July 30–September 15, 2013
The Midwest Premiere
Written by Jonas Hassen Khemiri
Translated from Swedish by Rachel Willson-Broyles
Directed by Anna C. Bahow
Invasion! is a tornado of words, images and ideas, all centered around a magical name: Abulkasem. The play assaults our deepest prejudices about culture, race and language. At once hilarious, disturbing and poignant, this mischievously subversive play deconstructs a “threatening” identity—the Arab male—and forces us to confront our own complicated identities.
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Read MoreApril 23–May 26, 2013
The World Premiere
Written by Rajiv Joseph
Directed by Timothy Douglas
In a depressed Cleveland neighborhood amidst a fierce winter storm, an Indian American brother and sister, long estranged, are reunited by the sudden death of their father. Enter their late father’s African American confidante and gambling bookie, and a slew of family secrets get unearthed. The Lake Effect sets in motion a complicated web of relationships and conflicts that challenge our perceptions of race, gender, and success.
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Read MoreOctober 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.
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Read MoreApril 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?
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Read MoreJune 14–July 31, 2011
The Chicago Premiere
Presented in Association with Goodman Theatre
Written by David Henry Hwang
Directed by Steve Scott
A revealing backstage comedy from the Tony Award-winning writer of M. Butterfly, this ferociously funny, utterly unreliable memoir chronicles David Henry Hwang's struggle to define racial identity in the mixed-up melting pot of contemporary America. Part fact, part fiction, Yellow Face explores the pitfalls and promise of our "PC" world.
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Read MoreOctober 6–November 21, 2010
The Chicago Premiere
Written by Wajdi Mouawad
Translated from French by Linda Gaboriau
Directed by Dale Heinen
Inspired by classical Greek tragedy and the devastating effects of the Lebanese civil war, the internationally-renowned play Scorched was originally written in French by the acclaimed Lebanese French Canadian playwright Wajdi Mouawad. Carried aloft by poetic language and evocative imagery, Scorched unfolds in a dreamlike atmosphere connecting the origins of one family in startling and unforgettable ways. A brother and sister raised in Quebec must return to their mother's war-torn country to carry out her last wishes—finding the father and brother they never knew they had.
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Read MoreMarch 2–April 4, 2010
The World Premiere
Presented in Association with Goodman Theatre
Conceived by Jamil Khoury
Featuring Plays by Philip Kan Gotanda, Velina Hasu Houston, David Henry Hwang, Jamil Khoury, Shishir Kurup, Lina Patel, and Elizabeth Wong
Directed by Steve Scott
Theatre meets science when a diverse group of playwrights each agree to take a genealogical DNA test and revisit their assumptions about identity, politics, and the perennial "who am I" question. Self, family, community, and ethnicity are all up for grabs.
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Read MoreOctober 21–November 1, 2009
The World Premiere
Conceived and Curated by Jamil Khoury
Directed by Elizabeth Margolius
Musical Direction by Gary Powell
Silk Road Cabaret: Broadway Sings the Silk Road features songs from popular Broadway musicals set along the Silk Road—from Pacific Overtures to Two Gentlemen of Verona to Jesus Christ Superstar to The King and I to Zorba to Miss Saigon, and many more in between. This bold and harmonious East-West interplay blends music with personal stories and showcases performers of diverse backgrounds as they claim, reclaim, subvert, and poke fun at a host of old favorites from the Broadway repertoire.
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Read MoreMarch 19–May 10, 2009
The Midwest Premiere
Written by Motti Lerner
Translated from Hebrew by Anthony Berris
Directed by Jennifer Green
Set in 2012 amidst the signing of a peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians, Motti Lerner’s Pangs of the Messiah is an apocalyptic yet fiercely humane drama about eight West Bank Jewish settlers pitted against an Israel they feel has betrayed them. The play focuses on a religious family that finds itself torn between fighting to stay in their settlement and obeying their government’s decision to dismantle it. Left hanging in the balance is the legacy of their beliefs.
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Read MoreSeptember 18–November 2, 2008
The Midwest Premiere
Presented in Association with Goodman Theatre
Written by Philip Kan Gotanda
Directed by Steve Scott
A divorced Japanese woman and an African American GI meet in post-World War II Japan and fall in love. After decades of struggle, they have found an accepting Los Angeles suburb to call home—but their peaceful world is changing.
More than a study of clashing cultures, Yohen is the poetic, resonant story of two partners who discover that intimate relationships change with environments—and love, however time-tested, is never constant.
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Read MoreMay 1–June 15, 2008
The Midwest Premiere
Written by Julia Cho
Directed by Carlos Murillo
To the outside world, the Lee boys look like the perfect Korean American sons: Isaac plans to be a doctor and his younger brother, Jimmy, is a champion swimmer with a bright future. But when their widowed father, Boo-Seng, decides to take them on a road trip to Durango, Colorado, all three find themselves grappling with old memories and unhealed wounds.
As tempers flare and secrets break open, the difference between who they are and who they’ve pretended to be threatens to tear the family apart.
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Read MoreFebruary 21–March 30, 2008
The World Premiere
Written by Yussef El Guindi
Directed by Patrizia Acerra
A darkly humorous and sensual look at identity, media-representation, love, and lust in the Arab American community.
Fueled by frustration over the scarcity of Arab voices in the US media, a struggling writer, Gamal, engages in a prank campaign to shake up the system. But those in power have a way of turning the tables.
When Gamal's lover, Noor, is convinced by a prominent publisher to alter her novel to satisfy Western hunger for "Orientalist" fare, Gamal lashes out at his own community. The results are staggering.
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Read MoreSeptember 15–November 8, 2007
The World Premiere
Written by Shishir Kurup
Directed by Stuart Carden
In Shishir Kurup’s Merchant on Venice, Venice, Italy intersects with L.A.’s Venice Boulevard in a wickedly funny, wildly inventive and politically provocative re-imagining of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Written in iambic pentameter and vividly colored by Indian, American and Latino pop references, playwright Kurup transforms Shakespeare’s original by injecting the story with Bollywood musical numbers, L.A. Punk, Hindu-Muslim tensions, and a distinctly American landscape.
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Read MoreMarch 1–May 6, 2007
The Midwest Premiere
Written by David Henry Hwang
Directed by Stuart Carden
Set in China in the early 1900's, the Obie Award winning Golden Child tells the story of Eng Tieng-Bin, a wealthy merchant who returns from abroad filled with Western ideas and Christian beliefs, and hopes of liberating China from its superstitious past.
But in a polygamous marriage riddled with jealousy and suspicion, what will Eng's religious conversion mean for each of his three wives? Can new ideas and old traditions co-exist or are they destined to collide?
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Read MoreOctober 7–November 26, 2006
The World Premiere
Written by Richard Vetere
Directed by Dale Heinen
Set in 17th century Rome, Malta, and Naples, Caravaggio is the story of the great Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, the father of the Baroque, whose daring art and volatile personality attracted the favor and wrath of the church he both loved and reviled.
Whether undertaking commissions from the Vatican or confronting the cruelties of the Inquisition, Caravaggio's short life was charged with artistry, violence and passion.
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Read MoreApril 4–May 28, 2006
The Midwest Premiere
Written by Yussef El Guindi
Directed by Stuart Carden
Two government officials pay Khalid, an Arab-American man, a seemingly innocuous visit. What begins as a "friendly" inquiry soon devolves into a chilling, full-blown investigation of Khalid's presumed ties to terrorists.
At times surreal and comic, Back of the Throat examines the way in which facts, evidence and (mis)perceptions are used to distort the truth and how notions of cultural "otherness" impact the relationship between the accusers and the accused.
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Read MoreOctober 13–December 30, 2005
The World Premiere
Written by Yussef El Guindi
Directed by Stuart Carden
See the Fawzis, an Egyptian immigrant family in southern California struggling to find their place within American society. Marvel as they painstakingly navigate inter-generational conflict, their Islamic faith, and the values of two cultures.
East meets West meets mayhem in this Muslim-American family comedy evoking universal themes of faith, culture, belonging, and desire. Ten Acrobats adds a brand new chapter to the American immigrant narrative as captured on stage.
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Read MoreJanuary 14–February 29, 2004
The Midwest Premiere
Written by Velina Hasu Houston
Directed by Lynn Ann Bernatowicz
Set in 1950's small town Kansas, Tea tells the story of four women who come together to clean the house of a fifth after her tragic suicide upsets the balance of life in their small Japanese immigrant community. The spirit of the dead woman returns as a ghostly ringmaster to force the women to come to terms with the disquieting tension of their lives and find common ground. Her destiny requires she escape the limbo between life and death, and move on to the next world in peace, carving a future passage for the others.
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Read MoreJuly 18, 2003–April 20, 2005
Written by Jamil Khoury
Multiple Casts, Multiple Directors
Precious Stones boldly examines the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the "safe" yet turbulent terrain of American Diaspora. Set in Chicago in 1989, the story unfolds against a backdrop of disturbing images, as the first Palestinian Intifadah rages in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Two women, one Jewish and one Palestinian, join forces to organize an Arab-Jewish dialogue group, only to find themselves falling in love. As they each cross "enemy lines," they stumble upon the disputed territories of sexuality and class.
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Read MoreJanuary 16–March 2, 2003
The World Premiere
Written by Jamil Khoury
Directed by Michael Malek Najjar
Precious Stones boldly examines the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the "safe" yet turbulent terrain of American Diaspora. Set in Chicago in 1989, the story unfolds against a backdrop of disturbing images, as the first Palestinian Intifadah rages in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Two women, one Jewish and one Palestinian, join forces to organize an Arab-Jewish dialogue group, only to find themselves falling in love. As they each cross "enemy lines," they stumble upon the disputed territories of sexuality and class.
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