2019
Obstacle Course
Written by Jamil Khoury
Directed by Dale Heinen
Director of Photogaphy: John Wesley Norton
Set in Naperville, Illinois, Obstacle Course explores reactions to a proposed Islamic Community Center on the site of a beloved landmark. Allyship, municipal politics, and Islamophobia all intersect in this head-on collision between Not in My Backyard fear mongering, well-intentioned liberalism, and the peaceful practice of faith.
2016
The Four Hijabs
Co-Written by Dr. Manal Hamzeh and Jamil Khoury
Directed by Liz Wuerffel
Animator: Anna Hayden-Roy
The Four Hijabs is an animated short Film that explores the multiple meanings of four Hijabs mentioned in 16 Qur’anic verses and interprets them through Arab-Muslim feminist lenses.
2015
Multi Meets Poly: Multiculturalism and Polyculturalism Go on a First Date
Written by Jamil Khoury
Directed by A. George Bajalia
Director of Photography: Drew Pientka
A thought-provoking and often-humorous reflection on the theoretical and practical differences between two powerful social ideas: multiculturalism and polyculturalism.
By personifying these ideas as human characters—one male, one female—and endowing them with intellectual rivalry and sexual tension, a would-be romantic evening becomes an intriguing vehicle for exploring American notions of pluralism, cultural interchange, and diversity.
March 22, 2014
Sacred Stages: A Church, a Theatre, and a Story
Directed by Jamil Khoury and Malik Gillani
Directors of Photography: Stephen Combs and Deann Baker
Sacred Stages: A Church, A Theatre, and A Story tells the unique and inspiring story of the relationship between the First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple—Chicago's oldest Christian congregation—and Silk Road Rising, a theatre company founded in response to 9/11 that showcases playwrights of Asian and Middle Eastern backgrounds.
A shared commitment to storytelling, racial and economic justice, and LGBTQ inclusion characterizes this profound partnership between a religious community and a secular theatre.
October 23, 2012
The Imam and the Homosexual
Written and Directed by Jamil Khoury
Director of Photography: Deann Baker
The Imam and the Homosexual probes the “strange bedfellows” political alliance between Imam Mustafa Khan, spiritual leader of a besieged Naperville, Illinois mosque, and Carl Baker, the openly 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 LGBTQ communities uniting against their common enemies.
The Imam and the Homosexual was created as part of an online new play development process for Jamil Khoury’s full length stage play Mosque Alert.
September 11, 2012
The Balancing Arab
Written by Jamil Khoury
Directed by Anne Jacques
Director of Photography: Drew Pientka
The Balancing Arab tells the story of Hanan, a politically active Arab American, and Heidi, her Irish American personal trainer. 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 and realize that they filtered the evening’s politics through decidedly different lenses.
The Balancing Arab explores tensions that exist within and between political cultures and the challenges of articulating ideas that get stranded in context or lost in translation.
February 26, 2012
Not Quite White: Arabs, Slavs, and the Contours of Contested Whiteness
Directed by Jamil Khoury and Stephen Combs
Director of Photography: Stephen Combs
Not Quite White: Arabs, Slavs, and the Contours of Contested Whiteness expands the American conversation on race by zeroing in on whiteness as a constructed social and political category—an elusive concept that historically played favorites, advantaging Northern and Western European immigrants over immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe and the Middle East.
Inspired by Jamil Khoury’s short play WASP: White Arab Slovak Pole, Not Quite White integrates scenes from WASP alongside interviews with Arab American and Polish American academics who reflect upon contested and probationary categories of whiteness and the use of anti-Black racism as a “whitening” dye.
June 26, 2011
both/and
Written by Jamil Khoury
Directed by J. Paul Preseault
Director of Photography: Stephen Combs
both/and swaps the shackles of either/or for the sweeping vistas of complexity. Jamil Khoury's semi-autobiographical video play explores and explodes persistent tensions between American and Arab, Arab American and gay, for profit and not-for-profit, and assorted other “contested categories.”