October 9–November 11, 2012

The World Premiere
Written by Adriana Sevahn Nichols
Directed by Lisa Portes

Spanning from the Ottoman Empire to New York City, and across three generations of an Armenian and Dominican family, Adriana Sevahn Nichols' Night Over Erzinga explores how a man can lose everything but his heart, and how a grandmother can reach through time, unearth an untold story, and bring her children “home.” From collective tragedy to personal triumph, ancestors reunite with the living in a breathtakingly beautiful journey toward making peace with the past and reclaiming one’s heritage.

Read the Program Book

April 4–May 6, 2012

The World Premiere
Curated by Jamil Khoury
Directed by Steve Scott
Musical Direction by Ryan Brewster
Choreography by Brenda Didier

Re-Spiced: A Silk Road Cabaret is a playful, sexy, occasionally subversive, always entertaining musical pastiche of Asian and Middle Eastern images in American and British song and verse. From Broadway show tunes to pop, from country to rap, folk to rock, poetry to prose, Re-Spiced turns the tables on “us” and “them” with panache and glee and leaves us wondering just who’s who?

Read the Program Book

April 4–May 6, 2012

The World Premiere
Curated by Jamil Khoury
Directed by Steve Scott
Musical Direction by Ryan Brewster
Choreography by Brenda Didier

Re-Spiced: A Silk Road Cabaret is a playful, sexy, occasionally subversive, always entertaining musical pastiche of Asian and Middle Eastern images in American and British song and verse. From Broadway show tunes to pop, from country to rap, folk to rock, poetry to prose, Re-Spiced turns the tables on “us” and “them” with panache and glee and leaves us wondering just who’s who?

Read the Program Book

December 7–9, 2012

Written by Fouad Teymour
Directed by Brian Golden

At the height of the Arab Spring, while a band of revolutionaries are embroiled in the fight of their lives to topple an oppressive regime and revive their country's dream of "Freedom, Dignity, and Social Justice!", they must contend with a fast-spreading rumor that Jesus has been sighted in the square. How will this apparition impact their battle? Will it catalyze the revolution or totally annihilate it?

August 3–5, 2012

Written by Shane Sakhrani
Directed by Anish Jethmalani

If ever a family was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, it’s the Gupta family of Mumbai, India! An unexpected takeover of the Gupta family business lands it in the hands of an American corporation. Marital woes abound as traditional male-female dynamics are challenged. The specter of interracial dating rears its unruly head. And a poisonous legacy threatens the security of the family home.

Traditionally, an Indian family would have suffered said struggles with silent resentment. But in this age of globalization, intrusive modes of communication and Western style family therapy turn tradition on its head.

July 13–15, 2012

Written by Yussef El Guindi
Directed by Stuart Carden

It’s Abbott and Costello meet the Arab Spring in Yussef El Guindi’s political farce. An Egyptian revolutionary, an American collector of antiquities, and a reanimated mummy—just three of the characters in this sexy, slapstick romp where ideological opposites attract and the “new” Middle East is never too far from the same old same old.

June 8–10, 2012

Written by Danny Bernardo
Directed by Greg Kolack

In Danny Bernardo’s Mahal, a Filipino American family redefines itself after loss & reclaims its culture.

After the death of the Reyes family matriarch, new relationships blossom, old ones are rediscovered, and family bonds are tested, as a long repressed secret from the homeland threatens to tear the family apart. 

April 23, 2012

Written by Yiyun Li
Adapted and Directed by Lavina Jadhwani
Choreography by Kate McGroarty

Yiyun Li's Gold Boy, Emerald Girl includes nine short stories set in modern China. This staged reading was an adaptation of one of those stories.

Performed as part of Chicago Public Library's One Book, One Chicago

February 17–19, 2012

Written by Motti Lerner
Translated from Hebrew by Hillel Halkin
Directed by Daniella Topol

Paulus explores Paulus of Tarsus, the bridger of Christianity from a Jewish sect to a Gentile religion, and his vision to universalize monotheism in the face of strong opposition by the Jewish Establishment, the Jerusalem Church, and the Emperor Nero. This historical drama weaves through Paul's past and present, guided by his fears and inspirations, and dramatizes the role that Jesus played on Paul's psyche after Jesus' crucifixion. 

Written and Directed by Jamil Khoury
October 23, 2012

“The Imam and The Homosexual” probes the “strange bedfellows” political alliance between Imam Mustafa Khan (played by Khurram Mozaffar), spiritual leader of a besieged Naperville, IL mosque, and Carl Baker (played by Nicholas Cimino), the gay son of the imam’s chief nemesis. As Imam Mustafa struggles to reconcile his support for civil rights with his religious and cultural objections to homosexuality, Carl imagines the Muslim and LGBT communities uniting against their common enemies. 

Written by Jamil Khoury
Directed by Anne Jacques
September 11, 2012

"The Balancing Arab" tells the story of Heidi (played by Leslie Frame), an Irish American personal fitness trainer, and Hanan (played by Amira Sabbagh), her once morbidly obese Arab American client. Set in a downtown Chicago gym amidst a strenuous training session, the mood turns tense as the two women recount an event at the Arab American Cultural Center a few nights earlier, an event at which the evening’s political discourse got filtered through decidedly different lenses. 

Directed by Jamil Khoury and Stephen Combs
February 26, 2012

Silk Road Rising's "Not Quite White: Arabs, Slavs, and the Contours of Contested Whiteness" (24 min, 8 sec), directed by Jamil Khoury and Stephen Combs, is a documentary film that explores the complicated relationship of Arab and Slavic immigrants to American notions of whiteness.