba has
died, Emir and Dalal leave with Youssif and Hayat to New York City to
start a new restaurant together, and Fadwa remains in Palestine with her
old aunt Samia. The olive saplings that are left for Fadwa are a promise for
a new future. Fadwa, like many Palestinians who refuse to leave no matter
how difficult life becomes, embodies the Arabic ideal of sumūd, a state of
perseverance and hanging on no matter how difficult the situation becomes.
Food and Fadwa is yet another attempt by Palestinian Americans to
remember a fragmented, occupied, and disappearing Palestine. The play
highlights the horrors of the occupation, how it damages Palestinian lives,
and how the very hallmarks of Palestine such as the olive trees are being
uprooted and destroyed. The play also dramatizes the fracture between
Palestinians living in Palestine and Palestinians who immigrated to the
United States. The rift between Fadwa and Hayat is one born of diaspora—
the betrayal one commits by leaving home and not staying to fight for the
future of the land. This is an attempt to bridge the gap between the world
that was left behind by past generations, and the guilt felt by those born
in diaspora who feel a connection with the land but cannot do anything
tangible to reclaim their lost heritage. Plays like Food and Fadwa are
valuable reminders of the painfully difficult negotiations that are inherent
to the Palestinian diaspora who are gradually witnessing the loss of their
potential state while the world looks on with apathy.

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Plays and Musicals About the Troubled Homeland:

Pera Palas, The Band’s Visit, and We Live in Cairo

Turkish American playwright Sinan Ünel’s time-shifting drama Pera

Palas is divided into three overlapping time frames: 1918–24, 1952–3,
and 1994. Ünel has written many plays that examine Turkish history
including The Cry of the Reed and Chatal, but Pera Palas is, in his words, “a
love letter to Istanbul” (Fletcher 2011). This sprawling, multigenerational
play examines Turkey in three of its most volatile periods: the decline of
the Ottoman Empire leading to the rise of Ataturk, the year 1952 which
marked the time that Turkey abandoned Ataturk’s neutralist policies and
joined NATO, and 1994 and the rise of political Islam. The characters in
each period are linked in interesting and necessary ways, and the view of
Turkey by outsiders (the English and the Americans in this case) provides a
fascinating deconstruction of Orientalist views in this period. The play has
twenty-five characters played by ten different actors. The setting is Istanbul’s
Pera Palace Hotel, which was founded in 1892 servicing clients on the
famed Orient Express. It stood next to the Grand Rue, a main street with
embassies, restaurants, and clubs. Over time the hotel was a hub for writers,
diplomats, businessmen, émigrés, and other prominent figures in Istanbul.

The Pera Palace was meant to be the last whisper of the Occident on
the way to the Orient, the grandest Western-style hotel in the seat
of the world’s greatest Islamic empire. Like Istanbul itself, the hotel
was Europeans’ first major port of call when they went east into a
traveler’s fantasy of sultans, harems, and dervishes. (King 2014, 4)

The main character in the first storyline is Evelyn Crawley, a 28-year-old

English writer, invited to stay in a harem by a 15-year-old girl named Melek.
Melek’s father, Ali Riza Efendi, is a member of the ruling elite. Melek is
going to be married to a man she has never met, which outrages Evelyn,
who believes that the world of the harem and the patriarchal system that
would have young girls married off in an arranged manner is an affront to
her sensibilities. Another important character is the young female slave/
odalisque, Bedia, who is seen as an older woman in the 1952–3 period, and
who is also Orhan’s mother. The second story focuses on a teacher named
Kathy Miller who is visiting Istanbul with her sister Anne. Anne is married
to a small-minded, boorish American named Joe. Kathy falls in love with
Orhan Bayraktar, a dashing and progressive young Turkish man. The last

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story revolves around a Turkish-born man named Murat Bayraktar, who

returns to Istanbul with his lover Brian. Murat has been estranged from his
father Orhan, his mother Kathy, and his sister Sema. Murat does not want
to contact his family, but Brian arranges a meeting that goes terribly wrong.
Utilizing the Pera Palace as its backdrop, Ünel takes audiences into worlds
that are either unseen or have been grossly Orientalized in the past. He also
lets us see the world through the eyes of the British and the Americans
who arrive with wide-eyed optimism and interest, but inevitably bring their
Western values into a society that does not desire them nor respects them.
Following the Orientalist trope of the unchanging East, Brian sees Istanbul
as a city frozen in time, whereas Murat must remind him of the multiple
bridges over the Bosphorus and the ubiquitous presence of American
chains like McDonald’s. Likewise, Evelyn’s outrage over Melek’s marriage to
a man she has not met is another trope Ünel confronts in the play. Evelyn
covets her freedom and independence and cannot accept the notion that a
man can have multiple wives; other women like Ayse, Ali Riza Efendi’s third
wife, cannot see why a woman would not want a husband and children.
Evelyn tells Melek she must demand her rights instead of remaining a
prisoner in a gilded cage. Likewise, Sir Robert Cave, a man from the English
Embassy, views the Turks as primitives who cannot understand Westerners.
In another contradiction, Evelyn berates Ali Riza Bey for allowing England
to divide his land after the end of the First World War, accusing him of
being a puppet for foreign powers. Evelyn steals Melek away from her
husband and tyrannical mother-in-law, but Melek realizes that Evelyn’s
dream, like the dream of the English who desperately attempted to keep
Turkey in the mode of European culture and ethics, is not one that she can
abide. Ali Riza Efend’s wife, Neyme, pleads with her husband to let Melek
leave her marriage. He finally concedes. When the sultan abdicates and the
British arrive, Ali Riza Efend hangs himself. As Neyime, Melek, and her
half-brother Cavid prepare to leave for France, to exile, at England’s behest,
Bedia begs to be taken with them and is rejected. In France they are lost and
Melek dies, Neyime marries a wealthy French diplomat, and an older Cavid
returns to Istanbul as a poor, homeless man only to be taken in by his old
friend Bedia.
Another theme the play explores is the cross-cultural relationships of
Kathy and Orhan, and Murat and Brian. In both instances, the cultural
expectations placed on Orhan and Murat are overwhelming, and their
relationships with those outside of Turkish culture and the Islamic faith are
severely tested by those around them. For Kathy, a young schoolteacher in

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her twenties in the 1950s, the romance with Orhan was invigorating and
new. As time went on, she and Orhan grew further apart, whether it was
his cruelty to their maid, his rejection of his son’s homosexuality, or his
disappointment at being rejected by an American firm for being Turkish.
The relationship is permanently damaged when Orhan physically attacks
Kathy. Orhan becomes a metaphor for Turkey itself; as the country declines,
so Orhan declines and becomes a shadow of himself filled with guilt, regret,
and remorse. After the Older Orhan and Murat have a fight that exposes
the guilt and recrimination of their past, they are left on the Bosphorus
Ferry together, looking out onto the shore. Orhan tells his son, “[O]nce you
assimilate the ideas of another country, once you understand the essence,
you have no alternative but to be alienated from your own” (Ünel 2015,
111). The play ends with all three storylines concluding not with hope but
with a kind of heartbreak and a look toward “the frightening, unfamiliar
future” (ibid., 120).
Pera Palas exemplifies a diasporic Middle Eastern American play. Here
we have a playwright who was born to Turkish immigrant parents in San
Francisco and moved back to Turkey with his parents, only to return to
the United States for college. His plays are informed by the immigrant
experience to and from America, and his characters are deeply rooted in
the history, culture, and complicated politics of the region. A play like Pera
Palas is epic in scope and character because the country it dramatizes is
equally so. So much has transpired in Turkey in the past century that it
would be nearly impossible to encapsulate all of it in a play; however, Pera
Palas attempts just that—to bring the hopes, glories, and fears of the Turkish
people to the stage from its zenith as the Ottoman Empire, to its rise as a
secular republic, to a nation facing the choice between embracing Europe
or becoming embroiled once more by coups and possible dictatorships. The
characters in Pera Palas are as rich and diverse as Turkey itself; and the play
leaves us feeling the deep love for the country and the deep sadness that it
faces. An older Orhan says, “We did not become the people we thought we
would become.” Murat replies, “Your sadness is a gift. Soon you will be free.
You’ll overcome destiny. You’ll make your own future” (ibid., 111). For the
people living in Turkey, one wonders which of these characters’ predictions
will ultimately come true.
The most renowned musical in this entire genre is The Band’s Visit with
music and lyrics by David Yazbek and book by Itamar Moses, based on the
film of the same name by Eran Kolirin. The musical swept the 2018 Tony
Awards with wins for best musical, best book of a musical, best original

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score, best leading actor in a musical (Tony Shalhoub), best leading actress
in a musical (Katrina Lenk), best featured actor in a musical (Ari’el Stachel),
best lighting design of a musical (Tyler Micoleau), best direction of a
musical (David Cromer), best orchestrations (Jamshied Sharifi), and best
sound design in a musical (Kai Harada).
The musical follows the same plot as the film. A group of Egyptian
musicians from the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra mistakenly
arrive in the Israeli town of Bet Hatikvah instead of Petah Tikvah and
find themselves stranded there for a night. During that time they meet
the eclectic townspeople including Dina, a café owner; Itzik and Iris, two
parents of a baby; Papi, an employee at Dina’s café; Avrum, Iris’s widower
father; Zegler, Papi’s friend; Anna, Zegler’s girlfriend; Julia, Anna’s cousin;
Sammy, a married man; and a young man known simply as Telephone Guy,
who waits for his lover to call him on a pay phone in the town square. In the
band, Tewfiq is the main conductor and Simon is a musician and clarinetist
who also writes concertos.
The musical combines Arab and Israeli musical styles with an attempt
to dramatize the romantic feel of the overall place and to connect the two
peoples. Unlike other plays in the Israeli-Arab conflict genre, this play
displays a genial relation between the two cultures rooted primarily in
the peace that has existed between Israel and Egypt since the 1979 Egypt-
Israel Peace Treaty. Although the musical is primarily in English, there are
Arabic translations provided by Mouna R’miki and Hebrew translations by
playwright Zohar Tirosh-Polk. Music is the language that most connects
these characters, and Yazbek and Moses find multiple connections
through the musical idiom. For instance, Dina and Tewfiq find a common
appreciation of Egyptian musical and film stars Om Kalthoum and Omar
Sharif in the song “Omar Sharif.” The town of Bet Hatikvah is presented
as a boring backwater where nothing happens. The band’s arrival brings
an air of romance, adventure, and musical collaboration to the otherwise
dull setting. The main relationship that the musical focuses upon is Dina,
lovelorn café owner spurned by Sammy, and Tewfiq, a man who lost his
wife and son in the past. Other relationships include the strained marriage
between Itzik and Iris, the youthful and troubled romance between Papi
and Julia, and a less turbulent pairing of Zelger and Anna. Ultimately, it is
Haled and Dina who connect romantically before the band leaves the next
day and plays for the opening of the Arab Culture Center in Petah Tikvah.
The musical presents a vision of a Middle East that is more interconnected
than divided. Because the Egyptians and Israelis in the musical are free to

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travel back and forth and to have artistic collaborations, the small town of
Bet Hatikvah becomes a microcosm for how Arabs and Israelis can not only
coexist but also find deeper connections with one another that transcend
the vitriolic history that often divided these people. The musical tends to
romanticize the relations between the characters in its attempt to create this
fictional utopia, but in doing so it provides a vision of the Middle East that
rests more on the similarities in food, music, and culture. The fact that a
musical with Middle Eastern motifs and a Middle Eastern American creative
team and cast could not only find a large audience but also win so many
important awards demonstrates that the American theatre establishment is
becoming open to these voices, and that the elusive peace that may not exist
in the Middle East might be found instead on American stages.
Patrick and Daniel Lazour’s musical We Live in Cairo is set in Egypt
in 2010–13 in the years leading up to the downfall of the Hosni Mubarak
regime through the Mohammad Morsi presidency, and ending with the
Abdel Fattah El-Sisi regime. The musical follows six young Cairenes who
are desperate for a better life than the ones that previous generations had
endured under the Mubarak regime for three decades. As part of the so-
called Arab Spring, the Egyptian revolution that centered in Tahrir Square
was considered one of the most vibrant and possible for real, lasting change.
The play opens with the actors singing a song that repeats the lyric, “I was
one person / Who had an idea / Who made it words / And someone heard /
Someone heard” (Lazour 2019, 4). The story focuses on revolutionary years
and dramatizes the overwhelming hope the young had in the heady days of
Tahrir Square; it ends with how that hope was dashed as a military regime
came to power once more.
The characters, of very different social and religious classes, are a tech-
savvy, hip, and aspirational group who truly believe that change is possible.
Fadwa Bassiouny is a passionate young woman who is often arrested and
detained by government forces. Karim Farouk is a young gay street artist
and political cartoonist. Layla Hakim is a Muslim photographer who is
interested in using her art to further her revolutionary aims. Hany and
Amir Salib are brothers from a Christian family. Amir plays guitar and
is in an on-again-off-again relationship with Layla. Hassan Ahmed is a
young man who is from a Muslim family who are supporters of the Muslim
Brotherhood. The young people coalesce around a series of murders of
young student activists by police forces, especially that of real-life student
Khaled Mohamed Said. Said was brutally killed by authorities, and his
murder led to protests that sparked the Egyptian revolution that ultimately

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brought down the Mubarak regime. The group start a Facebook group titled
“We are All Khaled Said,” which garners thousands of followers. Tweets
are then projected that take the audience through the various events that
followed including the protests in Shubra and Aswan, the explosion at the
Al-Qiddisayn Church, the torture and deaths of Maryam and Martina
Fekry and Sayyid Bilal, and the immolation of Abdu Abdel-Monaim Kamal.
The musical utilizes these real-life events to give motivation for the young
protagonists and their desire for freedom.
Screaming “HORREYA! HORREYA!” (Freedom! Freedom!) they gather
in Tahrir Square and endure multiple attacks and assaults by government
forces, yet they emerge victorious. As the months pass, the Supreme Council
of the Armed Forces takes over which sets up an election that puts the
Muslim Brotherhood in power. Once this occurs, the group begins splitting
along ideological lines. Fadwa, Hassan, Layla, Amir, and Hany are all dejected
by the Muslim Brotherhood victory. Fadwa is completely against the newly
elected government while Hany believes that the first free and fair election
results should stand no matter who is elected. For his part Hassan supports
Morsi’s victory, which alienates him from the group. Karim and Hassan’s
gradually developing relationship is severely tested, and Hany decides to
apply to study abroad in America. The group splinters much as Egyptian
society has following the contentious events that ultimately put a military
dictator in power. Two years later, Amir is killed in a protest, and Fadwa and
Hany are arrested for protesting. Layla is left singing the lyrics “We still have
our hands, / We still have our name, / We still have our past, / And time
sprawling in front of us. / We’re not surviving, / We’re living here” (ibid., 138).
We Live in Cairo is an attempt to portray the hopes, aspirations, and
struggles of the youth of Egypt trapped in a difficult choice between life
under a dictatorial regime and change that threatens to tear their society
apart. The rise of El-Sisi’s government and the brutal crackdowns on dissent
that followed are events that may be distant to many in the United States, but
for Middle Eastern Americans it is both personal and real. Like Jonathan
Larson’s Rent before it, a musical like We Live in Cairo is a testament to the
will of the youth who are not content to remain silent when they see injustice
and death all around them. We Live in Cairo is a theatrical memorial to
those who spoke out, protested, and were ultimately disappointed by the
failure of the so-called Arab Spring. Despite that failure, as the final lyrics of
the musical sing out, “We remain in a city of the sky, / We remain a river to
the sea, / We remain in light, / We remain in light” (ibid., 138). The hopeful
song promises a better future for Egypt’s youth.

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As these plays and musicals demonstrate, Middle Eastern American

playwrights, composers, and lyricists recreate homeland on American
stages in various ways. For some, they are reflections of the lives they and
their families lived overseas, while for others, these plays and musicals are
recounting historical tragedies that occurred in the past. There is a deep
concern for the plight of displaced persons, of those living in refugee camps,
and those suffering under unjust and corrupt regimes. However, there are
also plays and musicals that celebrate the similarities in the Middle Eastern
culture through music, dance, and theatre itself. All these works are rich
explorations into a world that few know or understand outside of the
news coverage seen on the internet or cable news. For the playwrights and
composers in this genre, life in the Middle East is not abstract—it is a very
real part of their everyday existence.

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C Chapter 6
CONFLICT PLAYS

This chapter is labeled “Conflict Plays” because they deal directly with many
of the major wars and conflicts that have taken place in the Middle East. The
largest body of this work focuses on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which
has been a part of the region from the late nineteenth century to the current
day. In play after play, these conflicts serve as the often-tragic backdrop
to the wars that plague this part of the world and, most importantly, how
these wars are devastating the lives of those who live there. Other conflict
plays deal with issues like civil war, the ongoing refugee crisis, life under
dictatorships, and foreign involvement in the Middle East.

The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: The River and the Sea,

Facts, Martyr’s Street, and Wrestling Jerusalem

As the previous chapters demonstrated, there are tens of plays written

about Israel and Palestine by both Arab American and Jewish American
playwrights. Like the conflict itself, it takes up much of the time and
attention of those who have ties to this holy land. Other Middle Eastern
American and Canadian playwrights who are not mentioned elsewhere in
this book but have contributed to this genre include Soha Al Jurf (Pressing
Beyond in Between), Martin Cohen (Checkpoint), Peter-Adrian Cohen (To
Pay the Price), Hanna Eady (Sahmatah, cowritten with Ed Mast), Jonathan
Garfinkel (House of Many Tongues), Emma Goldman-Sherman (Abraham’s
Daughters), Natasha Greenblatt (Two Birds One Stone), Nathalie Handal
(Between Our Lips), Israel Horovitz (What Strong Fences Make), Ismail
Khalidi (Tennis in Nablus), Jamil Khoury (Precious Stones), Mike Leigh
(Two Thousand Years), Stephen Orlov (Sperm Count), and Martin Sherman
(Onassis) to name only a few.
These plays are most often set in Palestine or Israel, though some take
place in the diaspora of the United States or Canada. Unlike the plays
included in the previous chapters, these plays are pointedly about the
Middle Eastern American Theatre

conflict itself, as opposed to being family dramas that are set in Israel
or Palestine. Almost all these works focus on the human tragedy of the
conflict, which is not to say there is not an abundance of humor in them as
well. The stories deal with connections between Palestinians and Israelis,
how those connections are tested and frayed, and how these most often end
with a tragedy or clash that leaves both sides longing for a resolution. In the
most optimistic plays, characters vow to create a solution that is mutually
beneficial for everyone involved. These plays are mostly an attempt by
these playwrights to re-humanize the Arab/Israeli other, despite containing
characters who sometimes act out of their worst, rather than their best,
instincts and intentions. These conflict plays offer audiences a glimpse into
a world as it might be, rather than the world as it is. In play after play there
are characters dealing with the vestiges of wars waged by those who have
little concern for the civilians caught in the crossfire. However, these are
works of deep empathy and understanding, not propagandistic plays that
support one side or the other. Of course, they all have a definite political
point of view but, overall, they are promoting peace and not a continual war.
There are contentious issues that should be addressed in the production
of such plays. In the coedited anthology titled Inside/Outside: Six Plays
from Palestine and the Diaspora, editors Naomi Wallace and Ismail Khalidi
discuss the “uphill battle” Palestinian plays face in order to get produced
in American theatre. They contend that Palestinian playwrights are
culturally delegitimized and derailed by the Palestinian-Israeli conflict
which always privileges the Israeli perspective. They also believe there are
various levels of censorship, intimidation, and misinformation that bias
an open discussion about the conflict in the media and theatre (Wallace
and Khalidi 2015, xi). They dismiss the idea that both sides of the conflict
must be presented in anthologies, festivals, and other theatrical events in
a “balanced” manner; this means that any issue Palestinian plays present
must be answered by an Israeli play and that it deprives these plays the right
to be judged on their merits. Palestinian plays are part of “the long struggle
of Palestinians and other oppressed and marginalized people who insist
that they do not need permission to narrate their own stories, their own
history, and their own visions of a future” (ibid., xii). In the edited volume
Six Plays of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, coeditor Jamil Khoury writes,
“Many theatres are also reluctant to produce Israeli Jewish playwrights who
question and challenge dominant narratives about Israel and its future—
and still, some have confused this patriotism for ‘disloyalty,’ even ‘treason.’
Not only do such allegations sabotage artistic freedom, they impede the

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robust dialogue we now so desperately need” (Khoury, Najjar, and Pond

2018, 3). In his edited volume Modern Jewish Plays, Jason Sherman writes
about how the Canadian theatre is too concerned with losing subscribers,
having controversial productions, or reinventing musicals. According
to Sherman, plays about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict are rarely, if ever,
produced in Canada because they are too controversial and require daring
and courageous artists who are not willing to take a chance on plays that
might challenge their audiences (Sherman 2006, 363–6).
Danny Bryck’s play The River and the Sea is a documentary theatre
piece that was created after Bryck’s own travel to Israel and Palestine in
2012 and 2013, where he interviewed those he met. On his website, he
asks the provocative question, “When everyone tells a different story, how
do we tell the truth?” (Goldberg 2014). Bryck interviewed many people
from a soldier in Tel Aviv to a mother from Gaza, a Holocaust survivor,
and a Sudanese refugee. The play was developed through donations and
a two-year residency Bryck had at New Repertory Theatre in Watertown,
Massachusetts. The play takes place at various locations in Israel and the
occupied Palestinian territories in December 2012 through March 2013.
In the script Bryck states that most of the text was taken verbatim from
his transcribed recordings of interviews and other personal interactions he
had with people living there, and some were translated from Hebrew and
Arabic. He changed the names of those interviewed and, in a few cases, he
composited several people into singular characters. Bryck writes that all the
characters should be played by five actors except for the character David,
who should be played by the same actor. “Actors should speak and move
with energy and momentum, and avoid the trap of portraying these people
as if they live in constant pain, self-pity or defeat,” his playwright’s note
concludes (Bryck 2016, 2).
The characters include David, a twenty-something Jewish American
writer on a birthright trip to Israel; Anat, a twenty-year-old conservative
IDF soldier; Nitzan, an Israeli tour guide; Ismail, a Palestinian professor and
citizen of Israel; and Mark, a middle-aged conservative Jewish American
settler. David begins with a monologue explaining that he is going on his
birthright trip and that his mother and father are frightened for him. He tells
them he must see the land, Jerusalem, the wall, and what lies between the
river and the sea. The play then shifts to interviews with the various people
David meets on his journey. David explains that following his birthright
trip he extended his visa so he could travel around and meet people living
through the conflict. He claims he’s an artist and writer who wanted to have

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a dialogue with people on both sides. The Palestinian professor, Ismail,

tells him the situation is extremely complicated and there are scores of
different religions and ethnicities that make up what are commonly known
as “Israelis” and “Palestinians.”
David meets a dizzying array of people from all over the area. The
dialogues with the various people reveal the fears, trepidations, and
historical injuries that have come to define the Arab-Israel conflict over the
past century. Despite David’s desire to remain neutral in his understanding
of the conflict, he realizes his position as a Jew automatically places him on
one side of the issue. When David tells Najla he is trying not to take sides,
she responds that when one refuses to take a side, they are already taking
a side. Another person David talks to tells him he is still young and naive,
and that as a Jew he only has one place to be, which is Israel. The Israelis
recount the horrors of the Holocaust, the wars they fought with Arab forces
in 1948, the fears they have of Arabs attacking them with suicide bombs,
and the lack of democracy among the Arabs and Palestinians. From the
Palestinians he interviews there are tragic stories of occupation, curfews,
shootings, bombings, lack of food and water, and tales of death at the hands
of the IDF. Despite David’s desire to interview as many people as possible,
he is constantly met with notions that challenge everything he thought he
knew about the place. A Palestinian woman, Najla, tells him he is not the
first person to attempt to find themselves through the suffering of others in
the region, and that he is ultimately there only to make himself feel better.
Similarly, Anat, an Israeli, tells David that Palestinians understand only
violence, not negotiation. David comes to realize that his desire to remain
unbiased and somewhat journalistic in his approach is not accepted by all
of those he interviews. David’s desperate desire to understand the conflict
is stifled by the fact that each story he hears contradicts the one that came
before. A Palestinian man named Ismail tells him that if Palestinians get
their own state, they may end up behaving just as the Israelis did when they
were occupiers. In this character’s view, oppression is human nature.
David has three monologues in the play: at the beginning, midway
through, and at the end. In the first monologue we hear about the young
man who always heard stories about “life,” “hope,” and Jerusalem; in the
second monologue we hear about a dream David has about home and
homelessness; and the third is about not knowing what to do with stories
and experiences he has heard. David is left in a liminal state between the
past he’s inherited and the present he is left to contend with.

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The play had a staged reading on March 24, 2014, at the New Repertory
Theatre, directed by Megan Sandberg-Zakian. Jill Goldberg of Tikkun Daily
wrote,

It’s not common to have the opportunity to know so many sides of

the same story, and to really reckon with the painful contradictions
implicit to Israel/Palestine. By being open to the process of
unlearning as much as learning, Bryck has created a work that will
undoubtedly provide a worthwhile challenge to both our intellect
and our hearts, asking us to hear not only the stories we already
know, but to pay attention to the ones that make us uncomfortable
or disoriented. Surely this work has the capacity to push audience
members to make room for empathy, and to allow their definitions of
their own identities to evolve and shift in order to begin to accept the
multiplicity of identities and stories that share the very small piece of
land that is Israel/Palestine. (Goldberg 2014)

The River and the Sea provides important narratives about the conflict
because it employs a polyvocal approach that allows all sides to have a
voice. Unlike traditional plays that are the invention of a single playwright,
Bryck decides on a documentary theatre format that creates a space for
actual voices to be heard. In doing so Bryck grows as an artist and allows
the audience to experience such growth for themselves. As reviews of this
reading attest, this style of dramaturgy is a forum for empathy building in a
conflict that requires such empathy now more than ever.
Arthur Milner’s play Facts is a three-character play that takes place in
an Israeli Army facility in the West Bank. Though the play is written in
English, the playwright states that the characters would be speaking in
Arabic or Hebrew. Based on the 1992 killing of Doctor Albert Glock, an
American archaeologist from Birzeit University, the play is the interrogation
of a young West Bank settler named Danny Rakoff by two characters:
Khalid Yassin, a police inspector with the Palestinian Authority, and Yossi
HaCohen, an Israeli police detective. Khalid arrives late to the interrogation
after being stopped at a checkpoint. Khalid explains how he, a Palestinian
official, must drive from checkpoint to checkpoint being searched by Israeli
soldiers. Khalid tells Yossi he refuses to accept checkpoints as normal, and
Yossi replies that he should hold on to his resentment and let it eat away
at him. Yossi, who is fifteen years older than Khalid, seems to think that

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the anger makes for better police work. They also disagree on the need for
“facts” in investigations:

YOSSI: Europeans are a modern people. They appreciate facts, but they
know their limitations. Americans worship facts, like peasants. They
idolize facts. We’re supposed to be Judeo-Christian but Americans
are peasants. Well, half are peasants, who don’t accept facts. And then
there are the artists who transcend facts. (Milner 2012, 42)

This tenet will be severely tested in the play as they encounter the young
Israeli settler accused of murdering an American archaeologist named
Gordon Philips. Philips was a fundamentalist Christian who came to the
Holy Land to walk in the footsteps of Jesus, but later had a conversion to
science. Philips, however, concluded that Israelites were never in Egypt,
and never ruled the Kingdom of Israel. Khalid believes that Danny, a
fundamentalist Zionist settler, may have killed Philips because of this
conclusion. Yossi asks Khalid to be “the good cop” because he hates the
settlers and wants to punish Danny.
When interrogated by Khalid, Danny refuses to speak Arabic and rejects
Khalid’s authority as a police officer, telling Khalid that Arabs don’t tell Jews
what to do in Israel. Yossi demands that Danny treat Khalid with respect,
even threatening him with physical violence. Danny flaunts the fact that
he has a weapon, and the men make him surrender it. Danny believes
archaeologists desecrate sacred soil with their work. While Khalid and
Yossi try to get Danny to confess by telling him that the entire history of
the Kingdom of Israel has no factual basis in history, Danny refuses Yossi’s
claim to Judaism.

YOSSI: (furious) You know what, Danny? You don’t get to decide who
is a Jew. I’m a Jew. I am a descendant of Jews. My mother was Jewish
and her mother before her and her mother before her. And I’m
circumcised. So even in your archaic, tribal bullshit rules, I get to be
a Jew. (ibid., 91)

For Danny, there is no debate; God granted the Jews the land of Israel
and God commanded them to keep it. He believes Israelis are their own
worst enemy because they want to trade land for peace. Danny knows,
however, that time and Israeli law are on his side; for every ten settlements
established and one evacuated, nine remain intact. The men realize they

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cannot implicate Danny in the murder, so they let him go. Khalid tells
Yossi members of his family were killed by the zealotry of Dr. Baruch
Goldstein, who in 1994, entered the Cave of the Patriarchs and massacred
29 Palestinian Muslim worshippers, wounding 125 others. Khalid tells
Yossi there is no real justice when a Palestinian can be arrested by the Israelis,
held in jail for years without trial, and then have their home destroyed by
bulldozers. Danny returns for his gun and tells Yossi that he ultimately won
and spits on Yossi. Yossi lifts the gun and fires it toward Danny, just missing
him. Danny takes the gun and leaves.
Milner’s Facts pairs a Palestinian and Israeli in a fight for justice in a place
where justice is questionable. The settler movement that Milner criticizes
in plays like Facts dramatizes the notion that many Israelis cannot abide
some settlers’ zealotry and zeal for taking the entire West Bank and driving
Palestinians out of their ancestral homes. Danny is a symbol of those who
have decided that Zionism lost its way and must be reclaimed by any means
possible, even if that entails the death of Palestinians living on the land.
Yossi, who wishes to find a way toward peace, is seen as a weak and cowardly
Jew who has sold Israel out. Khalid is seen as an interloper on the land who
has no authority and no place there in the future. Danny, for all of his vitriol
and hatred, is winning the war through building settlements, encouraging
an armed struggle against the Palestinians, and ultimately deciding that he
and his fellow settlers will take the land since the government does not have
the will to do so. A play like Facts awakens audiences to the harsh reality
on the ground in the West Bank—a place where compromise becomes less
possible, and the land is forever contested.
Misha Shulman’s Martyrs Street continues Shulman’s exploration of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict found in his other plays The Fist, Desert Sunrise,
and Apricots. Martyrs Street is centered on two disparate families—one
Israeli and one Palestinian—and set in Hebron on Martyrs Street/al-
Shuhada Street. The set consists of the Palestinian home of Noor and her
daughter Aisha, and the other half of the stage is the home of Dvorah and
Eilyahu. Both homes are in danger. Noor’s home is set to be demolished by
the Israeli government because her son, Nimer, is a Hamas operative who
has been accused of violence against Israelis. Dvorah’s home is also to be
demolished by the Israeli government because it is an illegal settlement.
Therefore, both families face the destruction of their homes, but for vastly
different reasons.
The play opens with a meeting between Nimer and Tsadok, Dvorah’s
cousin and the leader of a messianic Jewish settler group called “The Hand

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of God.” They conspire to help one another achieve their goals, despite being
on the complete opposite ends of the political spectrum and vowed enemies
of one another. Tsadok needs a bomb to set off in Jerusalem in order to
begin the apocalypse he believes will return the Messiah; Nimer wants the
bombing to occur in order to destroy a number of people he considers
enemies, and to get money from Tsadok for his mother to purchase another
home. In order to ensure that Tsadok keeps his end of the deal, Nimer keeps
his grandfather’s tzitzit and yarmulke as collateral. At the same time, Noor’s
friend Salim informs her of the government’s plan to demolish her home
which she and her dead husband spent their life savings building. Salim
urges her to move to Jerusalem with his assistance, but Noor, a university
sociology professor, does not want to leave Hebron. Noor’s daughter, Aisha,
disapproves of Noor even being alone with Salim because her brother Nimer
says it is against Islam for a single woman to be alone with another man.
Shulman creates a dramatic narrative about two extremists—Nimer and
Tsadok—to dramatize the tensions in a city like Hebron that is continually
marred by violence. The loss of homes for both the Palestinian residents
and the Israeli settlers creates the circumstances that then propel the
characters in the play to act out malevolently. The civilians like Noor and
Aisha are trapped by the machinations of a war that has little regard for
their civilian lives. Aisha’s school teaches her about Palestinian martyrs who
have committed atrocities which Noor disapproves of. Aisha retorts that
there is no way to coexist with settlers who attack and debase Palestinians
on a daily basis. Another character, Mashiach, is a young man whose family
was forcefully ejected from the Israeli settlements in Gaza. He comes to
Eliyahu, Dvorah, and Tsadok for community and they prey upon him,
convincing him to become the suicide bomber who will attack Jerusalem.
When Nimer tries to persuade his mother to take the money he received
in exchange for building a suicide vest for Tsadok, she refuses it as blood
money and chastises Nimer for his radical ideas.
Dvorah and Noor begin a strange relationship as they pass one another’s
homes on Martyr’s Street. They are entirely suspicious of each other, yet
they see their shared humanity, especially as women and mothers. In a
simultaneous scene, we see Nimer confront Noor and Salim, and Dvorah
and Tsadok confront Eliyahu. Salim and Eliyahu desperately try to convince
the younger men in their lives not to commit acts of violence in the name
of their respective ideologies, but they are both unwilling to listen. Dvorah
and Tsadok give Mashiach their blessing to conduct the bombing, and
Aisha decides to leave her mother to live with Nimer. In a final epilogue,

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Dvorah convinces Noor not to go to Jerusalem that night and to tell Salim
not to meet her at the square where the bombing is to occur. An explosion
is heard in the distance.
Shulman’s play attempts to humanize even the most radical among the
combatants in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by portraying those the Israelis
believe are the extremists—Hamas—and those the Palestinians view as the
extremists—the Israeli settlers. In doing so, and by setting the play in the
most contentious city, Hebron, and on the most contentious street, Martyr’s
Street, the play dramatizes the lives of those who are quite literally living
at the center of the conflict. Shulman was born and raised in Jerusalem
and spent his professional life working in North America. The play is based
on Shulman’s own visit to Hebron, and therefore is both an insider and
outsider’s view of the way Palestinians and Israelis are sometimes working
to destroy one another. Shulman says,

I have [also] used my plays as platforms for creating dialogue, and

deepening the understanding of what is going on in that part of the
world. For Theater for the New City’s production of Martyr’s Street
last year we brought in experts from around the U.S. and Israel/
Palestine for a series of talkbacks. That type of activity, as well as
intention around a production, give it what I’d call an overtly political
ring. (Bagatourian and Shulman 2016)

Therefore, like other plays in this genre, despite dramatizing extreme

views and dark subject matter, the play’s ultimate function according to
the playwright is about dialogue and understanding. By setting the play
in the epicenter of the West Bank, Shulman places his audience in the
uncomfortable position of confronting uneasy truths about the conflict.
Aaron Davidman’s solo performance titled Wrestling Jerusalem is an
exploration of a Jewish man’s connection to his religion and Israel. Like
Danny Bryck’s The River and the Sea, and British playwright David Hare’s
Via Dolorosa, Davidman makes a journey to Israel and Palestine in order
to understand why the situation is so intractable. However, Davidman
comes to this experience asking where he, as a Jew, fits within it. By
embodying seventeen different characters—Arab and Jewish—he takes
audiences on both a personal and theatrical journey into his struggle
with understanding this conflict through the embodied experiences of
the Israelis and Palestinians he meets. In the synopsis for the play it states,
“Davidman finds both entrenched isolation and shared humanity in the

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shifting moral compasses and competing narratives of all his characters”

(wrestlingjerusalem​.c​om). Originally produced as a minimalist one-person
show for theatre directed by Michael John Garcés, the play was later directed
by Dylan Kussman for film.
Davidman performs his script with accurate accents, singing, and
dancing interspersed throughout the performance. The play opens with a
litany of “ifs” regarding the political events that have shaped the conflict for
the past century. Davidman lists the endless wars, peace accords, murders,
assassinations, peace processes, and political maneuvers that have occurred
only to find himself in a crescendo that results in his falling into a heap onto
the floor. His main metaphor is that of the Kabbalistic story of creation, the
encapsulation of good into vessels that could not hold, the disbursement
of that good all over the world, and the necessary quest to gather all the
sparks of goodness once again. He then discusses his childhood in Yiddish
Brooklyn and his attendance of Camp Kinderland where he was taught the
values of freedom, equality, and justice for all. He first traveled to Israel as
a young man to learn the Torah, but in doing so he realized the political
situation in the country and questioned why Israel was so deeply troubled.
He travels through checkpoints to the West Bank, visits Israeli Army officials,
speaks to pro-peace activists, psychologists, coffee shop owners, West Bank
settlers, Arab farmers, rabbis, traumatized civilians escaping to the Dead
Sea, and he prays at the Western Wall. The stories he relays are filled with
grief, trauma, war, occupation, and death. This is not to say there are not
humorous moments but, overall, the feeling is one of immense melancholy
over people fighting and dying over the land. Davidman’s performance
is a tour de force both as a masterwork of a trained actor and as a work
of documentary theatre chronicling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Like
others before him, he leaves with more questions than answers.

Plays of the Armenian Genocide: March! and Night Over Erzinga

Plays and films about the Armenian Genocide are chronicles of the
1915–16 events that caused the death of 1.5 million Armenians out of an
estimated population of 2.5 million. The issue is contested by Turkey; the
Turkish government and many intellectuals there refute that genocide ever
occurred. Films like Garin Hovannisian and Alec Mouhibian’s 1915, Atom
Egoyan’s Ararat, and Terry George’s The Promise dramatize the events, yet
several important dramas written for the stage have continued to tell the

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story that remains cataclysmic to the Armenian community to this day.

Some could argue that these plays are European American and not Middle
Eastern American dramas. However, many Armenian plays are staged at
prominent Middle Eastern American theatre companies and Armenians
were, and still are, living in countries that are technically in the Middle
East. Therefore, these plays have been widely accepted as Middle Eastern
American dramas. Bianca Bagatourian and Adriana Sevahn Nichols both
consider their works as those categorizable in this genre as well.
Bianca Bagatourian’s play March! is based on 800 hours of Armenian
Genocide oral history. There are only four named characters in the play:
Man (labeled as “persistent”), Alin (an orphan), Lusine (labeled as “chatty”),
and Anahid, who is silent. Because the play does not follow a traditional
linear play structure, the dialogues are quick exchanges made up of actual
survivor testimonies. In each testament, we hear gripping and horrifying
stories of genocide: a boy bayoneted and dying after eight hours of torture,
men dismembered, women buried alive, and entire families executed. The
operative word in the play is “memory” and the characters state that, with
the passing of time, these memories will fade away. The man says, “But
forgetting will turn us into a blank page. We will become invisible. We will
disappear from all history. And that’s the way it was planned” (Bagatourian
2010). Bagatourian states that she doesn’t only write Armenian stories, but
rather stories that focus on human rights and social justice: “You know,
it’s interesting, as a writer of Armenian heritage, it is almost impossible to
ignore the Armenian genocide in my work. And the fact that Turkey is still
denying that it happened, pushes it to the front of the mind.” Regarding her
play March! she says that it “looks at genocide through the prism of memory
and how it can live on to destroy generation after generation” (Bagatourian
and Shulman 2016).
Armenian American playwright Adriana Sevahn Nichols’s play Night
Over Erzinga follows four generations of Armenians who were victims
of the Armenian Genocide and its horrific aftermath. The expansive
drama spans the lives of the Armenians living in Armenia before the
genocide, their children who were sent to America for safety, and their
grandchildren’s children who struggled with the trauma they witnessed
their parents enduring. The play was a commission by the Lark/Golden
Thread Productions/Silk Road Rising Middle East America Playwrights
Fellowship, but gradually it became a way for the playwright to delve deeper
into her own personal history, and the history of her people who were
decimated by the events of the Armenian Genocide.

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The play flashes back and forth from life in Armenia in the 1910s to
life in America in the 1960s. The first act deals primarily with Alice, an
Armenian woman, and Ardavazt, her Armenian husband, dealing with
their families’ haunted past with the Armenian Genocide. Their daughter,
Ava, cannot understand why her mother is so disturbed and why she must
be committed to a mental hospital where she is regularly given electroshock
therapy. Although Ardavazt was sent to America before the horrors of the
genocide, Alice endured horrific trauma during the genocide before being
sent to America to marry Ardavazt. The play flashes back to Alice as a
young girl in 1914 living a bucolic life with her parents in the Armenian
village of Erzinga. This changes when Turkish soldiers arrive and demand
that all Armenian boys, including Aram, Ardavazt’s father, must join
the military. Aram sends Ardavazt to live with his family in America to
keep him safe from the oncoming violence, giving him a pocket watch to
remember him by. Alice, on the other hand, is left to suffer the carnage of
her family’s slaughter in her village. She is rescued by a Turkish couple who
take pity on her and ensure she can leave for America. In a flash forward,
Ava, their daughter, becomes the singer that Alice only dreamed of being.
She meets and marries Bienvenido Raymundo (Benny), a Dominican
man, and they have a daughter named Estrella. Ava and Benny’s marriage
ends with Benny’s infidelity, and Ava and her father Ardavazt finally
reconciling after years of conflict. In ghostly hauntings, Ava realizes the
horrors her mother endured, watching her little sister being raped and
her entire family slaughtered around her, and that her father’s family was
eradicated in their village of Erzinga. Ava realizes that the mother she
thought was so cold and distant and the father who was so strict and cruel
were once young people who suffered unspeakable horrors. Her epiphany
is discovering that they both deserve immense empathy and forgiveness
(Figure 5).
Sevahn Nichols, who identifies as Armenian, Dominican, and Basque,
tells of her upbringing by a single mother, and being a descendant of
Armenian Genocide survivors: “As the granddaughter of Armenian genocide
survivors, I was being asked to write something on behalf of healing, repair,
restoration—and reminded that I carried a responsibility as an artist to give
something on behalf of all who perished and on behalf of all who survived”
(Sevahn Nichols 2015). In 2015 she traveled to Yerevan, Armenia, for a
performance of Night Over Erzinga at the Yerevan State Youth Theater for
the commemoration of the one-hundred-year anniversary of the genocide.
During that visit, she toured the ancestral villages of Armenians in Turkey

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Figure 5 Night Over Erzinga by Adriana Sevahn Nichols, Silk Road Rising, 2012.
From left: Nicholas Gamboa (Bienvenido), Rom Barkhordar (Older Ardavazt),
Sandra Delgado (Ava), Carolyn Hoerdemann (Ardavazt’s mother), and Levi Hollo-
way (Younger Ardavazt). Directed by Lisa Portes. Photograph by Michael Brosilow.

and paid tribute at the Armenian Genocide Memorial. After watching the
production, which was translated into Armenian, she concluded, “I am no
longer the playwright. I am a granddaughter watching my family story. I am
home” (ibid.). Sharing the many upheavals and dislocations of Armenian
history during the modern age, the theatre continues to play an important
cultural role both in the communities of the diaspora and in the homeland.
Armenian American writers in the diaspora gained renewed interest in their
culture and ethnicity in the 1960s along with other hyphenated groups. The
noted Armenian American theatre scholar Nishan Parlakian writes,

For Armenians, this new ethnic elan allowed them to focus their
attention on matters that were often on their minds and often
repressed as they made their way in America. The most serious of
these was their concern with the genocide perpetrated against the
Armenian race in Turkey and the need for justice in an international
context. Surely the Armenian sentiment was no less serious than that
of African Americans who in their own way had suffered genocide
two centuries before. (Parlakian 2004, 16)

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Like the Holocaust plays written by Jewish American playwrights, the plays
March! and Night Over Erzinga are attempts by Armenian Americans to
reconstitute a history that has been erased or denied even in the United
States. In addition to being well-written and moving dramas, these plays
serve as reminders of an event that remains seminal to the Armenian
American experience.

Civil War Plays: Scorched, Game of Patience, and Smail

Wajdi Mouawad’s searing drama Scorched is the story of two Québecois-

Canadians who were born in North America being forced to travel back to
the ancestral homeland to uncover their mysterious roots following their
Lebanese mother’s death. Her cryptic final will states that one of the siblings,
Janine, must find her father, and the other sibling, Simon, must find his
brother if they wish to bury their mother properly. Once they deliver the
letters to her attorney Alfonse Lebel, they will receive a third letter, and a
stone can finally be placed on her grave.
This is the same filial and psychological terrain Mouawad had explored
in a previous play, Tideline, where a son named Wilfrid is expected to take
his father’s corpse back to Lebanon for burial. Mouawad, who was born
to a Lebanese Christian family in Lebanon in 1968, witnessed the horrific
massacre of Palestinian children on a bus in 1975 which sparked the bloody
civil war there. His family emigrated to France after four years of living
through the war. He was later an exile in Canada where he enrolled in the
École Nationale de Théâtre in Montreal. Mouawad believes that he became
a writer because of his war experiences. His plays Alphonse (1996), Tideline
(1999), Scorched (2003), Forests (2006), Seuls (2008), and Ciels (2009) are
all deep explorations of Mouawad’s history, understanding of his past, and
grappling with the present. “Theater is a way of filling up our days,” he said.
“When children are born, they are filled with a kind of goodwill. Then their
conviction that the world is enchanted is shattered. Every time I try to glue
it back together the result is a play” (Daydé 2013, 39).
Scorched layers generations of women and their painful and complicated
journeys from adolescence to adulthood. Nawal, a young girl growing up
in a very traditional village, falls in love with, and is impregnated by, a man
from another religion for whom she is forbidden to love. After he is killed
in the fighting, she is forced by her mother to give the baby away. That baby
is taken to an orphanage, and Nawal pines for him in her adulthood. After

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meeting a woman named Sawda, she decides to find her child. After believing
the child is killed, she realizes she can no longer stand by and watch the
slaughter taking place all around her. Nawal assassinates a military leader
and Sawda sacrifices herself in a suicide bombing. After the assassination,
Nawal is imprisoned and put under the torture of an infamous soldier who
repeatedly rapes her. She gives birth to twins in prison, but they are taken by
an old man to be dumped in a river. He secretly raises the children himself,
and when Nawal is finally released from prison, the children are given back
to her. She immigrates to Canada to raise the children, but she is forever
cold and distant. One day she falls silent and later dies. The children are
left to travel back to her homeland and take a harrowing journey that leads
them to the horrific discovery that their father was the notorious rapist
named Nihad Harmanni, and he is also their brother. After they face the
monstrosity that is their birthright, they return, give the letters to Nihad
(the father and the son) which explains his origins, and bury their mother.
The final letter they are given is one that explains her love for them and that
there are truths that can only be revealed after they are discovered.
Janine and Simon’s return to their ancestral homeland is akin to the
journeys many Middle Eastern Americans face when traveling back to
their homelands which were ravaged by war. Traveling back entails visiting
people and places scarred by generations of trauma inflicted by war,
occupation, and dictatorship. This journey “home” is further complicated
by the inability to speak the language, to understand the customs, and to
make sense of the often-confusing history that comprises their histories.
In addition, many of the relatives they meet carry the scars of decades of
historical trauma that predate their parents’ departure from the homeland.
Although Mouawad’s plays read like contemporary retellings of Greek
tragedies, they are metaphors for the painful disconnection many living in
diaspora feel from their parents’ lives. Mouawad says, “In all my plays, there
is the story of someone who discovers his origins are different than what he
thinks, and he tries to get back to those origins” (Morrow 2008). It could be
said that many Middle Eastern American plays in this genre are attempting
the same feat. Scorched is a play about civil war, how it tears at the fabric of
society, and how it leaves generational scars that require great healing.
Lebanese Canadian playwright Abla Farhoud’s play Game of Patience is
a diaspora play that deals with Lebanese Canadian immigrants who fled
the war in Lebanon yet remain disturbed even in their distance from the
conflict. In the preface Farhoud writes, “I offer this play to all who have
lost their child, their country, their dreams, their taste of life. I offer these

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words to all those forgotten and all who are trying to forget . . . to everyone
who, every day, every moment, confronts the silence of death” (Farhoud
1994, 41). The protagonist, a forty-year-old novelist and playwright named
Monique/Kaokab, immigrated to North America when she was nine years
old. Her cousin, Mariam, also forty, has moved to Canada after suffering
the loss of her daughter, Samira, during the Lebanese Civil War. Mariam’s
fifteen-year-old daughter, Samira, appears as a ghost who haunts the play.
Monique/Kaokab is struggling to write while Mariam has given up the will
to live, grappling with the notion that her daughter’s death is somehow her
fault. Mariam is lost—she is an immigrant in a new country where she does
not speak the language, she is separated from her husband, she has small
children to care for, and she cannot forget the horrors of her past. Monique/
Kaokab has succeeded as a writer in her new homeland, but she believes her
writing lacks authenticity.

MONIQUE/KAOKAB: I’ve written the surface of things. To please, to

rock people to sleep. I’ve written to put myself to sleep, to forget. I
have written pushing my memory back inside, deep in my stomach.
I borrowed a language and I lent my soul. I have lived between
the heartbreak of remembering and the heartbreak of forgetting.
(Farhoud and MacDougall 1994, 58)

Monique/Kaokab tried to return to her homeland of Lebanon but found

she had forgotten much of her native language, the customs, and the names
of those left behind. Mariam is upset with Monique/Kaokab for lamenting
her comfortable life in diaspora while her fellow Lebanese are dying in a
civil war. However, even living in the diaspora, Monique/Kaokab is tortured
with thoughts of her fellow Lebanese suffering in war. When she cannot
write, she plays solitaire to pass the time. “In solitaire,” she says, “you have
what is hidden and what is given, what you have to grasp immediately and
what takes more patience” (ibid., 70). Mariam urges Monique/Kaokab to
tell Samira’s story so her memory can live on. After much indecision, she
decides to attempt to tell the girl’s story. “Pain is everywhere,” she writes in
the play, “but so is life, it’s irrepressible, here, there, everywhere . . . despite
the odds” (ibid., 81).
Abla Farhoud’s play is a deep autobiographical rendering of the life
of a Middle Eastern American woman who is struggling with her own
immigrant past, her cousin’s painful immigrant present, and the death
of an innocent child they both loved dearly. The play highlights the grief

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many immigrants carry having to flee their beloved homelands due to war,
famine, and other factors that made living there untenable. The Lebanese
Civil War claimed an estimated 150,000 lives and left the entire nation
ruined. The Lebanese diaspora, like other Middle Eastern diasporas, can be
found across the world. The survivors of that war grapple with the deaths
that occurred and with the fact that many dead were unaccounted for and
forgotten after the war ended.
Another play set in the homeland is Smail by Tariq Hamami, a play
based on a true story. The play is set in Algiers, Algeria, in 1990, 1994, and
2014. Ismail Said is a 36-year-old male living in Algiers who goes by the
shortened name Smail. Smail is first seen in a dark interrogation room
in Algeria in 1994. He is being interrogated by an Algerian government
agent named Rifat. Smail has been arrested because he is suspected to be
a member of the Islamic Salvation Front, a radical Islamist group that is
against the government of President Liamine Zeroual, who succeeded
President Ali Kafi.
Hamami attempts to take audiences into the horror of the civilians
trapped between a government that is aggressively committed to wiping out
Islamist terror and Islamist groups that wish to overthrow a government
they deem dictatorial and fascist. Smail suffers from epilepsy, a condition
that the people around him erroneously consider contagious. He also grows
a beard to cover the cuts on his face he has suffered from his seizures, a
beard that many mistake for his allegiance to Islamist groups. Rifat is
intent on making Smail confess to being a member of the Islamic Salvation
Front, and on making him turn over the names of others he believes are
also affiliated with the group. Smail insists he is innocent, but Rifat tortures
him physically and emotionally, continually clicking a light on and off
attempting to trigger another seizure.
In his cell Smail imagines he is visited by loved ones including his
girlfriend Saida. She urges him to stay strong and not submit to the
government’s brutal tactics. She also reminds him that the nation is fighting
the terrorists in order to retain their democracy; yet Smail reminds her that
the Islamic Party won the election and was overthrown by the government.
This debate over the character and soul of Algeria itself is one that Hamami
contends with as he takes audiences into the darkest period of contemporary
Algerian history. Smail wants nothing to do with politics and believes he is
cursed because of his epilepsy. In flashbacks we see Smail and his family
together in their courtyard. His sisters Raniya and Amani are hopeful that
President Benjedid will hold elections and that Algeria might have a better,

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more democratic, future. Amira, his mother, brings an empty birdcage

home: a symbol of the imprisoned Algerian people and the empty cage
that has become their country. Their brother, Farrad, moved to the United
States and is free from the turmoil that has embroiled his homeland. Amani
wants to vote Benjedid out of office, but Smail reminds her that he will still
be president no matter the results. Raniya wants to vote for the Islamists
since Algeria is a Muslim country. Smail wants neither Benjedid nor the
Islamists, but rather a Muslim leader with a non-Muslim government. The
play captures how even the closest families are torn apart by politics.
Audiences discover that Rifat has withheld Smail’s medication and
he lies, telling Smail that his family has not come to visit him. Rifat tells
Smail that twenty-seven people were massacred by the Islamists outside the
military base, which makes discovering their confederates an even more
urgent task. Rifat also tells Smail he knows Raniya voted for the Islamists
and that there is nothing he can hide from the government. When Rifat
tells Smail he is a good Muslim because he is trying to rid the world of
terrorists, Smail tells him Muslims do not torture, threaten, or murder
others. Despite Rifat’s treacherous ways, Smail tells him he will pray for him
because every Algerian needs a prayer. Finally, Rifat tells Smail that it was
Saida who turned him in. When Smail has a hallucination that his mother
has visited him in jail, she begs him to confess and come home. She tells
him that nothing is right in Algeria, and that the factions that are fighting
are nothing more than bullies who are hurting the children around them.
She begs him to be a moral person who stays alive, no matter what he tells
Rifat. When he refuses, she tells him to be like his father who fought the
French during the Algerian War of Independence.
In another flashback, Smail sees his sisters Raniya and Amani becoming
more Islamicized by wearing hijabs and he worries for them. Amani says
men have been abducted by soldiers simply for looking like Islamists. She
urges him to shave his beard to reduce his guilt by association. Smail tells
them that praying too much will get them arrested by the military, and not
praying enough will get them taken by the Islamists. He believes everyone
says that they are fighting for the Algerian nation, but none are fighting for
the Algerian people. Smail realizes the reason he and others like Saida are
taken, tortured, and killed is because all that is left to take from the people
now is their happiness. He swears that no matter what his torturers do to
him, they cannot have his happiness. Rifat tells Smail that the people cannot
see that the government is like a parent taking care of all the responsibilities
of the country for the children that are its citizens. Rifat believes he is not an

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extremist because he is fighting on the side of right, yet Smail reminds him
that both sides believe they are right and that is the very thing tearing the
country apart. When Rifat threatens to arrest and torture Smail’s mother,
he suffers a massive epileptic seizure and dies. The final scene takes place in
2014 in the family’s courtyard. Rifat arrives and approaches Smail’s mother
Amira telling her to sign a paper that exonerates the government for the
death of her son in return for a monetary payment. He tells her President
Bouteflika wants closure. She refuses to sign. She says her country is lost
and will be lost forever and that when arrogant men take over, it is the good
men who die.
Hamami’s play dramatizes a horrific and painful moment in Algerian
history. Smail is just one man caught up in an escalating situation where
a fearful government becomes tyrannical in their attempt to destroy what
they considered a radical fundamental Islamist uprising. The play is set
in his ancestral homeland of Algeria, yet it provides a chilling portrait of
what can happen when societies are consumed with fear and loathing, and
the extreme measures they can take in order to restore order. Bouteflika’s
presidency, which lasted from 1999 to his resignation in 2019, was a
controversial tenure that was gradually diminished with the Arab Spring
uprisings that began in 2011. Hamami’s play is a testament to the more
than 200,000 lives that were lost during the Algerian Civil War. It is also a
testament to the survivors who refused to allow the successive governments
the immunity against prosecution they desired by compensating families in
return for forgiving the war crimes that were committed. Plays like Smail
remind us that peace is extremely fragile and that individual liberties can be
stripped away in periods of fear and nationalism.
The conflict plays written by Middle Eastern Americans are sometimes
derived from their own painful experiences growing up in the various
Middle Eastern conflicts, or they are by those in the diaspora who are
speaking out against the inhumanity of genocides, wars, dictatorships,
and civil conflicts tearing apart their ancestral homelands. These plays
demonstrate that while leaders are busy making speeches and attacking
their enemies, it is the people on the ground that are being destroyed.
These plays chronicle events like the Armenian Genocide at the start of
the twentieth century, the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and the
various civil wars that continue to decimate Middle Eastern nations. Where
no physical monuments stand to chronicle the human toll of these events,
these plays are testaments to the lives that have been lost so that audiences
never forget the human toll of war.

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THE CURRENT STATE OF MIDDLE
EASTERN AMERICAN THEATRE

Middle Eastern American theatre is undergoing a renaissance with more

plays, more companies devoted to producing these plays, and more theatre
artists working professionally than in previous generations. In 2018, a
Middle Eastern American theatre steering committee was formed consisting
of Shoresh Alaudini, Andrea Assaf, Debórah Eliezer, Leila Buck, Catherine
Coray, Yussef El Guindi, Nora El Samahy, Tracy Cameron Francis, Kathryn
Haddad, Pia Haddad, Denmo Ibrahim, Taous Claire Khazem, Jamil Khoury,
Kate Moore Heaney, Torange Yeghiazarian, Michael Malek Najjar, and Evren
Odcikin. The purpose of this steering committee is to address these works,
find solutions for how to amplify these voices, increase access to resources,
and impact and expand how stories from and about these communities are
told on US stages. The group had their first convening in November 2019
at the Golden Thread Productions in San Francisco. After many discussions
and votes, the name MENA Theatre Makers Alliance, or MENATMA, was
adopted by the members of this group.
Some of the major issues explored at the convening were the following:
coalition building and networking, MENA in the academy, artistic and
administrative mentorship, naming and defining the MENA coalition,
and strategies for getting more MENA plays on US stages. By examining
other successful theatre coalitions such as the Black Theatre Association,
Consortium of Asian American Theaters and Artists (CAATA), and the
Latinx Theatre Commons, there was a desire to learn from other theatre
artist groups that are dealing with similar issues. These companies have
different organizational structures, nonprofit statuses, meeting schedules,
and connections with various theatres and academic journals. Another
important aspect explored was how Middle Eastern American plays
were being taught, produced, and integrated into American educational
institutions. In this session, plans were discussed regarding building
relationships with play selection committees, creating new syllabi, and
casting issues for MENA plays in predominantly non-MENA student
Middle Eastern American Theatre

groups. Artistic and administrative mentorship was also a major concern

that required discussion. The various approaches proposed were informal
and formal mentorships, transnational and multigenerational mentorships,
mentorship surrounding civic engagement and philanthropy in the MENA
community, and consultancy as mentorship. As far as strategies for having
more MENA plays on US stages, several questions were asked: How can
cultural consulting assist more theatres producing more MENA plays? How
can there be a better balance between more opportunities for MENA actors
and more opportunities for MENA playwrights for productions? How can
more MENA artists find leadership roles in American theatres nationwide?
Also, how can MENA artists educate theatre critics about the plays and
inform them about their cultural specificity?
After a year of virtual meetings with the members from across the
country leading up to the convening, this in-person gathering was the first
major opportunity for MENA artists to gather, discuss important issues, and
create action plans for moving forward. As with the theatre communities,
it is difficult to have so many varied communities under one umbrella and
to find policies that can serve them all. Another difficulty is how to define
the various groups that are working in the American theatre and how these
groups overlap. For instance, the CAATA is primarily for Asian American
theatre, but since the Middle East is technically located in Southwest Asia,
there may be overlap between those who identify as Middle Eastern and
those who identify as Asian American.
Concurrently, Theatre Communications Group (TCG) added a “Middle
Eastern Artists’ Initiative” to their “networks of Theatres of Color” which
includes the Black Theatre Commons, the Consortium for Asian American
Theatre Artists, Indigenous Direction, and the Latinx Theatre Commons.
TCG states that their Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Initiative (EDII)
is meant to “transform the national theatre field into a more equitable,
inclusive and diverse community” (tcg​.o​rg). Programs include the EDI
Institute, Legacy Leaders of Color Video Project, and different ways of
supporting coalition building.
These various convenings, coalition-building efforts, and networks are
meant to transform an American theatre landscape that has excluded and/
or omitted minority and marginalized voices for much of its history. The
formation of steering committees and the inclusion of Middle Eastern
American artists herald a new period of growth in this genre. In the past,
disparate groups representing this community were working separately on
similar goals but gaining little traction in the larger theatre community. Now,

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as Middle Eastern American artists realize their similarities are greater than
their differences, there is an opportunity to find common purpose going
forward. This can only benefit the American theatre because it is a reflection
of the diversity of the nation presented on its stages. In the coming decades,
the hope is that all groups of color find their place at the table, rather than
accepting leftovers from the banquet. Many challenges remain, but Middle
Eastern American theatre has finally reached the point where it is gaining
recognition, including more communities, and becoming more accepted as
a legitimate genre of theatre in the Americas.

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C Chapter 8
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES

This book concludes with several critical perspectives about Middle Eastern
American theatre by important figures who have worked to define the genre
in the past few decades. Where the previous chapters focused primarily on
playwrights, the first critical perspective is an interview with four of the
leading directors working in this genre: Kareem Fahmy, Evren Odcikin,
Megan Sandberg-Zakian, and Pirronne Yousefzadeh. These directors are
of Middle Eastern descent themselves, and their work in the group Maia
Directors is focused on bringing more stories and artists from the Middle
East, North Africa, and South Asia to the stage and screen “with respect
for the multiplicity of cultures, languages, and religions of these regions”
(maiadirectors​.c​om). These directors also exemplify the polycultural
nature of the Middle Eastern American community, and they are also
leading figures in the American theatre. The direction of these plays is just
as important as their dramaturgy, since directors are part of the creative
process that shapes representation. Therefore, a discussion with these
directors about their work allows a deeper understanding of how these
plays are translated onto the stage.
The second critical perspective is an extended interview with Golden
Thread Productions founding artistic director Torange Yeghiazarian
and Silk Road Rising co-founder and co-executive artistic director Jamil
Khoury. Yeghiazarian is one of the longest-tenured artistic directors of a
Middle Eastern theatre. Her company, which celebrated its twentieth year
of productions in 2016, continues to produce plays by Middle Eastern
American artists. Yeghiazarian also writes about theatre in her ancestral
homeland of Iran from the perspective of her Iranian Armenian heritage.
She has been deeply involved in the American theatre for decades and
is able to provide a valuable overview of how this kind of theatre has
evolved over the past decades, with a unique view regarding the Bay Area
theatre scene. She is also a playwright and director, so she brings a unique
perspective as one who both produces these plays and writes and directs
them herself. Jamil Khoury, another playwright/artistic director, provides
Middle Eastern American Theatre

his perspective on Silk Road Rising, a company he and his husband Malik
Gillani founded in 2002 (originally as Silk Road Theatre Project) as “an
intentional and creative response to the terrorist attacks of September
11, 2001” (silkroadrising​.o​rg). Their mandate covers the entire Silk Road
region, the historical network of trade routes that stretch from China to
Syria. Therefore, they produce plays by writers from backgrounds such as
East Asian, South Asian, and Middle Eastern countries. Their core values,
which they list as “Discovery, Pluralism, and Empathy,” guide their choice
of plays, and their history of play productions reflects those values. In this
extended interview, Yeghiazarian and Khoury share their views on Middle
Eastern American theatre, their personal histories writing and producing
these works, and how these works manifest and are perceived in the wider
American theatre landscape.
By including the voices of these six individuals who have shaped Middle
Eastern Theatre artistic production for the past decades, we arrive at a more
critical perspective about this genre; how it has developed, the challenges
faced by its artists, and how the American theatre has both supported and
hindered the production and proliferation of these plays. These artists,
revered by their artistic community, and sometimes criticized by their
respective audiences and communities, are on the front line of artistic
creation. Their companies have shaped, and will continue to shape, this
genre for the foreseeable future.

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“THEATRE THAT DISRUPTS OUR UNCONSCIOUS BIAS

WITH HUMOR AND JOY”: AN INTERVIEW WITH MAIA
DIRECTORS KAREEM FAHMY, EVREN ODCIKIN, MEGAN
SANDBERG-ZAKIAN, AND PIRRONNE YOUSEFZADEH

Author’s Note: The directors’ names are initialized below—Kareem Fahmy

(KF), Evren Odcikin (EO), Megan Sandberg-Zakian (MSZ), and Pirronne
Yousefzadeh (PY). When the directors answered as a group, I have written
the abbreviation “MAIA.” Also, MENA refers to Middle East/North African,
while MENASA refers to Middle East/North African/South Asian.

MMN: How do you self-identify? In your own words, what is your personal
relation to the Middle East?

KF: I identify mainly as “Middle Eastern,” but will sometimes use the term
“Arab.” I’ll often say “Middle Eastern American” or “Arab American” but
this is actually a bit of a lie as I’m not an American citizen. I was born and
raised in Canada, a child of immigrants from Egypt. My parents came to
Canada in the late 1960s. I visited Egypt many times as a child (the vast
majority of my family is there), and more recently as an adult. I feel a strong
kinship to my Egyptian heritage.

EO: If we are going with a full-list, I’m an immigrant, Middle Eastern,

Turkish-American, Muslim, queer artist. Depending on the day and the
task at hand, different identifiers will take more space in my psyche.

PY: I identify as Middle Eastern, Iranian American, a Jew, and a child of

immigrants.

MSZ: I identify as a queer woman. My mother is Armenian, and my father

is Jewish. I identify as Middle Eastern, mixed-heritage, and American.

MMN: What do you consider to be a “Middle Eastern American Play”?

What defines a play of this genre for you?

MAIA: The plays that we are interested in are created by artists that self-
identify as part of the Middle Eastern American community and portray
people and cultures of the Middle East and its diaspora in a nuanced way.

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MMN: Which plays have you directed that you would characterize as
“Middle Eastern American”?

EO: My work has always focused on the story of the outsider—narratives

about and from those that have been traditionally excluded from mainstream
storytelling. And because of my background and my deep involvement with
Golden Thread Productions as an artist and producer, a large portion of
my work specifically focused on Middle Eastern American work. I have
directed numerous plays by Yussef El Guindi, Mona Mansour, and Jonas
Hassen Khemiri, as well as developing work with such writers as Melis
Aker, Hannah Khalil, Ken Kaissar, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, and Betty Shamieh.
I’ve also had the honor of working with non-Middle Eastern writers such as
Kevin Artigue, Gabriel Jason Dean, and Guillermo Calderón on pieces that
pertain to Middle Eastern and Middle Eastern American identities.

KF: I have directed, created, and written a number of plays that fit that
category. The most notable example is the play This Time, which I co-created
with playwright Sevan K. Greene. It tells the story of how my paternal
grandmother fled Egypt and came to Canada because she was having an
affair with a Canadian professor. It received a world premiere in New York
in 2016. More recently I wrote and directed The Triumphant, which is based
on interviews I conducted with gay men in Egypt. It was developed and
presented at Target Margin Theatre in Brooklyn in June of 2018. My play
Pareidolia is about an Egyptian-American artist who enters into a mysterious
online relationship. I also created the first-ever English-language adaptation
of Alaa Al Aswany’s bestselling novel The Yacoubian Building.

MMN: Maia Directors is committed to MENASA works. In your opinion,

what differentiates Middle Eastern/North African plays from South Asian
plays?

MAIA: We had extensive conversations before deciding to include South

Asia in the scope of the Maia Directors mission, since none of our co-
founders is of South Asian descent. This was in response to our recognition
that South Asian artists are often cast as Middle Eastern characters, and vice
versa. We wanted to make sure that if our Middle Eastern artist community
is benefiting from the talents of South Asian artists, we are committed to
supporting those artists and their stories as well. With this decision, we are
purposefully putting ourselves in the middle of a complex conversation. In

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agreeing to this larger umbrella, we strive to honor the difference among

all of the cultures represented while highlighting the commonalities. The
question of differentiating between plays from MENA versus South Asian
communities is a difficult one as the sample size of produced plays by
MENASA writers in the United States is not large enough to be representative
of the full diversity of voices, aesthetic, and traditions from these regions.
We were specifically founded with the intention of championing more
artists and stories to counteract this. It will be exciting to see what kind of
conversation is possible about this in ten to twenty years once we’ve seen
many more MENASA plays on US stages.

MMN: On the Maia Directors website it states: “We believe that increasing
the visibility of MENASA stories is critical to deepening our national
empathy.” Why, in your opinion, does our national empathy require
deepening? How do MENA plays contribute to this deepening?

MAIA: As we’ve seen over and over again, othering and dehumanizing
is the first step towards some of the darkest chapters of history—in this
country and around the world. We’re living in an era where immigrant
communities of all backgrounds are actively vilified by the highest seats
of our government, and it is our imperative as artists to counteract that.
Specifically, MENA communities represent only around 3 percent of the
total US population and 20 percent of those are clustered in the larger
metropolitan area of only four cities (Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, and
New York). There are large swaths of the country where it would be totally
possible, if not likely, that an average citizen has never met a MENA person.
Although TV, film, and pop culture representations of MENA culture and
peoples are getting better, there is still a very narrow perspective that is
usually highlighted based in a fundamental lack of understanding of
MENA culture and history nationwide. Any opportunities to put American
audiences in dialogue with MENA stories is essential in fostering a deeper
understanding.

MMN: Also, on the Maia Directors website it states: “We believe in the
importance of centering the voices of artists who identify as part of the
MENASA-American community in telling these stories. We believe that the
American theatre must reject cultural conflation and lift up the complicated
and intersectional reality of MENASA communities. We believe that our
work in the American theatre is part of a larger movement towards inclusion

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and equity.” Why is it necessary to center the voices of MENA artists? Why
is cultural conflation something that must be rejected? What are some of the
intersectional realities of MENA theatre that you are particularly interested
in exploring in your work?

EO: This feels obvious to those of us that come from these communities, but
this is something that we continually have to advocate for in mainstream
spaces. Not all MENASA artists are the same—our lived experiences are
unique and touch upon wildly divergent histories, cultures, languages, and
religions. No single artist or play speaks for all of us, and we must continue
to push for more inclusion to help create a more rounded and complex
representation of our communities. It’s also worth noting that just because a
play is set in or deals with MENASA regions or cultures, it doesn’t mean that
it serves these communities. Maia Directors strongly advocates for work
generated by MENASA artists because we know that the most impactful,
nuanced, and accurate work representing our communities is created by
people from those communities. Although it can come with good intentions,
American theatre’s benevolent approach to helping “others” through the
authorship of white artists can be profoundly dehumanizing and damaging.
This is not to say that artists cannot work outside of their culture, but we
believe that it is essential for MENASA artists to be empowered as decision-
makers at the center of these projects and processes.

MMN: What do you believe having a personal connection to the Middle

East brings to your work on MENA plays that, perhaps, a non-MENA
director might not bring to the work?

MSZ: There’s an incredible diversity of experiences in the region. I think

that having a personal connection to the region actually more finely attunes
me to the need to get very granular and specific in the research I do and the
questions I ask. Although I have some degree of lived cultural knowledge of
the region, it’s knowledge that is very specific to me. I know that variations
in religion, language, and geography—which might seem unremarkable to
a white American—are hugely significant and would drastically affect how
characters move, speak, and relate to one another.

PY: Though I haven’t spent time in the Middle East, my time in America
as a third culture kid and child of immigrants has made me very aware of
my identity and the specificity of my family’s culture. Having had personal

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experiences of microaggressions, cultural conflations, and cultural erasure,

accuracy, and specificity in the work I do are of the utmost importance; I want
MENA artists, stories, and audiences to be seen and heard with respect and
pride. My identity and experiences have made me more attuned to creating
a process where no one person is a sole cultural ambassador because of
the multiplicity of viewpoints, experiences, and expertise represented in
the rehearsal room. It is through that rich exchange that the work can be
specific, and demonstrate respect and appreciation for languages, cultural
traditions, and rituals.

KF: The key thing that my Middle Eastern upbringing allows me to bring
to my directing work on a MENA play is a lived cultural knowledge.
While I think a director of any race or background can (and should!)
tackle any play, I feel we are still early in building a canon of new Middle
Eastern American work, and representations of our community that have
been put on stage up to now have too often been lacking in nuance and
specificity.

EO: It took me a long time to articulate the ways in which my identity

and heritage impacts my work in other ways than just content. I grew
up in a country filled with contradictions—ancient and new, East and
West, masculine and feminine—and I am drawn to works that have those
conflicting ideas at their core, and tonally, stylistically, and structurally
center dissonance. My lack of interest in subtlety that is endemic in
American theatre is also deeply rooted in my heritage. I come from a family
and a culture where people say what they mean—usually loudly and with
passion. I feel more at home in plays that do that as well. I also find that I am
drawn to unexpected metaphor. Satire and camp have always been key parts
of Turkish artmaking especially in the ways that artists speak to power. So,
it’s not surprising that I love camp, caricature, big visual and sonic ideas that
have deep political meaning and can speak to difficult truths.

MMN: What directorial choices do you find you must make when directing
a MENA play that are specific to this genre? In other words, what makes
preparation for a MENA play different than preparations for directing a
play by Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, or Tennessee Williams, for instance?

EO: First off, I wish American artistic leaders would consider that a MENA
director like me might be an option for an O’Neill, Miller, or Williams. But

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if I were at some point able to direct an American classic, I am sure I’d be

approaching it with a slightly different lens. A director has to always think
of their audience, but when dealing with MENA work, I think the question
of audience’s perspective and preconceived biases come earlier into my
process. Along with the research that goes into any works that deal with
oft-ignored stories, I also think deeply about the ways in which the creative
teams’ intentions may be co-opted and misunderstood. This usually means
that MENA works I direct will be more colorful and more direct. I find that I
spend more time to find and highlight the joy and laughter in MENA works.

KF: Preparation and research is a vital part of the directing process for
any play. It’s up to the director to understand the world that the writer is
trying to create, and that takes a knowledge of context and history. The
great American canon of theatre (O’Neill, Miller, and Williams are great
examples) has a long and celebrated production history so much can be
gleaned from how other directors have interpreted the work in the past,
and how your own interpretation will be in conversation with those that
have come before. In working on a MENA play, a director is usually tackling
a first production, or possibly a second or third. Very few MENA plays
have been canonized or have received multiple productions. The choices
a director makes—staging, design, structure—can become part of the very
fabric of the play.

PY: I find that my preparation varies because the plays themselves are so
singular and varied in terms of tone, style, narrative, and aesthetic. The key
difference is that in working on a MENA play, I am not inheriting a set of
assumptions about how the play must be performed in the way I am when
working on a piece of the American theatrical canon. I find this liberating,
and in lieu of researching an extensive production history, I immerse myself
in research on the play’s circumstances. I think the other key aspect is that
when working on a MENA play, I am more consciously aware of the political
act and activism my job requires. What unconscious bias can I disrupt?
How can my work on this play allow for a MENA audience member to feel
seen, heard, and understood? These questions are fundamentally a part of
my process, because of my vested interest in ensuring that we accurately
represent our communities and our stories.

MMN: Are there particular MENA playwrights that you collaborate with
often? If so, why do you feel artistically compelled to work on their plays?

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EO: Three playwrights come to mind, and I think it’s worth noting how
different their works are. Mona Mansour has become a key collaborator and
is part of the reason why I have a career in the American theatre. I love how
actor-friendly her plays are, and that she brings an undeniable complexity to
her characters and their political and personal relationships to their culture.
She creates with great generosity and is one of the most giving collaborators
I’ve ever worked with. Yussef El Guindi has been an important part of my
growth as a director. His plays are difficult—and purposefully so. He writes
anger rooted in injustice like no one else I’ve ever read. And he does it with
humor, sharp wit, and brave honesty. Any time I feel like I need to be braver
as an artist, I think of his Language Rooms and the difficult and personal
conversations he put in that play. Lastly, Jonas Hassen Khemiri is someone
I need to mention. He is the master of unreliable narratives and creating
flawed young men whose complexity and jagged edges make it impossible for
the audience to look away. His hip-hop poetic sensibility and bold theatrical
vision are a great match for my strengths as a director—and his plays have
been some of the most satisfying artistic experiences of my career to date.

KF: I’ve had an excellent working relationship with the Pakistani-American

playwright Rohina Malik, who does not identify as MENA, but is a devout
Muslim and writes passionately about the Muslim-American experience.
We’ve had a very fruitful collaboration as I’m able to draw from my own
Muslim upbringing to translate her work for non-Muslim audiences. I take
the responsibility of putting Muslim characters on stage very seriously.
Rohina and I have developed a great dialogue about why it’s important to
be doing this kind of work in today’s American theatre.

MSZ: I’ve gotten to workshop and brainstorm a lot with MENA writers, but
have never gotten to direct a MENA play in production! I’m looking forward
to this changing as more and more of these plays make it to full production.
Recently I’ve been workshopping a new play by one of my theatre heroes,
Eric Bogosian, based on his book Operation Nemesis—which is really
exciting and has been the first time I’ve worked with an Armenian writer.
It is an extraordinary experience to have so many very specific things from
my family and personal history—food, language, gesture—echoed on the
page and in the rehearsal room.

PY: One of my closest collaborations is with Ramiz Monsef, and for several
years, we have been developing his play 3 Farids, a clown show about Middle

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Eastern representation in Hollywood. I love working on comedy and clown,

particularly, but my appreciation for Ramiz and his work is much deeper
than that. In ways that are buoyant and joyous, Ramiz has crafted a subversive
narrative, where the Middle Eastern men at the center of the story are also
the play world’s moral compass. So often, in mainstream entertainment,
Middle Eastern characters are rendered without basic morality or decency,
and/or those same characters rely on white characters in the story to “save”
them. In this play, the Farids are the heroes of their own story, and this is the
kind of theatre I want to be a part of: theatre that disrupts our unconscious
bias with humor and joy, and gives Middle Eastern characters a sense of
agency and fullness as three-dimensional human beings.

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“BE A PART OF CHANGING THE AMERICAN NARRATIVE ABOUT

THE MIDDLE EAST”: AN INTERVIEW WITH GOLDEN THREAD
PRODUCTIONS EXECUTIVE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR TORANGE
YEGHIAZARIAN AND SILK ROAD RISING CO-FOUNDER AND
CO-EXECUTIVE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR JAMIL KHOURY

MMN: How do you personally identify as a Middle Eastern American, and

what is your relation to that term?

TY: I identify as Iranian American, and Middle Eastern to me is an umbrella

term that includes that, and I would say I mostly identify as an immigrant
woman. That’s, I think, the thing that informs my perspective.

JK: And I identify as a mixed-heritage Arab American and a queer feminist

Arab American. Middle Eastern American becomes useful when talking
about our theater movement, and, in the case of Silk Road Rising, when
talking about the “heritage communities” that we focus on—East Asian,
South Asian, and Middle Eastern North African.

MMN: Jamil, you talk about polyculturalism as an idea. How do we bring

polyculturalism into the conversation when someone is not born from two
parents who are from the Middle East, for instance?

JK: I am the product of a polycultural marriage and the union of two cultural
communities. I’m part Arab and part Slavic, and both backgrounds inform
my worldview. Arguably I’m more attached to my Arab heritage, as it was my
father who was the immigrant. He immigrated from Syria in the early 1950s
whereas my mother was born in Chicago of Polish and Slovak heritage. I
also have an actual lived relationship with Syria and with the Arab world
that I don’t yet have with Poland and Slovakia. So that immigrant piece of
me, that consciousness about being the son of an immigrant, has always
been central to who I am. And to how I understand my Americanness, and
whatever sense of belonging and affinity and hyphenated existence I may
feel at a given time.

TY: So, fundamental to why we started Golden Thread and why we chose
to go with the term “Middle Eastern American” is this idea of a pluralistic
society, a pluralistic background. From my perspective, nobody’s really pure,

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nobody’s one thing; we all have many layers to our identity. As someone
who’s from a mixed marriage, someone who’s an immigrant, who’s, you
know, displaced and “othered” on multiple levels . . . pluralism is, I think,
central to the idea of who I am and how I bring people together and what
Golden Thread is. So, we are a company made up of many mixed people.

JK: And I think the polycultural model, or the pluralistic model, is

ultimately more useful for us than the multicultural model, in that it’s about
cultural interchange and relationships between communities. It’s about the
intersections and the overlap. And although I often say that we were born
of a multicultural politic, we quickly migrated to a polycultural aesthetic,
because multiculturalism all too often silos communities and polices
identities and doesn’t necessarily acknowledge the fact that we all inhabit
and embody multiple identities at any given time.

MMN: So, is it inherently problematic to say someone is, say, Iranian

American or Arab American, when people obviously have such plurality
in their lives and in their backgrounds? And if we do try to create these
definitions, then is that really for our consumption, or is that to help those
outside of our groups understand better our connection to a Persian culture,
for instance?

TY: I don’t know what you mean by problematic. I mean, I think people
self-identify, and people arrive at that self-identification wherever they are.
So, if someone defines themselves as Iranian American, that’s where they
are, that’s how they define themselves. I think for me what’s difficult is when
people argue racial purity or cultural exclusiveness. Those conversations
become difficult, those conversation and that mindset ignore our very
mixed and very long history of shared cultures in the Middle East. That’s
again one of the reasons why Golden Thread has such a broad and inclusive
definition of the Middle East is that we are not one thing. And the Middle
East over the many centuries, over the millennia, has been inhabited by
people of many different cultures, and all of those races and ethnicities have
left an impact there. And we are the product of that history. So, I think for
me what’s exciting is to dive into that mix and see what we come up with, as
opposed to try to, you know, pull out exclusive threads out of it.

JK: And I think that complexity and the fact so many of us have assimilated
this idea, usually for historical reasons, that we don’t like each other or that

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we’re somehow adversaries, be that Arabs and Israelis or Turks and Kurds
or Sunnis and Shi’ites. And that isn’t to deny some very painful history
of course. But Middle Eastern American theatre gives us an opportunity
to move beyond so many of the narratives that either divide us or pit us
against each other and to focus instead on that which unites us, the cultural
experiences that we share, without homogenizing or hegemonizing us.
Without denying our specificities. And I think there are so many cultural
traditions and ideas and practices and expectations that so many of us
who fall under this complicated, messy rubric called “Middle Eastern” can
identify with or attach to.
I do want to say something else about Arab American for me, and why
I call myself Arab American as opposed to Polish American. For me, it’s
largely a political choice, and it’s a political choice that I made at a very
young age. I know that there was, and is, prejudice against Slavic peoples
and that it was much more pronounced in earlier generations, directed
at earlier waves of immigrants, than it is today. But my entire life I have
been hugely aware of anti-Arab sentiment in this country, and hostility
and stereotyping and scapegoating. And so it was always important for me
politically to align myself with Arabs and Arab Americans because of anti-
Arab racism and stigma. And also, in part, because when I self-identify as
Arab American and people respond with “Oh, but you don’t look Arab,”
whatever “look Arab” may mean, I’m also doing the work of refuting or
somehow challenging perceptions of who is and isn’t an Arab, or what
“Arab” even means.
So, I think when the Polish Independence Day Parade passes through
downtown Chicago, where I live, and I catch pieces of it, I feel very proud,
you know, I feel very happy for all the Polish people waving flags, that kind
of thing. But I also feel a little removed. So there’s this sense of, Yeah! I’m
part of them and they’re part of me and we share something, and I’m happy
that Poland is quote, unquote “free,” however we want to define “free,” but it
is different. And so many of the Slavic immigrants, so many of my relatives
on my mom’s side, really became white Americans, they assimilated into a
version of “whiteness,” whereas with my Arab side that was never really the
case, it wasn’t even a possibility or an option for many.

MMN: What then do we do with people who are Middle Eastern but perhaps
don’t fit within the boundaries of a map, for instance. What if somebody
who’s Afghani says I’m Middle Eastern, or if somebody who’s Pakistani, or
North Africa of course becomes its own conversation, what does Middle

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Eastern then mean if it’s based first of all on a colonial representation of

what this region is, and second of all when even maps are excluding certain
countries and peoples from this definition.

TY: Jamil and I have come up with a definition of a broad and inclusive
Middle East, basically not defined by geography or politics, language or
religion, but by a broad cultural brushstroke. So we have that definition on
our websites.

JK: You know, and, if an Afghan person or a Central Asian person or a

South Asian Muslim, a Pakistani, chooses to identify as Middle Eastern,
that’s great. You know, I’m not going to police or contest how someone
self-identifies. It could be that they self-identify as South Asian and
Middle Eastern or that somehow Islam connects them to the Middle
East, or Eastern Christianity, that expatriate experiences in the Arabian
Gulf connect them to the Middle East, you know, they feel an attachment
culturally or religiously or professionally or linguistically. I do like the term
“Southwest Asian,” and I will sometimes identify as Southwest Asian, but
it oftentimes creates confusion and some people think I’m saying I’m from
the Philippines, which becomes all the more confusing. So I’ve learned that
Southeast Asian has real meaning for people; it has a particular geographic
resonance, whereas Southwest Asian. . . . Herein lies the debate: I mean,
yes, we’re calling ourselves a MENA movement, yes, we absolutely need to
embrace the acronym MENA, we’ve kind of figured that out. But it would
be nice if, at some point, a term like “Southwest Asian” or “West Asian,”
particularly within our broader conversations about Asian Americans and
Asian-ness, could be more readily recognized and embraced.

MMN: One of the questions about our coalition’s name, for instance, is
the addition of the word “American.” So for instance Middle East North
African American, and then the problematics of North African American
as a term, for instance, where, in truth, people from North Africa are
technically African American, but they do not fit within the box of the
American ethno-racial construction. So, what are the inherent pitfalls of us
identifying with this notion of Middle Eastern American or Middle Eastern
North African American?

TY: I wanted to go back to the previous question and share just the
fundamental philosophy of inclusiveness. There’s, in the politics of

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identity in the United States, in the process of claiming one’s identity,

what has happened is that people have in fact isolated themselves more.
This is something Jamil touched on briefly. In our work at Golden Thread
Productions, and I imagine also at Silk Road Rising, our philosophy is a
philosophy of inclusiveness. It’s basically widening the embrace as much as
possible because, at the end of the day, we have more in common than we
don’t. So just going back to the Middle East, the term “Middle East” and how
we identify it or how we describe it, at Golden Thread, we have produced
plays that deal with Andalucía, with Bosnia, with Sicily. We include the
Caucasus, you know, Azerbaijan, Armenia, so it’s a very wide net. And part
of that is that, through sharing these stories, we can broaden peoples’ idea
of what this culture is, right? And its historic heritage and wealth and how
it has impacted the world, right? So, if anyone contacts Golden Thread and
says, “I self-identify as Middle Eastern,” I don’t even ask them where they’re
from. I say, “Come on in.” And then, just to touch on the American side of
it, it’s interesting. In describing Golden Thread from the very beginning,
we had really taken care to talk about the Middle East and how we define
the Middle East and what it means. And for years we had debated using
the term. It wasn’t until when we started doing our strategic planning back
in 2013 that it occurred to us that we were actually an American company.
So, we had talked about being Middle Eastern American and Middle
Eastern American theater and we were part of Middle East America new
plays initiative and all of that. But we had taken that for granted, and I
personally hadn’t thought about what that means. And it was in 2013 in
those conversations that we, that I, realized we are an American company
with a focus on the Middle East, and that is inherently a very different
perspective than a company in any of the countries of the Middle East
producing, even with a similar philosophy to ours. So, for me that was very
revealing, and it was very interesting to think about, well, what does it mean
to be American? What does it mean to be Middle Eastern American? And I
think that, I don’t know, shifted something in me personally.

MMN: What, then, is a Middle Eastern American play?

JK: We are committed to producing playwrights of Middle Eastern

backgrounds who create protagonists or central characters of Middle
Eastern backgrounds. We call it “the playwright-protagonist imperative,”
or alignment. Now, I’m not going to argue that that’s the only definition
of, or the sole definition of, a Middle Eastern American play, but that is

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how we decided to tell Middle Eastern American stories. I want to add that
the American piece of that is huge, and that we cannot disentangle our
American-ness from our Middle Eastern-ness. Nor can we deny the fact
that we’re speaking to mostly non-Middle Eastern American audiences,
who bring their own impressions and perceptions and understandings to
the table, either of our part of the world or the cultures emanating from
our part of the world. And with that comes a certain set of aesthetic
choices and political responsibilities. So we are—and I don’t mean this in
a propagandistic way or an ideological way—but we carry this constant
awareness that we’re creating art against a backdrop of stereotypes and
animus directed at all things “Middle Eastern.” I think we also have a lot to
say about what it means to be an American. I mean, in many respects, that’s
been the central question for Silk Road Rising from the beginning. After all,
9/11 was our company’s moment of conception. Our American-ness was
being questioned and challenged in profoundly disturbing ways. Middle
Eastern Americans were basically exiled from the American story. And so
we set out to reclaim and reassert our American stories, on our terms. And
to create spaces where we could define ourselves.

MMN: Torange, is the playwright-protagonist model something Golden

Thread Productions also adheres to?

TY: At Golden Thread, we produce plays about any topic written by

playwrights of Middle Eastern heritage, and then plays written by anyone
about the Middle East. So we have an “about from, or about” mission. And
that’s informed by an emphasis on dialogue and bringing diverse artists
together to the table. Having said that, I would say historically, over the
past twenty plus years, we have produced 90 percent plays by playwrights
of Middle Eastern heritage. Mostly in the ReOrient Festival, sometimes
about maybe, I don’t know, [one] third or half of the short plays are by
playwrights not of Middle Eastern heritage. Because it was initially just a
philosophical thing, but then it became really important during the war
years, the Iraq war, and then to create space for Americans who were also
exploring alternatives to what the government was, the official narrative in
the media, and the official narrative that the government was doing. And
so, in a way, we were kind of a rare space for those perspectives.

MMN: I think what’s unique about both of you is that, not only are you
artistic directors but you’re also playwrights who’ve written plays in this

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genre. In thinking about plays like 444 Days or Mosque Alert what, to you,
was necessary in writing those plays, and how did those plays then become
Middle Eastern American plays?

TY: I mean, I don’t set out to write a Middle Eastern American play. I
think I do by virtue of who I am, but in the case of 444 Days it was my . . .
what I needed to say was that, here are two countries that are behaving
like belligerent teenagers, instead of adults, and I wanted to convey that
through a love story, or a love story gone bad, basically, which is in many
ways what I feel has happened between the US and Iran. So more than
anything it was political intrigue à la—I don’t know—romance kind of play.
I think what makes it Middle Eastern American is that it . . . it very directly
depicts the relationship between the US and a country in the Middle East.
It’s different from some of the other Middle Eastern American plays in that
it’s not the perspective of a Middle Eastern American character. The lead
characters—one is American, the other one is Iranian from Iran—are not
Middle Eastern American, per se.

JK: I think that in the case of Mosque Alert, what makes it a Middle Eastern
American play—first of all—six of the eleven characters are Arab Americans,
Egyptian and Syrian—essentially, it’s a play about Islamophobia. And Islam,
you know, gets wrongly conflated as this Middle Eastern religion that is
somehow monolithic, and that all Muslims are tied to that part of the world,
even though geographically it might extend from Nigeria to China, but who
has time to parse that out? I tend to think that all Middle Eastern Americans,
or at least most Middle Eastern Americans—including those of us who are
not Muslim—are affected by Islamophobia and the egregious assumptions
it propagates. So, this was a play that was not written in a conventional style,
in that we invited participants, virtually and in-person, to contribute to the
crafting of the narrative, and to contribute insights and experiences and
perspectives, and so forth. And I incorporated a lot of that. But it was part of
a prolonged conversation, live and online, and us working in communities
where there was actual resistance to the building of proposed mosques.
Including the community in west suburban Chicago where the play is set,
Naperville, Illinois. Naperville had been home to two cases of proposed
mosques that were initially denied permits. So by working with the local
Muslim communities, and with their friends and foes, and with those, who,
you know, were somehow indifferent, but not really indifferent, we were
able to build a story that’s ultimately about belonging and not belonging

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in today’s America. So to me, Mosque Alert is a Middle Eastern American

play that heavily emphasizes the American, in that it’s about finding one’s
place in a society that hasn’t fully embraced you, and that asks you to prove
your American-ness, or at least disprove your anti-American-ness, or your
foreign-ness. It also examines how Islamophobia gets racialized and, in a
way, universalized, to the extent that it also targets, and doesn’t distinguish
between, Hindus, Sikhs, Latinx communities, Eastern Christians, Mizrahi
Jews, and so forth. And that was always very important to me, demonstrating
that this is an ideology that (a) relies on othering and foreignizing, and
(b) has proven to be a very effective tool politically within the American
electoral landscape; one that is easily exploitable. So, scapegoating Middle
Eastern Americans, scapegoating Muslims, becomes convenient and useful
for folks with, well, really insidious politics.

MMN: Now, one of the inherent problems is who are we writing for?
Because inevitably we will have somebody who’s from the Middle East stand
up and say, “We know all of this! Why are you telling us this?” And you’ll
also have an American, or non-Middle Eastern audience member saying,
“Oh, I learned so much, coming to this play!” So, how do we deal with that
dichotomy, and how do you personally deal with it both as playwrights and
as artistic directors?

TY: As a playwright, I think the story, I’m personally drawn to stories that
bring multiple communities together, so I often have people of different
backgrounds in the play so that their various perspectives can . . . so that
different people in the audience can relate to different characters in the play.
So I don’t necessarily think about, or consciously think about, “Oh, who’s
representing what perspective or what segment of my audience can relate to
what?’’ But just naturally I’m drawn to stories that bring different kinds of
people together and often it results in plays that have, that provide multiple
points of entry to the audience. Having said that, it happens all the time
that Iranians or Armenians in the theater have opinions about my choices
in the plays, and cultural opinions. They make major broad statements like
“An Iranian woman would never do that,” “An Iranian mother would never
say that,” “An Iranian man blah blah,” you know, so it happens all the time
and my answer to that is, “In this play, they do.” Or they try to rewrite the
play for you, and I’m like “Hey, you have a great story! You should sit down
and write it!”

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JK: Well, I just want to start by saying that Torange and I have so much
in common, both as artists and as producers, in that we strive to create
landscapes that include lots of different people with different perspectives
and experiences. Also we both dramatize discourse, debates, and ideas in
ways that aren’t about directing you as an audience member to think in
a particular way, or arrive at a particular conclusion, but rather affording
you the integrity and intelligence to arrive at your own conclusions. But
certainly, having people of different cultural backgrounds somehow
relating to each other, be they in conflict, be they romantically involved,
you know, whatever the case may be. But in that same space, I think that
some segments of our Middle Eastern audiences bring a certain cultural
insecurity to the table, or to the conversation, and a degree of fear. And
sometimes it’s a very, you know, understandable or justifiable fear of . . .
airing dirty laundry, or how such and such depiction of such and such idea
or behavior is going to reflect poorly upon the broader community. The
burden of representation that falls on so many of us who deign to create
Middle Eastern American stories is enormous and frankly unfair. It’s like
we’re supposed to represent everyone’s story in one two-hour play and, God
forbid, our people not “look good” every step of the way. It’s this impossible
expectation that certain members of our communities cannot seem to
forgive us for not adhering to. But you know, by and large, as Torange said,
this idea of “Well then, tell your story, tell your story the way you want to
hear it told!” I mean, I have often found that to be an effective way to at least
shut someone up, without sacrificing politeness and decorum, diplomacy,
but also as a way to say “You too can tell a story, you too can write a play,
you too . . . .” And we see ourselves, certainly with our education program,
as facilitators of just that. And if you have a specific idea of what an Iranian
woman does or says, then that is the Iranian woman you need to depict, but
Torange is going to go in a different direction, and God love her for it. I will
always maintain when people say, “Well, now that person doesn’t exist in
our community,” “Really? I happen to know five versions of that person, no,
ten versions of that person,” you know what I mean? Generally speaking,
the characters that live in my head are a composite, like with all writers, of
the many people we know and the many parts of ourselves.

TY: I would also just add, there is the burden of representation, there is the
burden of countering stereotypes. So it is true that I’m drawn to plays that
counter stereotypes. So while you know a father beating up his daughter for

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marrying the wrong person happens all the time, it’s probably unlikely that
I will produce that play. So I do, as a producer, I make choices, and it is my
intention to show stories that counter what most Americans already think
of the Middle East.

MMN: Now, as much as we want coalition building, and we desire it and we

work toward it, what do we do with problematic counter-narratives such as
the Armenian Genocide or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where you will
produce a play that maybe is very charged? Say a pro-Palestine play that’s
very charged against the Israeli occupation, or a pro-Armenian play that is
very strongly saying that Turkey did commit such atrocities? What do you
do when you have to, on the one hand, bring Middle Eastern communities
together and, on the other, knowing that these plays are very divisive in
certain ways, and perhaps need to be divisive in certain ways? Or do you
just avoid that altogether and try to find the play that finds commonality
rather than conflict?

JK: That’s a very important question, and I just want to go back a moment
to the politics of countering stereotypes. And I too think the act of
countering, consciously and intentionally, very much informs a lot of
our decision making and a lot of how we view plays. This idea of Middle
Eastern people as human beings, that radical notion, is like this irrefutable
fact that we constantly need to reiterate. Think about it. I mean, it’s tragic.
It’s heartbreaking. It’s testimony to how “successful” Orientalist, racist, and
colonial discourses have been. We’re talking centuries. And now it’s somehow
incumbent upon us as artists and storytellers to show that Middle Eastern
peoples are neither demons nor angels, but rather complicated, complex
people like everyone else. And that we, as a theater company, demand the
right to explore those complexities, and those contradictions of the human
condition, warts and all. I agree with Torange about the father who beats up
his daughter, unless there’s a story that absolutely warrants that depiction.
Because the idea of feeding into stereotypes, the idea of confirming peoples’
worst assumptions about Middle Easterners, is such a . . . it’s a minefield
and it can be very dangerous. Because on the one hand, if it’s the daughter
who comes to us with a story about being abused by her father, then there’s
an urgency and an importance ascribed to her story by virtue of the fact
that she’s coming forth, and that the telling of her story becomes part of her
own catharsis, her own healing. So, we of course stand with her. Which isn’t
to deny that these are difficult conversations and difficult balancing acts.

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Look, colonial feminism is real, and it’s waiting in the wings eager to exploit
authentic feminist expression.
I think when it comes to issues like the Armenian Genocide and
Palestinian dispossession and Israeli occupation, we need to take a
nonnegotiable stance. There was a genocide of over two million Armenians,
Assyrians, and Greeks committed by Turkey. Full stop. Turkey committed
those crimes and we’re not going to debate that. We’re not going to allow
historical facts to reside in a contested arena. We know that Japanese
Americans were incarcerated en masse by the US government. The US
government committed a racist crime against American citizens. Not the
first time, not the last, and no, I’m sorry, we’re not debating the “virtues”
of mass incarceration. We know that Palestinians were forcibly displaced
from their land, from their homes, by Israeli forces, and that Palestinians
today live under a cruel, draconian military occupation. It’s incontestable.
And artists have a responsibility to recognize and honor collective trauma.

TY: To everything Jamil said, I would build on that two examples. So, for
us, the ReOrient Festival has been an opportunity to actually present plays
from different perspectives, not ones that debate the fundamentals but
show the impact from different perspectives. So, for example, we famously
produced Motti Lerner’s Coming Home, so an Israeli, the impact of the
occupation on an Israeli family. And in the same evening we had Tamam
by Betty Shamieh, and Baggage and Sahmata. So, the first year that we
produced those plays we had like three Palestinian plays and Motti’s play
in one ReOrient. And I don’t know if you know Sahmata, but it’s about the
[Palestinian] village and the destruction of the village and the grandfather
telling his stories. And, you know, because of Motti and his stature we had
people from the Israeli Consulate in the audience one night, the night that
Motti was participating in the post-play discussions. And the same night I
had invited—it accidentally happened, it wasn’t an intentional thing—I had
invited the singers from Aswat Arabic Music Ensemble and their founder to
attend. I think they were performing at ReOrient earlier that afternoon, so
many of them stayed and came to see the play, came to see the performance,
the ReOrient performance, that evening. And the post-play conversation
after that play was chilling, I would say, because . . . Motti is probably one
of the most vocal critics of the occupation, and in his conversation after the
play, he didn’t hold back, he was very open. He shared his fears, essentially,
for the future of Israel if the occupation continues. And the Israeli Consul
who was in the audience stood up and said, “I really loved the play and I

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love that it’s being produced here, but I have to say that I don’t share your
perspective and I love my country and I think it’s a great country and has a
lot to offer.” And then one of the Palestinian singers in the audience stood
up and said, “Yes, but I hope it didn’t cost my humanity” or, something to
that effect, and there was a back and forth between them, and it was . . . they
were both very respectful to each other. It’s rare for those two people to be in
the same space together to begin with, and then to be actually able to have
a conversation, I think is rare. And I think they were both surprised that
they were in fact able to have a conversation. Of course, it got heated, and
of course it got emotional, and we concluded on a note of agreeing that it’s
difficult and how wonderful that we are able to gather in this cultural space
and have this conversation. But I think ReOrient is one place where we
are able to bring in people from different communities together. And often
in post-play conversations we have those kinds of opposing perspectives
that may clash. Another experience that was interesting was when we
produced A Girl’s War by Joyce Van Dyke, who’s an Armenian playwright
in Massachusetts. It’s about a love affair between an Armenian and Azeri
during the Karabakh War, the border conflict there. And it was difficult for,
I mean we have deep roots in the Armenian community in the Bay Area,
and we’ve produced a number of plays that deal with the aftermath of the
genocide. But it was a difficult play to pitch to the Armenian community
because many people were uncomfortable with this idea of a love affair
between and Armenian and an Azeri, and we were promoting it that way.
And the feedback that I got was that if it hadn’t been promoted that way,
more people probably would have come. But it felt a little, I don’t know that
it felt propaganda-y, but it felt like a foregone conclusion without room for
conversation, so anyway, that was a learning experience for me.

MMN: Have either of you had to deal with a playwright who’s given you a
play whose politics you absolutely do not agree with and that you had to
reject for that reason?

JK: Well, you know, Motti Lerner’s play Pangs of the Messiah, which we’re
very proud to have produced, the first time I read the script—and I very
distinctly remember sitting at a gate at an airport, I think it was Washington
National, and my flight had been delayed and I thought, “Well, I’ll read the
first few scenes, see if I like it,” and I literally couldn’t put it down. I read
it start to finish and the flight still hadn’t arrived! Pangs really disturbed
me. It really shook me up, and in large part because Motti had created

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these characters who were religious Zionist settlers, we’re talking leaders
of an illegal West Bank settlement, who were complicated and likeable
and detestable and yes, relatable. And I’m not supposed to relate to these
guys. I worked for a UN agency on the West Bank with Palestinian refugee
communities. The Israeli settlers and soldiers were uniformly the bad guys,
and any interaction with them was negative. And to enter the world of
that story, and to do so knowing that Motti is a secular, atheist Israeli Jew
who’s opposed to the settlement movement . . . the play took me to a very
uncomfortable place, but in a way that convinced me we needed to produce
it. My political discomfort greenlighted the project for me. And a number
of Arab audience members who came to see Pangs of the Messiah—and
most of our Arab audience avoided that production altogether—they too
professed feeling a deep discomfort, because on the one hand they really
liked the play, they found themselves relating to the characters, and yet felt
torn, guilty even, about attaching humanity to people who inflict harm and
suffering on fellow Arabs. And of course that’s part of what Motti—that’s
part of the point that he was making—we can critique their world view, we
can critique their politics, we can even critique aspects of their religious
beliefs or how they interpret those beliefs, but we can’t deny the fact that
these are people who live and breathe their belief system and put their
bodies on the line for a cause that they consider to be moral and just and
even redemptive. Motti’s not endorsing their views—to the contrary—but
in putting a human face on those views, he’s reminding us just how black
and white the world is not. And so, that play stands out as an example, a
very vivid example.

TY: I think similarly because agenda-driven plays tend to be very, you

know, transactional or very direct in what they’re trying to do, and that’s
not interesting theater. We did have one experience with playwright Ken
Kaissar, whose play we chose to do a stage reading of, and then later he
had a short play that we included in ReOrient. I think we did the reading
first and then his short play was included in ReOrient and as part of our
ReOrient promo. I knew that Ken is Jewish and he’s a practicing Jew, so I
knew that, but in his interview he self-identified as a Zionist so that came
as a surprise to me and it was . . . . So, I had to have a conversation with him,
I’m like, “Uh, what is this and how come we haven’t had this conversation
before?” And he said he defines Zionism as just believing that Israel has
a right to exist, and I said, “Well, that’s technically not what Zionism is,”
[laughing] and so we had to have a further conversation. And there was a

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whole . . . not even a debate, I don’t know a major reaction to that, a rant by
one of our Palestinian actors in ReOrient. He posted a long opinion piece
on his Facebook page. I had to explain the playwright’s perspective to the
actor and vice versa and invite them to use the opportunity to establish
dialogue, which they did. But I mean it all worked out and it was fine,
but I think it did leave a bad taste in some of our Palestinian audience
members’ mouth, just the way he the playwright self-identified. If we’re
going to produce Israeli or Jewish playwrights who write about “The
Conflict,” I think to only say we will produce anti-Zionists would be very
difficult and would probably . . . is problematic in a way. I think that most
of the playwrights, Israeli playwrights, Jewish playwrights, that we’re going
to interact with, understand themselves as liberal, progressive, leftists, you
know however that . . . but have this fundamental belief that there needs to
be or should be . . . a Jewish state. And I don’t want to engage necessarily in
that debate so much as, you know, it’s important to me that they recognize
that Palestinian self-determination is a baseline in terms of resolution
to this conflict. I would say in general again it goes back to countering
dominant stereotypes, you know? I’m interested in plays that challenge the
dominant perspective, that challenge those narratives regardless of where
it comes from.

MMN: Let’s talk about the idea of “balance.” Because as you know, we often
feel that if we give one half of a narrative, we must give the other half of the
same narrative. But some of our colleagues feel that is extremely unhelpful
and downright equivocating. So, what do we do about that? What do we do
about this notion that we must balance these contested narratives in order
to come to a more fair or equitable understanding?

TY: I don’t feel I have to balance the narrative. [laughs] I reject that question.

MMN: So, with ReOrient, you don’t feel the need to have a balance of ideas
based on certain topics?

TY: I think with ReOrient I look at how to put the plays in dialogue with
each other, not necessarily to balance the perspective but to create a more
provocative conversation. So, I think this idea of fair and balanced, I mean
maybe the news media or some news channels can do it, but it’s really . . .
it’s like people saying “I’m very objective.” Nobody’s objective, everybody’s
subjective. So, I reject the notion of fair and balanced.

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JK: Or people who say that they’re logical and not emotional. [laughs] And
yet, everything that comes out of their mouths is based on emotion and fear
and reactionary impulses. I think that with Semitic Commonwealth we stated
early on, including in our promotional and dramaturgical materials, that it
was not about balance and that we were consciously rejecting the idea of
balance and that if you read into the choice of three Jewish playwrights and
three Arab playwrights a sort of balance, or an attempt at balance, you were
missing the point. Semitic Commonwealth was about addressing imbalance
and an asymmetrical power relationship between Israelis and Palestinians.
If anything, we were “off-balancing” the dominant narratives. And to
Torange’s point about dominant narratives, we too understand ourselves
as subverting and challenging a lot of the orthodoxies that get baked into
narratives that are rooted in power. I mean obviously, Malek, you directed
my play Precious Stones, Silk Road’s inaugural production, and it was
premised on a kind of symmetry of voices, embodying and theatricalizing
multiple perspectives, and I do know that different people left the play,
thinking that it was leaning one way or another. And I was quite surprised
to hear that, particularly from people who thought it leaned pro-Israel
and actually thanked me for that [laughs], you know? Because I know that
wasn’t our intent. Our project was essentially an exercise in getting into the
minds of people we disagree with, and people we agree with, and affording
them integrity and believability and complexity and fallibility. And so, I see
great value in the multiplicity of perspectives approach. I’m not interested
in propaganda. I don’t want to write it and I don’t want to produce it. I think
that when we reduce conflicts down to two overriding narratives, “I’m pro-
Israel” or “I’m pro-Palestine,” we do audiences a disservice, and we do a
disservice to ourselves as artists who are looking to grow and learn and to
expand and, you know, be somehow political and relevant in this world.
Basically, I reject the whole notion of balance because it seeks to establish
moral equivalency, and once again false symmetry, and allows you to skirt
injustice and equivocate on power and powerlessness.

MMN: I’ve noticed a lot of the plays I’ve been finding are very much from large
communities, such as Arab American, Turkish American, Iranian American,
and Jewish Israeli American. But what about some of the narratives from
some of the very small minoritarian groups in the Middle East? For instance,
have you come across a Yazidi American play, or a Kurdish American play, or
an Amazigh American play? Have you come across many of those, and why
aren’t they more prevalent than perhaps they are?

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TY: For the first time, we produced a play by a Kurdish playwright from
Turkey in ReOrient, so that was a first I would say that I know, for us. And
then, the Yazidis, I mean, what, there are 5,000 Yazidis in the world? So I
don’t think any of them are playwrights. So part of it is just numbers and
access. But I do try, I agree with you, that it’s important to represent more of
the Middle East, and I actively search for plays that have not, perspectives
that haven’t been presented at Golden Thread. For example, with Yemen, I
really wanted plays that deal with Yemen or tell us something about Yemen,
so I had to actively seek that out. I do have access to, for example, Assyrians,
and I know we have produced an Assyrian playwright, although her play
did not deal with that layer of her identity. But the smaller minorities, I
think it’s just a matter of numbers. Having said that, you know, for example,
I haven’t produced a play by a playwright from Tunisia, which I think is
a major shortcoming. I mean we’ve done Algerian plays but not Tunisian
plays so . . . I mean we’ve done a Moroccan play many years ago, so like
Tunisia, Libya, we’ve never done anything about Sudan. So I would be
interested in those voices for sure. It’s just a matter of looking for it and
actively seeking it out.

JK: First of all I would love to get my hands on an Assyrian play, and we
have not really had much luck. Ironically, because Chicago has a huge
Assyrian population and we feel a responsibility to tell Assyrian stories.
With the Yazidis, and I do want to say there are more than 5,000 of them,
but yes, it’s a very small community and it’s been devastated in recent years.
I personally don’t know of a Yazidi migration to the US, but of course there
are Yazidis living in this country. And if there are Yazidi houses of worship
or organizations here, I just don’t know of them. We worked with a Baha’i
playwright some years ago who wrote a play about her experiences as an
abused wife and her eventual escape. It was an absolutely beautiful play,
painful as it was, very poetic very powerful. And, you know, some members
of the local Baha’i community were upset that this was the one quote,
unquote “Baha’i” story that we chose to tell. So the argument was, “we’re
already under siege, we’re already a persecuted minority, we’re already . . .
and now you add this to the mix?” And like I said, it’s really hard to have that
conversation. We made a commitment to an artist who wrote a courageous
and impactful play that, organizationally speaking, won us no friends in
the local Baha’i community, and won us quite a few friends in the anti-
domestic violence activist community. Would we do it again? Yes. But do
we want to be allies to the Baha’i community? Oh my God, absolutely. But

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when we align our politics and aesthetic choices with the most vulnerable
in our communities, which more often than not means women and queers,
we’re told that we’re not being allies. Once again, it’s the whole dominant
narrative thing.

MMN: What about collaborators, such as hiring directors, designers, and

other theatre professionals? What are some of the criteria you’re looking
for as far as their connection to the play, and how necessary are those
connections for you when hiring someone?

TY: I mean in our community we don’t really have many designers that
are of Middle Eastern heritage. Here and there, there may be a costume
designer, or maybe we’re working with an Iranian video artist now. But
there aren’t any, and so I’ve always been the one providing the cultural
competency information to the designers and helping them with their
research. Directors we have a few more options but again, locally, there
aren’t that many. So, it’s difficult . . . we just don’t have that many options. So,
again I try to, you know, steep my director in as much cultural information
as possible and really work with them closely on those aspects.

JK: I think oftentimes in the absence of a director or a design team that is

somehow culturally connected to the playwright and the play, dramaturgy
becomes all the more important. If you want to do justice to the story that
you’re telling, then you need to understand the world of that story. I mean,
don’t get me wrong, dramaturgy is always important, but it takes on even
greater stakes when cultural knowledge, context, nuance aren’t immediately
available, shall we say, to many of the artists involved. I mean, you want to
avoid glaring mistakes that are later called out, but even more importantly,
you don’t want to change or undermine the story. I think that there are
all these debates, and certainly in Chicago theater and beyond, about who
gets to tell whose story and why and so forth. And from the beginning we
identified, we defined, a playwright-protagonist alignment, so we’ve always
been very clear about that, it’s a subjective choice on our part, it’s about
authorial voice, but does the “who gets to write the story” extend to who gets
to direct and who gets to act and who gets to design, etcetera? And those
can be very, you know, contentious and prickly conversations. They can be
very hurtful conversations. And, you know, there is something to be said
for a director who is culturally connected to the world of the play. There’s
also something to be said, particularly when you have the playwright in

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the room, for a director who’s not culturally connected to the world of the
play. And I think what oftentimes gets lost in many of these conversations,
particularly these very absolutist conversations, which are, in fact, not
conversations at all, is that playwriting is an empathic art and there are
many ways to create and leverage and activate empathy in workshops, in
production meetings, in rehearsals, in collaborative processes. And if we’ve
managed to somehow change our non-culturally specific artistic partners,
imagine what that work will do when it touches our audiences. There are
plenty of great arguments to make for an all Arab or all Turkish cast and
production team and there are great arguments to be made for a diverse
cast and production team. Now, if there’s someone involved who is trying
to steer the vision of the play in directions that are somehow antithetical
to the intentions of the playwright, then we don’t want that person in the
room. We don’t want that toxicity. . . . It’s kind of funny for me to hear all
these heated conversations today, because back in 2003, when we started
Silk Road, we weren’t aware of any of these conversations taking place, in
fact they may not have been taking place, and yet we were adamant that our
first production, my play Precious Stones, be directed by an Arab American
director: Malek. And that we needed a Palestinian actor to play the main
Palestinian character, and a Jewish actor to play the main Jewish character
and, I’ll tell you, for that story and that production and for that moment in
Chicago theatre, those choices were spot on. They were absolutely integral
to the success of our inaugural production. . . . Now, I think when we talk
about directors and designers of Middle Eastern backgrounds in Chicago,
yes, they’re very small pools. But they will continue to grow and frankly, we
have a responsibility to assure that they grow.

TY: I would say that specifically with plays that are set in the Middle East,
it becomes even more important to really dig deep and have someone in
the room with cultural competency, who can provide the nuances that
we may not be aware of or think about. With certain plays, if there is a
specific language in the play, then it’s important to have someone in the
room, from my perspective if at all possible the director, but if not someone
else in the room who is fluent who can address linguistic questions, not
from a scholarly perspective but from an everyday life perspective. So, for
example, with We Swim, We Talk, We Go To War, even though that wasn’t
really set in the Middle East, but it did have Arabic in it. And having Hala
Baki in the room who is Lebanese and fluent in Lebanese-Arabic, I think
that was really useful. With Scenes from 71* Years, Malek, having you direct,

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and obviously having Palestinian actors in the room, was invaluable. And
with the plays that we’re doing next year, they’re all set in the Middle East.
So it’s really important to have as much cultural competency in the room
as possible.

MMN: So if you have a choice between two actors, one who is extremely
culturally competent to the point of speaking the language, maybe they’re
from the culture but they’re not a “great actor,” as opposed to hiring
somebody who is a highly trained, highly polished actor, who do you cast?
Which would you rather have playing that role?

TY: For me it’s never abstract. It’s always case by case, depending on the
play, depending on the actor, depending on who else is in the room, who
else is in the cast. I think I can’t answer that theoretically. It’s a very practical
call, and I would make that call on a case by case basis.

JK: I’m going to agree with Torange. I will also say that we often defer to
the playwright, particularly when it’s a world premiere, and most of our
productions have been world premieres. But, you know, that conversation,
because it has shifted so much over the years, I cannot be oblivious to or
ignore the arguments of those, oftentimes actors, who say “I have a right
to play this role,” as opposed to this other person who is not of the culture.
And I cannot deny or discredit or ignore that argument. Casting in general
is hard. It’s complicated. It changes depending on the circumstances,
who’s in the room at what given time. But there is something to be said
for providing opportunities for artists in our communities. And even if
a particular actor is a little more “green” than this other actor who isn’t
Middle Eastern, we also have to take the long view, we have to think in
terms of how this experience will enable this actor to grow and evolve in
their craft. We need to make that investment in their future and ours. We
never said we were an actor training school. That’s not what we set out to
be. The actors rise to the occasion when given the chance, and then some.
But we have a responsibility to nurturing and cultivating Middle Eastern
American artists, and to creating opportunities for them that may not
otherwise be there.

TY: I would add that, as theatre companies devoted to the community, we

take it as part of our responsibility to nurture talent within the community. I
think that goes without saying. We often discover nascent talent within our

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community and nurture it and support it until they become very desirable
to larger theater companies and are never available to work with us again.
[laughs]

JK: You know, we can claim that as a contribution.

TY: Building careers of our artists in our communities is part of our

mission, so we do that without reservation. But I don’t subscribe to the
philosophy that, because an actor is from a particular community or culture
or background, they automatically are a better fit for a role. I do believe that
there is something about cultural body language, about cultural knowledge,
that is unspoken and unexplainable, and when you see it, you recognize
it, and when it’s valuable to a particular play, then that’s how you should
make your call, you know? So, really, I think it varies from play to play,
production to production.

MMN: What about funding? It’s a perpetual problem, of course, so the

question is why aren’t companies like yours getting the kind of massive
funding that other American theater companies producing the repertoire
of canonized American plays get? What have you experienced, and what do
you think is behind that?

TY: We get a lot of local funding and we are grateful for the support of
the local foundations and California Art Council, National Endowment for
the Arts . . . I don’t know, some of the larger foundations that are national,
part of it I think is just budget, being even eligible for, because they have
a minimum budget requirement and just being visible to them. And it
doesn’t help that some of the larger foundations have recently changed
their guidelines and shifted away from the arts. I do think that our work
is social justice and being able to make that argument in an environment
where everybody’s trying to make that argument [is] not an easy thing. So,
I’ve kind of given up trying to worry about funding. I cling on to those who
support us and recognize us and continue to notify other foundations of our
work, just to make sure that they are aware. But, I agree that a company like
Golden Thread Productions, like Silk Road Rising, should really be funded
at several levels higher than we actually are and should be recognized for
the community impact that we have, like what we were talking about in
terms of nurturing talent, developing audiences, developing artists.

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JK: Well, I think we’re in really similar places, you know, and I think that our
budgets are probably similar. We are fortunate, and this is the brilliance of
my husband Malik [Gillani], quite frankly, to have cultivated relationships
for years within the local funding community, with local philanthropic
foundations, corporate foundations. So we are disproportionately reliant
on foundation support, and thank God, and kudos to them, that they
see the virtue and necessity of our mission. Now, do they fund us at the
same levels that they may fund “mainstream” others? In many cases no,
but, some foundations have been quite generous and quite consistent,
and I want to give them the credit they deserve. And there will be some
companies that will say, “Oh, we wish we had what Silk Road has,” to which
I typically respond, “Well, then, you need a Malik, and there’s only one
of him, so . . .” [All laugh] I will say that the individual giving is where
we lag behind. While we certainly have individuals who donate, and some
quite generously so, one donor in particular, they tend not to be from
our Asian and Middle Eastern communities. But they love our mission
and they love our work. That said, I do think we’d be much larger, and
I think we’d have much more impact and reach, if our communities, if
the Silk Road communities, were to step up and donate more generously.
Unfortunately, that remains an uphill battle. Now I’m not saying that there
aren’t any donors from the Silk Road communities. Of course there are.
But the fact that we do work that sometimes ruffles people’s feathers, or
makes people uncomfortable, or disrupts dominant narratives within our
communities, or challenges the social status quo, has not won us friends in
many quarters. And frankly, when you’re a same-sex couple doing work, in
part, with socially conservative and religiously conservative communities,
there’s a stigma attached to that work, and there’s a distancing that takes
place. So that is a cross to bear, so to speak. But we’re here, and we’re doing
work that matters, and we’re making a difference and we’re on the map, and
we continue.

MMN: Why, in your opinions, hasn’t one of the playwrights you have
championed, who is writing specifically about our community and the
issues we face, won a Tony Award? Do you believe that it’s because we
haven’t achieved some sort of marker in the sort of larger American theater
framework that keeps us from having that critical mass that’ll take us
forward to the next level? Is that what’s wrong? Is it just our communities
aren’t as engaged as they could be? What’s missing?

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JK: I think historically there’s been a lot of fear of Middle Eastern American
work that once again threatens the status quo, or challenges or questions or
disrupts it. And I’ve often said that if one of our playwrights is going to make
it to Broadway, it should be Yussef El Guindi. Now, maybe someone else
would contest that. Maybe it should be Heather Raffo or Mona Mansour?
And I think one of the “problems” is that Yussef ’s plays, with maybe a few
exceptions, are really subversive and really smart and ask audiences to
grapple with some pretty uncomfortable stuff. And that’s what I love about
his voice, that’s what we all love about his voice.

TY: I think we haven’t been around very long and I think Yussef [El Guindi],
Heather [Raffo], Mona [Mansour], they’re well on their way to hopefully
make it to Broadway. But I’m hopeful. I think in my lifetime it’ll happen.

MMN: Both of you have companies that have been around for decades.
What’s next for each of your companies going forward, in your opinion at
this point?

TY: Immediately our next season celebrates the passage of the 19th
Amendment and the US women getting the right to vote with three plays
from the Middle East, by Middle Eastern women. A Turkish woman
playwright, Lebanese woman playwright, and Iranian woman playwright.
So, three countries that are very present in the US news media in this
moment. So we’re really excited that next year is all about women, women’s
voices, women’s political agency. It’s an election year, and I hope the next
president will be a woman, so I’m very focused on that at the moment. And
I’m hoping that I can retire soon. With the new generation coming up, I’m
very encouraged and energized that I can pass on the torch.

JK: Well, we have been talking about moving from a season model to
a festival model and to exploring what a three-play rotating rep kind
of festival would look like for us. My ideal festival would have one play
by a MENA American playwright, one play by an East Asian American
playwright, and one play by a South Asian American playwright. That
way we’d get to unite three geographic regions of the Silk Road, and I’d
also want them to be plays that somehow speak to each other. So I’m
increasingly attracted to the idea of turning us into an annual festival,
one that would grow incrementally. In terms of the more immediate
future, we’re thrilled to be working with playwrights Nahal Navidar and

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Yussef El Guindi in 2020, and to continue our uber popular playwriting

program and short play showcases in Chicago public schools, senior
centers, and the city’s West Ridge neighborhood. West Ridge is one of
the most ethnically, racially, religiously, linguistically, and economically
diverse communities in the United States. Activists from the community
invited us to partner with them to help build social cohesion through
storytelling. My God, talk about a welcome learning curve! You know
Torange mentions retiring, and I too think about the next chapter. I mean,
I’m fifty-four years old, I think by now I have some skills and experience.
[laughs] I do think a lot about the next generation and am mindful of
the fact that the politics of many Middle Eastern American artists who
are younger than us have different politics. Some of the conversations
they’re having are conversations we don’t necessarily find ourselves in
or on some level even relate to. So I do think that whatever generational
shift is happening . . . . Look, we define this as our life’s work, as our most
significant contribution perhaps. But at the same time, I don’t want to
get fossilized or stuck in place. I don’t want to be perceived as old, as old
news gone stale. The hope is to always remain dynamic and flexible. So
yes, there will be another chapter, and no, I’m not writing my Silk Road
obituary for quite some time. [laughs]

MMN: Is there anything either of you wish to add that we haven’t covered?

JK: I think one of the things . . . I’m going back to the Middle East America
convening at The Lark a few years back, where it really dawned on me that
we’re creating these radical spaces where Turkish artists and Armenian
artists, Israeli artists and Palestinian artists, Iranian artists and Arab artists,
can effectively remove ourselves from the dictates of our community
gatekeepers, and imagine new ways of relating to each other and of relating
to history, and new ways of negotiating identity and power, where at
least there’s the possibility of trust, and that the really, really hard work of
atonement and healing can maybe happen. It was pretty mind blowing, you
know. To be in a space where we could imagine relationships beyond our
prescribed enmities, our prescribed hatreds and suspicions, our distrust.
And I want to be very careful and establish that I’m not calling for a colonial
model in which Middle Eastern Americans save the Middle East, okay? But
I am relishing these opportunities to be in MENA American spaces, where
we allow ourselves to rethink and reconfigure our relationships to one
another. I feel inherently connected to Arab and non-Arab peoples of the

205
Middle Eastern American Theatre

Middle East. Regardless of whether or not we’re allowed to like each other.
I want to build on that potential. And Middle Eastern American, sure, it’s
a construct, it might even be artificial, but so are a lot of things, until we
endow them with meaning and vitality and longevity. How many times have
I said that the artists must lead, the storytellers must lead, and I think we’re
becoming an example of precisely that. I also want to say that on a local
level, as Torange was speaking about the Bay Area, I think that Chicago
has been absolutely critical to our success and our ability to not only dream
but to realize our dreams. And being part of a theater-making ecology that
is detached from Broadway and Hollywood—that isn’t about “I’m gonna
be cast in the next Spielberg film”—but is about taking risks and creating
new work and growing and experimenting and learning. We’ve been able to
find our place in that ecology and have been pretty much embraced by the
larger community. I think we’re seen as an important piece of the Chicago
theater mosaic. And I’m really proud of that, and I’m really grateful for
how well we’ve been received. And I’m not saying that we couldn’t exist
somewhere else. But there was this convergence of time and place and need
that’s worked so beautifully for us.

TY: Yeah, I would love to talk a little bit about the role of community,
because in the San Francisco Bay area, we have really invested in developing
relationships with community, as artists, audience members, donors. We’ve
tried to convey this message of investing in our stories. That these are our
stories and invest in them and take part in them and be a part of changing
the American narrative about the Middle East. And I think that when I
look back to let’s say five years ago to today, I think it has made a difference
and we have had some successes in building a community, both of artists
and of donors, board members. Again, these are things that I think to our
community, it’s new, you know? Theater is not . . . in a way it’s a new kind
of art, which to some people is attractive because of it. But to others, maybe
not. They’d rather go with music or poetry or something they have a more,
a deeper cultural connection with? You know, this kind of modern theater,
the realistic theater, or devised theater that has emerged in the twentieth
century or late nineteenth century to now, this is new. In the Bay Area, I
think we have benefited from the Iranian theater company here [the Darvag
Theater Group] having developed an audience already since the 1960s.
We’ve also benefited from the Bay Area itself being open to new ideas and
being . . . and encouraging risk-taking programming. The counterculture

206
 Critical Perspectives

here is very strong. So these are the elements in our environment that have
supported Golden Thread over the years and have been instrumental in our
ability to grow and sustain our work. So I think it’s important to remind
ourselves that we are not isolated. That we work within a community
that gets us, and supports us, and helps us thrive. And as we thrive, the
community thrives as well.

207
208
REFERENCES AND
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Visual Arts of the Middle East. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press.

224
CONTRIBUTORS

Kareem Fahmy is a Canadian-born director and playwright of Egyptian

descent and is the cochair of the Middle Eastern American Writers Lab at
the Lark. He has been a fellow or resident artist at the Sundance Theatre
Lab, Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Phil Killian Directing Fellow), Eugene
O’Neill Theatre Center (National Directors Fellow), Second Stage (Van
Lier Directing Fellow), Soho Rep (Writer/Director Lab), Lincoln Center
(Directors Lab), the New Museum (Artist-in-Residence), and New York
Theater Workshop (Emerging Artist Fellow & Usual Suspect). He has
worked at theatres around the country, including MCC, New Dramatists,
the Civilians, Geva Theatre, Pioneer Theatre, Silk Road Rising, and Berkeley
Rep. Kareem holds an MFA in Directing from Columbia University.

Jamil Khoury is the co-founder and co-executive artistic director of Silk

Road Rising. A theatre producer, playwright, essayist, and filmmaker,
Khoury’s work focuses on Middle Eastern themes and questions of
diaspora. He is particularly interested in the intersections of culture,
national identity, and religion. Khoury has been playwright-in-residence
at the Joan Mitchell Center (2019), Tufts University (2018), Benedictine
University (2017), North Central College (2016), Valparaiso University
(2015), and Knox College (2015). He holds an MA in religious studies from
the University of Chicago Divinity School and a BS in international relations
from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and is a Kellogg
executive scholar (Northwestern University) in Nonprofit Management.

Evren Odcikin is a theatre director, adapter, translator, and producer who

was born and raised in Turkey. He is the associate artistic director at Oregon
Shakespeare Festival, a founder of Maia Directors, and a resident artist
at Golden Thread Productions. He has worked at Portland Center Stage,
Cal Shakes, Berkeley Rep, South Coast Rep, New York Theater Workshop,
Kennedy Center, InterAct (Philadelphia), Cleveland Public Theatre, the
Lark, Magic Theatre, Crowded Fire, Shotgun Players, TheatreFirst, and
Playwrights Foundation, among many others. https://odcikin​.com.
Contributors

Megan Sandberg-Zakian is a freelance director based in Jamaica Plain, MA,

and a cofounder of Maia Directors. The daughter of an Armenian molecular
biologist and a Jewish playwright, Megan is a freelance theatre director and
the director-in-residence at Merrimack Repertory Theatre in Lowell, MA.
She is passionate about the development of diverse new American plays
and writers and supporting theatres to work toward inclusion and equity
on and offstage.

Torange Yeghiazarian is the founding artistic director of Golden Thread

Productions in San Francisco, the first American theatre company focused
on the Middle East where she launched such visionary programs as
ReOrient Festival, New Threads, Fairytale Players, and What do the Women
Say? A playwright, director, and translator, Torange has been published in
The Drama Review, American Theatre Magazine, Amerasia Journal, and
contributed to Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures and Cambridge
World Encyclopedia of Stage Actors. Born in Iran and of Armenian heritage,
Torange holds a master’s degree in theatre arts from San Francisco State
University.

A child of Iranian immigrants, Pirronne Yousefzadeh is a theatre director,

writer, and educator. She currently serves as the associate artistic director
and director of engagement at Geva Theatre Center. She has directed
and developed new work both in New York and regionally at the Public,
Playwrights Horizons, New York Theatre Workshop, Atlantic Theater
Company, Kennedy Center, La Jolla Playhouse, Actors Theatre of Louisville,
Cleveland Playhouse, A.C.T., Pioneer Theatre Company, InterAct Theatre
Company, and Hangar Theatre, among others. pirronne​.co​m.

226
INDEX

Page numbers in italics refer to Figures.

Abboud, Victoria M. 59–60 Arab American Children’s Theater

Abdoh, Reza 57 Company 21
Abdoh, Salar 57 Arab American comics 45
Abraham’s Daughters (Goldman- Arab Americans. See also Middle Eastern
Sherman) 138–9 Americans
Adjmi, David 125–7 anti-Semitism and 15–16, 62
African Continuum Theatre Company 51 assimilation of 15
Ahmed, Ahmed 21–2, 45, 97 cultural productions of 15
AJYAL (Generations) Theatrical diversity of 19–20
Group 41–2 as “foreign” others 60, 77, 95–6
ensemble actors 42 Hollywood representations of 96–8
social commentary of 44 identity formation of 60
Aker, Melis 29, 176 migration to US 20
Dragonflies 111–14 post-9/11 66
Manar 112 scapegoating of 185
plays by 111 stereotyping of 45, 185
Alaudini, Shoresh 169 transnational identity of 60
Alcodray, Ray 82 Arab-Israeli War (1948) 124, 138
Algerian Americans 67–9 Arab-Israeli War (1967) 36
Algerian Civil War 6, 40, 69 Arabness 81
in Smail 165–7 in Roar 86
Alliance for Jewish Theatre (AJT) 44 in Truth Serum Blues 79
Alrawi, Karim 125, 127–8 Arabophobia 36–7, 73, 185
Americanness in persecution plays 80
citizenship and 73–4 post-9/11 76
in Dragonflies 113 Arabs. See also Arab Americans
immigration and 183 anti-Semitism and 15–16, 62, 96
of Iranian Americans 61 hate crimes against 8
Islamophobia and 190 persecution of 76
Middle Easternness and 188 sexualizing of 16, 96
in Roar 86 stereotyping of 36–7, 89, 96, 121
whiteness and 73–4 surveillance of 81
Amin, Dina A. 29–30 Arab Spring 6
anti-Muslim sentiment 75 in Algeria 167
hate crimes and 6–7 in conflict plays 40
in Mosque Alert 89 in return to homeland plays 68–9
anti-Semitism 3, 8, 73–4 in We Live in Cairo 146
against Arabs 15–16, 62, 96 Arab Theatrical Arts Guild (ATAG) 21
Index

Arida, Holly 30 Baki, Hala 200

Armenian Genocide 5, 18 Band’s Visit, The (Yazbek and
in conflict plays 40, 158–62 Moses) 144–6
in film 158 Banzon, Krystal 46
in March! 159 Barbary Wars 13
in Middle Eastern American plays 38, Barone, Michael 9
167, 192–3 Bazian, Hatem 37
in Night Over Erzinga 159–62 BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions)
Arreola, Dora 46 movement 61–2
Art2Action Inc. 45–6 belonging
Asher, James 52 limits of 34–5
Asian American literature 23 of Middle Eastern Americans 85,
Asianness 113–14, 183, 189–90
and MENA Americans 186 transnational 5, 15
Assaf, Andrea 46, 169 Benshoff, Harry M. and Sean Griffin 16,
assimilation 23, 96–7
in Baba 123 Berry, Maya 10
of Jewish Americans 4, 74 Bial, Henry 26
in Middle Eastern American Birthright Israel trips 7, 61
literature 13 “detours” to Palestine 64
of Muslim Americans 88–9 in The River and the Sea 151
transnationalism and 5 black sites 78–9
whiteness and 185 Black Theatre Association 169, 170
Al Aswany, Alaa 176 Blank, Martin 49, 56
Atefat-Peckham, Susan 13 Bogosian, Eric 181
authenticity Breaking the Silence 64
casting and 32–3 Browntown (Younis) 100–2
in Game of Patience 164 Bryck, Danny 27
Hollywood representations of Middle The River and the Sea 151–3, 157
Easterners 96–8 Buck, Leila 51, 52, 69–71, 169
in It’s Not About Pomegranates! 98–9 bridge metaphor in 69, 71
Jewish American identity and 26, 118 In the Crossing 69–71
in Middle Eastern American plays 98 Buck, Stephen 69
Autobiography of a Terrorist
(Sayrafiezadeh) 83–5 Caplan, Debra 25
Avanesian, Arbi 24 casting
Ayeesh, Farhad 47 authenticity and 32–3
Suitcase 114 of Middle Eastern American
Azizi, Anthony 97 plays 32–3, 200–2
typecasting 96, 130
Baba (Ibrahim) 122–3 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre 107, 155
Back of the Throat (El Guindi) 55, 75–8 Chehlaoui, Maha 52, 53
Badreya, Sayed 97 Christianity and whiteness 74
Bagatourian, Bianca 159 Christians
Baghdad Theatre, The 21 Arab 4–5
Bahá’i Institute for Higher Education Iraqi 109–11
(BIHE) 7 Palestinian 5, 63
Baha’is 4, 198–9 Churchill, Winston 2
persecution of 7 citizenship
Baha’u’llah (Mírzá Ḥusayn-ʻAlí Núrí) 4 Americanness and 73–4

228
 Index

Iranian 61 Fahmy, Kareem 50, 54, 105, 173–82

Middle Eastern American immigration interviewed 175–82
and 6, 15–16, 61 plays by 176
whiteness and 73–4 Fa’ik, Ala 20
colonialism Farah, Laila 114–16
“Middle East” as term 3 Farhoud, Abla 163–5
in plays set in homeland 131 far-right extremism 8
Coming Home (Lerner) 193 Feldman, L M 120
conflict plays Firqat al-Yaoum (Today’s Cast) 21
Arab Spring in 40 food
Armenian Genocide in 40, 158–62 in Middle Eastern American plays 98,
civil war plays 162–7 139–41
empathy in 153 Food and Fadwa (Issaq and Kader) 139–41
production of 150 444 Days (Yeghiazarian) 102–5, 189
Consortium of Asian Theaters and Artists trauma in 104–5
(CAATA) 169, 170 Francis, Tracy Cameron 169
Coray, Catherine 50, 169 Al-Funun Al-Arabiya (Arab Arts) 21
Council on American-Islamic Relations Furlanetto, Elena 28
Civil Rights Report 2017 7
Cromer, David 145 Game of Patience (Farhoud) 163–5
Cucalsi, Karen 2–3 Garcés, Michael John 158
genocide. See also Armenian Genocide
Dar a Luz 57 in March! 159
Darvag Theater Group 24, 46–8, 206 in plays set in homeland 131
Darwish, Mahmoud 22 Ghoussaini, Noelle 54
Davidman, Aaron 51, 157–8 Ghurba (Kurup) 22
Deep Cut (Alrawi) 125, 127–8 Gibran, Kahlil 20
Detour Guide (Nagi) 120–2 Gillani, Malik 54–5, 174, 203
(dis)Placed[d] (Eliezer) 123–5 Girl’s War, A (Van Dyke) 194
Dragonflies (Aker) 111–14 Glock, Albert 153
dramaturgy 153, 173, 199 Goldberg, Jill 153
Golden Thread Productions 30–2, 33,
Egyptian Revolution 146–7 47–9, 173. See also Yeghiazarian,
in We Live in Cairo 146 Torange
Ehya, Hamid 47 founding of 102, 183–4
Eldebek, Hadi 54 funding of 202–3
Eldek-Richardson, Ayse 29, 56 inclusiveness and 186–7
Eliezer, Debórah 123–5, 169 pluralism and 183–4
endogamy 19 productions 48, 132, 159, 176, 204
essentialism Goldman-Sherman, Emma 138–9, 149
Iranian American women and 98 Gordon, Thomas Edward 2
Jewish American identity and 26 Grabowski, John J. 28
exile 26, 38, 111 Grassian, Daniel 23
in Dragonflies 111–12, 114 Greene, Sevan K. 106–7, 176
in Food and Fadwa 139–40 “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy 87,
Iranian Americans and 23, 48 90–1
Palestinian 131, 133, 139–40 Gualtieri, Sarah M. A. 73
in Roar 86 Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp 78–9
El Guindi, Yussef 33, 48, 49, 50, 169, 176,
Facts (Milner) 153–5 204–5
Fadda-Conrey, Carol 15, 60 Back of the Throat 75–8

229
Index

Language Rooms 181 and citizenship 6, 28

plays by 75, 102 Middle Eastern 6, 13, 20
Gulf War Muslim 13
in Noura 109 post-Second World War 28
in Roar 86 US immigration laws 73
In Algeria They Know My Name
Haddad, Kathryn (Kathy) 51, 169 (Khazem) 67–9
plays by 51, 80 Indigenous Direction 170
Zafira and the Resistance 51, 80–1 interventionism, US 85, 95
Haddad, Pia 169 in Deep Cut 128
Hamami, Tariq 165–7 in Iran 99, 103
Hamas 62 in Iraq 109
in Martyrs 155, 157 In the Crossing (Buck) 69–71
Harada, Kai 145 Iran Hostage Crisis 102–5
hate crimes Iranian Americans
anti-Arab 8 Americanness of 61
anti-Muslim bias and 6–7 Aryan myth 83–4
anti-Semitic 8 diversity of 4
Hayashida, Gen 48 dual citizenship of 61
Heaney, Kate Moore 169 essentialism and 98
Hebron Massacre 107, 155 exile and 23, 48
Hershewe, S. K. 21 immigration to US 46–7
Herzl, Theodor 135 Persian identification of 17
Hezbollah 67, 69–70 returning to homeland 61–2
Hill, Holly 26–7, 29–30 whiteness and 35, 83–4
homeland plays, return to 34–6, 59–72, Iranians
163, 164 stereotyping of 23
Arab Spring in 68–9 Iran-Iraq War 47
Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 67 Iraq
in Palestinian American plays 62–3, Farhoud (pogrom) in 124
66–7 US intervention in 109
survivor guilt in 67 Isis (Islamic State) 5
homeland plays, set in 38–9, 131–48, 165 in Dragonflies 112–13
genocide in 131 in Noura 109–11, 113
refugees in 131–5 rise of 113
homophobia Islam
in Lubbock or Leave It! 92 diversity of 1
in Middle Eastern American practice in Twice, Thrice, Frice
drama 18–19 . . . 106–7
in Mosque Alert 90 racialization of 75
Huffman, Elizabeth 133–5 Islamic Revolution of 1979 3, 22
in Autobiography of a Terrorist 84–5
Ibrahim, Denmo 122–3, 169 Iran Hostage Crisis 102–5
I Heart Hamas: And Other Things I’m Iranian immigration to US 46–7
Afraid to Tell You (Jajeh) 62–3 Islamophobia 36–7, 75
immigrants Americanness and 190
identity formation of 59–60, 95 in Lubbock or Leave It! 92
Internet use of 59–60 Middle Eastern Americans and 189
in Suitcase 114 in Mosque Alert 90, 189
immigration 9/11 and 62–3, 76

230
 Index

in persecution plays 80 Food and Fadwa 139–41

racialization of 190 Kaissar, Ken 63–6, 71, 195
Sikhs and 190 Kanaaqeel Theater Group 21
Israeli Americans 26–7 Kaye/Kantrowitz, Melanie 74
Israeliness 27 Kelley, Robin D. G. 11
Israeli-Palestinian conflict 131–2 Khalidi, Ismail 54, 149, 150
in Abraham’s Daughters 138–9 plays by 78
in Food and Fadwa 139–41 Truth Serum Blues 78–80
in Middle Eastern American Khalidi, Rashid 78
plays 38–9, 62–7, 149–58, 167, Khalil, Hannah 176
192–6, 197 Scenes from 71* Years 200–1
plays, production obstacles to 39, Khazem, Taous Claire 67–9, 71, 169
150–1 Khemiri, Jonas Hassen 176, 181
in Reading Hebron 108–9 Khomeini, Ayatollah 103
in The River and the Sea 151–3 Khosrowjah, Hossein 47
Issaq, Lameece 50, 53, 54 Khosrowjah, Sepideh 47, 98–100
Food and Fadwa 139–41 Khoury, Jamil 30–2, 54–5, 149, 150–1,
It’s Not About Pomegranates! 169, 173. See also Silk Road Rising/
(Khosrowjah) 98–100 Silk Road Theatre Project
interviewed 183–207
Jajeh, Jennifer 62–3, 71 “Middle Eastern American Theatre, on
Japanese incarceration 9, 193 Our Terms” 30–2
Jewish Americans. See also Middle Eastern Mosque Alert 87–91, 91, 188–9
Americans Precious Stones 197
Ashkenazi 3–4, 74, 126 Kolirin, Eran 144
assimilation of 4, 74 Kooshan, Kamshad 48
Chabad-Lubavitch 4, 116–20 Koury, Omar 52
diversity of 3 Krasinski, Jennifer 57
essentialism and 26 Kulato, Salah 21
identity 26, 118 Kurdish plays 197–8
Mizrahi 3–4 Kurds 4
Orthodox 117 Kussman, Dylan 158
Sephardic 1, 3–4, 126
stereotyping of 74 Lababidi, Hala 69
whiteness and 126–7 Lark, The 49, 50, 159, 205
Jewishness Laschinger, Verena 29
as foreign 25 Latinx Theatre Commons 169, 170
passing and 16–17 Lazour, Daniel 146–7
in A People 120 Lazour, Patrick 54
in theatre 25–6 We Live in Cairo 146–7
in TRAYF 118–19 Lebanese Americans 20–1
whiteness and 127 diversity of 12
Jewish Plays Project 49–50 early writers 20
Jews, Iraqi 124–5 in Farah’s performances 115
Jews, Syrian 125–7 in In The Crossing 69–71
immigration of 126 in Mondalek’s plays 42–4, 81–2
Jobrani, Maz 97 Lebanese Civil War 18, 40, 162
Joelle, Lindsay 49 in drama 67
TRAYF 116, 118–20 in Game of Patience 163–5
in Hyphen-Nation 115–16
Kader, Jacob 54 in Scorched 162–3

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Lenderhendler, Eli 116–17 as category 176–7

Lenk, Katrina 145 diversity of 178
Lerner, Motti 40, 49 MENA Theatre Makers Alliance
Coming Home 193 (MENATMA) 169–70
Pangs of the Messiah 194–5 Me No Terrorist (Mondalek) 81–2
literature, Iranian American 23 Merson, Susan 44
literature, Middle Eastern American. Metwally, Omar 52
See also plays, Middle Eastern Micoleau, Tyler 145
American; theatre, Middle Eastern Middle East. See also Middle Easterners
American Catholicism in 4
contemporary writers 14 defined 1–3
Islam in 13–14 diversity of 1–2, 186
major themes 13–14 as term 2, 32
literature, Turkish American 28–9 Middle Eastern Americans. See also Jewish
Living in the Hyphen-Nation (Farah) 114– Americans; Muslim Americans
16 Americanness of 15, 61, 188
Lubbock or Leave It! (Modirzadeh) 91–2 anti-Semitism and 14
lynching 74 belonging of 85, 113–14, 183, 189–90
citizenship of 6, 15–16, 61
Maghbouleh, Neda 35, 60–1, 83–4 diasporic cultural identification
Mahan, Alfred 2 of 14–19
Mahjar (Ahmed and El Guindi) 21–2 discrimination against 74
Maia Directors 173, 175–82 diversity of 12
mission statement 176–7 hybrid identity of 7, 183
Malek, Rami 102 immigration of 6, 13, 20, 28, 73
Malik, Rohina 181 invisibility of 14
Man in the Sukkah, The (Yarchun) 128 Islamophobia and 189
Mansour, Mona 48, 49, 50–51, 176, 181, Orientalizing of 95, 100, 130
204 passing and 73, 86–7
Urge for Going 131, 132–3, 132 persecution of 6–7
We Swim, We Talk, We Go to War 200 as polycultural identity 11, 183
March! (Bagatourian) 159 scapegoating of 190
marriage 19 self-representation of 30–1
arranged 117, 126–7 sexualizing of 16, 31, 95, 96
polygamy 106–7 stereotyping of 16, 95, 100–2, 188,
in Twice, Thrice, Frice . . . 106–7 196
Martyrs (Shulman) 155–7 transnational identity of 15
Marvasti, Amir B. and Karyn D. typecasting of 96, 130
McKinney 11, 13, 15–16 violence against 74
Massoud, Mena 98 whiteness and 9, 11–12, 126–7
Mayer, Jane 79 “Middle Eastern American Theatre,
Meguid, Amal 105 on Our Terms” (Khoury and
MENA (Middle Eastern/North African) Yeghiazarian) 30–2
Asianness and 186 Middle Easterners
census categorization 10 defined 187
demographics of 177 diversity of 183–7
diversity of 178–9 Orientalizing of 85
as identity formation 186 stereotyping of 36–7, 53, 122
MENA Advocacy Network 9–10 Middle Eastern Writers Lab 50
MENASA (Middle Eastern/North African/ Miller, Arthur 179–80
South Asian) Miller, Daryl H. 22

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Milner, Arthur 153–5 9/11

Mizna 51, 80 Arab Americans and 66
Moayed, Arian 50 Arabophobia and 76
Modirzadeh, Leyla 91–2 in Autobiography of a Terrorist 85
Mohammadi, Iraj 47 Islamophobia and 62–3, 76
Mondalek, Michael 42, 82 Middle Eastern American theatre
Mondalek, Najee 41–4 and 29–30, 52, 55
Im Hussein character 42–3, 81–2 persecution and 37, 66, 76
Me No Terrorist 81–2 surveillance and 78
Monsef, Ramiz 181–2 Noor Theatre 53–4
Morsi, Mohammed 146–7 Not My Revolution (Huffman) 133–5
Mosaic Theater 49 Noura (Raffo) 109–11
Moses, Itamar 144–6 Novelli, Jo 46
Mosque Alert (Khoury) 87–91, 91, 188–9 Novick, Julius 24–5
mosque building, resistance to 87–91,
189–90 Obeidallah, Dean 45
Mossadegh, Mohammad 103 Odcikin, Evren 29, 47, 169, 173–82
Mossalam, Mike 50 interviewed 175–82
Mouawad, Wajdi 55 O’Neill, Eugene 179–80
plays by 162 Orientalism
Scorched 162–3 in dance troupes 36–7
Mubarak, Hosni 146–7 in film 16
Mukherjee, Dipankar 54 in It’s Not About Pomegranates! 99–
multiculturalism 100
vs. polyculturalism 11, 184 of “Middle East” 3
Muslim Americans. See also Middle Middle Easterners and 85, 192
Eastern Americans in Pera Palas 142–3
assimilation of 88–9 in theatre 37
as “foreign” others 77, 95 Orientalism (E. Said) 2
immigration and 13
racialization of 190 Palestine
scapegoating of 190 exile in 131, 133, 139–40
stereotyping of 75 occupation of 6, 18, 138–41
surveillance of 78 refugees from 131–2
Muslims Palestine (N. Said) 66–7
persecution of 76 Palestinian Americans. See also theatre,
stereotyping of 36–7, 89 Palestinian American
surveillance of 81 journey home 61–3
Pangea World Theatre 54, 80
Nagi, Karim 120–2 Pangs of the Messiah (Lerner) 194–5
al-Nahda (Arab Cultural Awakening) 20 Parlakian, Nishan 161
Naimy, Mikhail 20 passing
Najjar, Michael Malek 169, 197, 200–1 and Jewishness 16–17
Natarajan, Meena 46, 54 of Middle Eastern Americans 73,
Naujoks, Daniel 5 86–7
Navidar, Nahal 204 Patel, Faiza 8
New Arab American Theatre Works 51, patriarchy
80 in Deep Cut 125
Nibras Theatre Ensemble 51–3, 66 in Middle Eastern American
Night Over Erzinga (Sevahn plays 125
Nichols) 159–62, 161 in Stunning 125–6

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Pen Group, The Prashad, Vijay 11

members 20 Precious Stones (Khoury) 197, 200
People, A: A Mosaic Play 120
Pera Palas (Ünel) 142–4 queer themes
Perry, Tyler 43 in Middle Eastern American plays 57,
persecution 87–8, 90, 199
of Arabs 76 in Mosque Alert 87–8, 90
of Baha’is 7
of Middle Eastern Americans 6–7 Raffo, Heather 17, 204
of Muslims 76 Noura 109–11
post-9/11 37, 66, 76 plays by 109
persecution plays 36–8, 75–93, 95 Reading Hebron (Sherman) 107–9
Arabophobia and Islamophobia Reed, Alan 21
in 80–1 refugee camps 131–2
governmental 75–82, 92–3 in Abraham’s Daughters 138–9
societal 83–93 in Not My Revolution 134–5
terrorism in 82 in Urge for Going 132–3
plays, MENA refugees
direction of 179–80 in Noura 109–10
plays, Middle Eastern American. See also Palestinian 131–2
theatre, Middle Eastern American; in plays set in homeland 131–5
and names of particular plays post-traumatic stress disorder
Armenian Genocide in 38, 167, 192–3 and 6–7
casting of 32–3, 200–2 Rent (Larson) 147
conflict plays 39–40, 149–67 ReOrient Festival 33, 188, 193–4, 195–6
defined 175–6, 187–90 Rida, Rashad 18
diaspora plays 38, 95–130, 144, 163–4 Rihani, Ameen Fares 20
empathy in 153, 200 River and the Sea, The (Bryck) 151–3, 157
Holocaust in 27–8, 129–30, 135–7 Roar (Shamieh) 86–7
homophobia in 18–19, 90, 92 Ronson, John 97
Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 38–9, Roth, Ari 50
149–58, 167, 192–6, 197
major themes 34–40 Said, Edward W. 2, 22, 36, 66–7, 96
patriarchy in 125–6 on exile 38
persecution plays 36–8, 75–93, 95 on Palestinian diaspora 87
productions of 17 Said, Khaled Mohamed 146–7
queer themes in 57, 87–8, 90, 199 Said, Najla 52, 66–7, 71
return to homeland plays 34–6, Sajjil (Nibras Theatre Ensemble) 52
59–72, 163, 164 Salaita, Steven 19–20
set in homeland plays 38–9, 131–48, El Samahy, Nora 169
165 Sandberg-Zakian, Megan 153, 173–82
polyculturalism 10–13 interviewed 175–82
Middle Eastern Americans and 173, Sayed, Hala 123
183 Sayrafiezadeh, Saïd 176
vs. multiculturalism 11, 184 Autobiography of a Terrorist 83–5
polygamy plays by 83
in Twice, Thrice, Frice . . . 106–7 Sayyad, Parvis 24
postcolonial literature 23 scapegoating
postmodernism of Arab Americans 185
Jewish American identity and 26 of Middle Eastern Americans 190

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 Index

of Muslim Americans 190 of Iranians 23

Scenes from 71* Years (Khalil) 200–1 of Jewish Americans 74
Schiff, Ellen 25–6 of Middle Eastern American 16, 95,
Schneerson, Menachem Mendel (the 100–2, 188, 196
Rebbe) 117 of Middle Easterners 35–6, 53, 122
Scorched (Mouawad) 55, 162–3 of Muslim Americans 75
Semmerling, Tim Jon 37 Stokes, Tobin 109
Sevahn Nichols, Adriana 50, 159–62 Stunning (Adjmi) 125–7
sexuality 19 Suitcase (Ayeesh) 114
in Stunning 126 surveillance
in TRAYF 118 of Arabs and Muslims 78, 81
Shafie, Hammam 21 post-9/11 78
Shaheen, Jack G. 16, 95–6 Syrian Civil War 18, 40
Shalhoub, Tony 102, 145 in Not My Revolution 133
Shamieh, Betty 39–40, 86–7, 176, 193
Sharif, Omar 97 Taeed, Mansour 47
Sharifi, Jamshied 145 Taidi, Farzaneh 24
Shawwa, Afaf 52 TARTE: Turkish American Repertory
Sheikh, Irum 75 Theater & Entertainment 55–6
Sheikhani, Roham 47 Tayback, Vic 21
Sherman, Jason 107–9, 151 Tehranian, John 12, 17
Shi’ites 1 terrorism
Shotgun Players 47 and fear mongering 8
Shulman, Misha Internet recruiting for 113
Martyrs 155–7 Teymour, Fouad 55, 106–7
plays by 155 Theater J 50, 56–7
Siegel, Richard 44 theatre, Arab American 18, 19–21
Sikhs companies 21–2, 41–4, 51–3
Islamophobia and 190 post 9/11 52
violence against 8 theatre, Iranian-American 22–4, 83–5
silence in Deep Cut 127 companies 46–48
Silk Road Rising/Silk Road Theatre theatre, Jewish American 24–8, 116–20,
Project 49, 50, 54–5, 173. See also 128–30, 194–6
Khoury, Jamil companies 44, 49–50, 56–7
funding of 202–3 dysfunctional families in 27
inclusiveness and 186–7 Holocaust in 27–8, 119, 129–30,
productions 55, 91, 159, 161, 197, 135–7
204–5 major themes 26
as response to 9/11 200 mysticism in 27–8
Semitic Commonwealth 197 return to homeland plays 61, 63–6
theatrical focus of 183 Second World War and 24
El-Sisi, Abdel Fattah 146–7 theatre, MENA 169–70
Sleiman, Haaz 98 distinguishing characteristics
Smail (Hamami) 165–7 of 179–80
South Asians in Middle Eastern American theatre, MENASA 176–8
theatre 100–2 theatre, Middle Eastern American. See also
Stachel, Ari’el 145 plays, Middle Eastern American
stereotyping Arab-Israeli conflict in 145
of Arabs and Arab Americans 37, 45, audience of 190
89, 96, 121, 185 casting in 32–3, 200–2

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Index

community and 206–7 in Man in the Sukkah 128–30

current state of 169–71 mental health and 6
diversity of 186–7 in Night Over Erzinga 159–62
funding of 202–3 in A People 120
major themes 34–40 in Roar 86
mentorship in 170 in Scorched 163
9/11 and 29–30, 52, 55 violence and 7
playwright-protagonist model 187–8, TRAYF (Joelle) 116, 118–20, 119
199–200 Truth Serum Blues (Khalidi) 78–80
representation, burden of 191–2 Turkish American Repertory Theater &
self-representation in 34 Entertainment (TARTE) 29
smaller populations, representation Turkish Americans
of 197–9 migration to US 28
South Asians in 100–2 Twice, Thrice, Frice . . . (Teymour) 106–7
teaching of 169–70
theatre, Muslim American 181 Ünel, Sinan 29
theatre, Palestinian American 38–9, Pera Palas 142–4
78–80, 193 plays by 142
productions, obstacles to 150–1 Urge for Going (Mansour) 131, 132–3,
return to homeland theme 62–3, 66–7 132
theatre, Turkish American 28–9, 142–4 US Census
companies 55–6 Japanese incarceration and 9
theatre, Yiddish 25, 57 race and 9–10
Theatre Communications Group
(TCG) 170 Valdez, Samuel 46
theatre companies, Middle Eastern Van Dyke, Joyce 194
American 18, 41–58. See also Via Dolorosa (Hare) 157
names of particular companies Victims, The: Or What Do You Want to Do
This Time (Greene) 106–7, 176 About It? (Kaissar) 63–6
Thomas, Danny 21 violence
300 (film) 23 against Middle Eastern Americans 7
Tirosh-Polk, Zohar 49 against Sikhs 8
The Zionists 135–8 trauma and 7
torture and white masculinity 23
in Deep Cut 127–8 visibility 10, 12
in Hyphen-Nation 116 Vitale, Nancy 53
in Scorched 163
in Smail 165–6 Wallace, Naomi 150
in Truth Serum Blues 79 Warda, Bella 47, 114
transnationalism We Live in Cairo (Lazour and
Arab American identity and 60 Lazour) 146–7
assimilation and 5 We Swim, We Talk, We Go to War
belonging and 5, 15 (Mansour) 200
as identity formation 5 whiteness
trauma Americanness and 73–4
in Deep Cut 128 assimilation and 185
in diaspora plays 38 Christianity and 74
in 444 Days 104–5 citizenship and 73–4
of Holocaust 135–6 Iranian Americans and 35, 83–4

236
 Index

Jewish Americans and 126–7 on casting 33

Middle Eastern Americans and 9, 444 Days 102–5
11–12, 126–7 interviewed 183–207
Williams, Tennessee 179–80 “Middle Eastern American Theatre, on
Winitsky, David 27, 49–50 Our Terms” 30–2
Wrestling Jerusalem (Davidman) 157–8 plays by 102
Younis, Sam 100–2
xenophobia 73, 96. See also Arabophobia; Yousefzadeh, Pirronne 54, 173–82
Islamophobia interviewed 175–82
Youssef, Ramy 102
Yarchun, Deborah 49
The Man in the Sukkah 128 Zafira and the Resistance (Haddad) 51, 80–1
Yazbek, David 144–6 Zamroud, Maria 48
Yazidis 197–8 Zayid, Maysoon 45
Yeghiazarian, Temeh 48 Zionists, The (Tirosh-Polk) 135–8
Yeghiazarian, Torange 24, 48, 49, 169, Zoroastrianism 17
173. See also Golden Thread Zorro, Hussam 21
Productions Zuaiter, Waleed 97

237