Seduction | Switzerland

Playwright: Lukas Bärfuss

Translator: Neil Blackadder

Director: John Green

English Language Premiere

In Partnership with Goethe-Institut Chicago

Synopsis: Hauke is a con man who’s almost completed a six-year prison sentence. For much of that time, he’s been in therapy with Tania, whose task now is to help him reintegrate into society. She tells him that a woman called Sonja has come forward, claiming to be Hauke’s daughter. He agrees to meet her, and they hit it off. But is she really his daughter? Or is she motivated by the seven million that went missing? Who’s seducing whom? And just what role does Tania play in determining responsibility and what should happen next?

Neil Blackadder translates drama and prose from German and French. He has contributed many translations to IVP, including of plays by Lukas Bärfuss, Mishka Lavigne, and Ewald Palmetshofer that were later produced by theatres in Chicago, London, New York, and elsewhere. Neil has received grants from the NEA, PEN, and the Howard Foundation, and he’s Translations Editor for Another Chicago Magazine. In Spring 2023, Neil was Translator in Residence at Princeton University.

John C Green was born and educated in the United Kingdom, where he received his undergraduate degree Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) in Theatre and Education from the University of London, his Master of Arts (MA) in Theatre and Film from the University of North London, and his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) from Plymouth University, where the focus of his research was on experimental actor training techniques in mid-20th Century Western theatre practice. He currently serves as an adjunct professor in theatre at Columbia College Chicago. His professional directing credits include four productions at the Edinburgh International Festival, and at international theatre festivals in the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Slovenia, Russia and Australia. In the United States he has directed plays, musicals, opera, and created site-specific installations at Pittsburgh State University Kansas, Butler University Indianapolis, Columbia College Chicago, and Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. He has had a long association with the Indiana Repertory Theatre as guest director, and with Chicago’s International Voices Project. He has received a number of “Best Director” awards at festivals including: The London Student Drama Festival, The National Student Drama Festival of Great Britain, and the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. In addition to directing, Green is the author of two books on theatre and performance and has made presentations of his research at numerous international conferences, most recently in Italy. He is delighted to be collaborating once again with Neil Blackadder and Kendra Thulin on a third play by Lukas Bärfuss for IVP.

On Sunday, April 2nd, poet Bayan Fares will perform some of her poetry at 2:45 PM and the Students for Justice in Palestine will join us for a special event including a talkback.

Bayan Fares is a Palestinian writer, poet, Licensed Social Worker, Tatreez Instructor, and small business owner of Badan Collective. She's been writing poetry for 16 years, is from the Chicagoland area, and is currently the Studio and Community Manager at Watan Palestine as well as the Administrative Coordinator for Muslim Women Professionals. Through all of these different endeavors, Bayan is able to serve her community, connect with her Palestinian roots, and center her work around healing trauma, advocacy, and building community through the arts and culture. Follow Bayan on Instagram

Totentanz: Black Night, Black Death | Poland

Playwright: Ishbel Szatrawska

Translator: Soren Gauger

Director: Michael Mejia

Partner: Trap Door Theatre

Synopsis: March of 2020, Bergamo, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Francesca, a former model and her husband, Luca, a television host, have invited some neighbours to an illegal dinner. This innocent social evening gradually turns into a quarrel over the pandemic, Italy, European values, social solidarity, and political and ideological views in the crisis situation.

The play is built on structures drawn from commedia dell’arte: the protagonists come from various regions of Italy and personify the stereotypical attributes associated with dell’arte characters, yet the conflict rests on twenty-first-century divisions. Venetian wealth and Sicilian poverty, the refugee crisis in Lampedusa, immigrant labour, the breakdown of the health system during the pandemic, the collapse of faith in European solidarity—these are only some of the subjects the drama raises. The story of the murder of Pier Paolo Pasolini in 1975 hovers over everything like a sinister omen—this was a homophobic and political crime that smacked of wild capitalism and the fascist history of Italy and Europe.

Yet two characters seem to belong to another world entirely. These are Salvatore, the equivalent of the dell’arte Dottore and his helper, Chiara, a young girl, a character who seems to be a mix of Arlecchino and perhaps an Italian Lisbeth Salander. It is they who ultimately take one of the guests into the underworld. Who are they? Etruscan gods? Messengers of Hades? A delirious dream of Claudia, who turns out to be a doctor in a Covid unit?

The play makes a wide range of references to Italian, European, and world culture. We encounter Pier Paolo Pasolini, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Tarkovsky, Tarantino, even the opening words of the Comendatore from Mozart’s Don Giovanni and allusions to the Aeneid. The action is broken up by intermezzi—some take the form of television shows, others resemble musicals. There is also a grotesque parody of Wheel of Fortune, ending with the prize of a luxury coffin, and the performance of a medieval song that is an ode to Pluto, lord of the underworld.

In the finale the violinist dies, the bourgeoisie are ridiculed, the helpless doctors await international aid, and Chiara performs her contemporary song, which might be read as the triumph of death.

Comedy mixes with tragedy, mythology with the global problems of the twenty-first century. The Italian context turns out to be merely a costume for the challenges standing before most of the societies of the West.

Totentanz: Black Night, Black Death was a finalist for a Polish national award, the Gdynia Dramaturgical Prize, in 2021; it has been translated into English, German, Ukrainian, and Danish.

Ishbel Szatrawska was born in 1981 in Olsztyn. She is a playwright and theatre scholar. She graduated from the Jagiellonian University’s Theatre Studies Department, and studied film and  American culture at the same university and at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster. In 2013–14 she studied at the private Multi Art Academy film school in Krakow under some renowned names in Polish cinema, including Xawery Żuławski, Jacek Bławut and Janusz Kondratiuk. In December 2019 she had her debut with the drama Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear in the Nasz głos e-anthology published by the National Stary Theatre in Krakow. Her subsequent dramas were published in Dialog magazine: Polowanie [The Hunt] in no. 4/2020 and Totentanz: Black Night, Black Death in no. 2/2021. In 2020 she received a City of Krakow Creative Scholarship, which allowed her to write the drama Kateriny brak [Katerina’s Absence]. She was named the winner of the DRAMATOPISANIE scholarship competition (2nd edition; 2021) organized by the Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute. This scholarship enabled her to create the drama Wolny strzelec [Free Lancer] on the war in Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003. A competition is currently underway to decide the public theatre that will get to stage this play. In 2021 she wrote the play Żywot i śmierć pana Hersha Libkina z Sacramento w stanie Kalifornia [The Life and Death of Mr. Hersh Libkin from Sacramento, CA]. The play was published by Wydawnictwo Cyranka in April 2022, making it her book debut. The Life and Death of Mr. Hersh Libkin from Sacramento, CA was selected among the plays in the international Eurodram 2022 contest. It's a selection that is made once every two years by a committee which recommends the chosen plays for translation. Totentanz was shortlisted in Stückemarkt contest as part of Theatertreffen – Berliner Festspiele 2022. She has lived in Krakow since 2000.

Soren Gauger is a Canadian novelist, translator, and essayist. He has translated such Polish authors as Bruno Jasieński, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Jerzy Ficowski, Dorota Masłowska, and Wojciech Jagielski into English, and freelances for wide array of theaters, art galleries and cultural institutions across Poland. He has published two volumes of his own short fiction in English (Hymns to Millionaires, Quatre Regards sur l’Enfant Jesus), and three novels in Polish, co-translated by himself. His essays have recently appeared in books on Andrzej Wróblewski and Paweł Bownik, and Opera Buffa Theater’s experimental travel magazine. He lives in Krakow with his wife, Magdalena, and his son, Milo.

A Dictionary of Emotions in War Time

Call Them By Their Names

The Peed-Upon Armored Personnel

| Ukraine

Playwrights: Elena Astasyeva, Tetyana Kitsenko, Oksana Gritsenko 

Translators: John Freedman, John Freedman/Natalia Bratus, John Freedman/Natalia Bratus

Director: Warner Crocker

Partner:

Synopsis: Three voices from the War in Ukraine meld together chronicling thoughts, emotions, and horror from the war in Ukraine as it begins and changes the world. Call Them By Their Names by Tetyan Kitsenko, The Peed Upon Armored Personnel Carrier by Oskana Gritsenko, and A Dictionary of Emotions in a Time of War by Elena Astasyeva immediately transport us to the moments that changed their world and ours in an instant and presage a rupture that will take generations to heal.

Elena Astaseva was born in the city of Kherson (Ukraine), which she considers her hometown to this day, although she currently is in exile outside of Ukraine. She studied at the Kiev Institute of Culture. Worked as a librarian, bookseller, copywriter. She is the author of stories and a number of plays that were repeatedly shortlisted for the Ukrainian Contemporary Play Week festival and were staged in the theaters of Kherson and Kyiv. A founding member of the Theater of Playwrights in Kyiv, her short play A Dictionary of Emotions in a Time of War has been presented, read, performed and filmed in a dozen countries since it was written in March 2022.

Tetiana Kytsenko is a playwright and screenwriter. She specializes in social and psychological drama. She has won numerous awards at Ukrainian Contemporary Play Week (Kyiv, 2011, 2012, 2013), the DramaUA festival (Lviv, 2012), and the Coronation of the Word competition (Kyiv, 2015). She has participated at the festival SPECIFIC (Brno, Czech Republic, 2014) and the Wilder Osten. Ereignis Ukraine project (Magdeburg, Germany, 2016). She was awarded the Grand Prix of the Free Theater competition (London-Minsk, 2016), and was curator of the following events: To Document!; Drama Of Freedom; and Insight Contemporary Drama (Kharkiv). She was author and curator of the socio-artistic Lifelong Importance project (2018-19). She is a member of the Board of the Theater Platform NGO (Kyiv), and a member of the Supervisory Board of the Union of Theater Actors.
Oksana Grytsenko is a Ukrainian playwright and screenwriter. She wrote her first play, Saniok, in 2019 following completion of courses in dramatic writing conducted by Maksym Kurochkin and Anastasiia Kosodii. This play was shortlisted at the Ukrainian Contemporary Play Week in 2019, and had a staged reading at Lesia Ukrainka Drama Theater in Lviv. Her second play, Don Juan from Zhashkiv, was shortlisted at Contemporary Play Week in 2020. Based on this play, Grytsenko created a screenplay for a feature film with the same name. The film was produced by Kristi Films and was funded by Ukraine’s State Film Agency. The release of the film was scheduled for December 2022. Grytsenko is a co-founder of Kyiv’s Theater of Playwrights. Before starting her artistic career, Grytsenko worked as a journalist for about 20 years, covering the Russian invasion of Georgia, Ukraine’s EuroMaidan Revolution, Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and Russia’s war against Ukraine. She has worked for Ukrainian and foreign publications, including the Kyiv Post, AFP, the Guardian, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Marie Claire, Ukraine Verstehen, Huck Magazine, Nikkei and the Wall Street Journal. 

Warner Crocker (Director) is delighted to return to one of his favorite gigs, The International Voices Project. Before returning to Chicago in 2013 he served as the Artistic Director of Wayside Theatre in Virginia for 15 seasons. Before that stint on the East Coast he worked for 20 years in Chicago Theatre as Artistic Director for Absolute Theatre Company, New Tuners Theatre, and Pegasus Players, and also directed for other Chicago theatres. He has produced and directed more plays than he can count, is the author of several, and has won a few awards along the way. Recent regional and Chicago directing gigs include The Play That Goes Wrong; Shear Madness; Peter Pan, the US premiere of Diamonds and Divas; Junk; Pinocchio; Bunny Bunny Gilda Radner, A Sort of Love Story; The Bridges of Madison County; Mama Won’t Fly; Boing Boing; Barnum; The Seven-Percent Solution, and The Man Who Murdered Sherlock Holmes.

Turks, Fire | Germany

Playwright: Özlem Özgül Dündar

Translator: Neil Blackadder

Director: Anna Bahow

Partner:

Synopsis: When a residential house is engulfed in flames five people are killed, three children and two women. The perpetrators are youths from the neighbourhood. The name of the small town is soon known nationwide thanks to a flurry of media reports. But the nation’s attention soon turns elsewhere to other, more pressing issues. Yet for the survivors and victims of the arson attack that fateful night will never end. The mother who leapt from a window cradling her child trying to protect the baby with her own body tells her story over and over, detailing the moment of her death. The mother of one of the perpetrators talks about the silence that enveloped her home, of her inkling that something had happened, of her doubts about her son’s guilt. A female relative who survived the fire sees the flames every day, feels the heat and smells the smoke. Each person is trapped in their memory and pain yet searches for a way to talk about what happened, yearns to meet other people and find a way to communicate.

The 1993 arson attack in Solingen is the starting point for Turks. Fire. Writing with great sensitivity and precision, Özlem Özgül Dündar searches for a language to describe those harrowing events that permits all the various perspectives a space to exist. The resulting play retains a painful relevance for today’s social and political climate.

Özlem Özgül Dündar was born in 1983 in Solingen. She writes poetry, prose, essays and performs with “Kanak Attak Leipzig” as well as the “Ministry of Compassion”. She is also active as a publisher and translator. She won the 2015 Retzhof Drama Prize. Recently, she was awarded the Kelag Prize at the Klagenfurt literary festival as well as the 2018 Rolf Dieter Brinkmann Scholarship. Her volume of poetry tugging thoughts (2018) was published by Elif Verlag.

Neil Blackadder translates drama and prose from German and French, specializing in contemporary theatre. He has contributed many translations to IVP, including of plays by Lukas Bärfuss, Mishka Lavigne, and Ewald Palmetshofer that were later produced in cities including Chicago, London, and New York. Neil has received grants from the NEA, PEN, and the Howard Foundation, and he’s Translations Editor for Another Chicago Magazine. In Spring 2023, Neil will be the Translator in Residence at Princeton University.

Give Me A Happily Ever After | Norway

Playwright: Marius Leknes Snekkevag

Translator: Kyle Korynta

Director: Breahan Pautsch

Partner:

Synopsis: Welcome to Life! Fasten your seatbelts, it's gonna be a bumpy ride! Living is scary, will we be okay in the end?

Marius Leknes Snekkevåg has been active as a playwright since 2009. His plays have been performed all over Norway, including Rabinowitz (nominated for Performance of the year at the Hedda Awards in 2011), We Are the Voice of our People (2013), I Want to Wash the World Clean (2017), Traitor (2018) and Kim F. (2018). In 2013 We Are the Voice of our People was staged as a reading at Akvavit Theatre in Chicago directed by Wm. Bullion. We Are the Voice of Our People and I Love You, Let Me Go were performed as staged readings directed by Kathy Curtiss at Scandinavian American Theater Company in New York in 2016. In 2022 his stream of consciousness text You Should Have Held My Hand Poor Soul If Both My Hands Weren't So Full was published by Flamme Forlag. Marius Leknes Snekkevåg is represented by Nordiska ApS.

Kyle Korynta graduated with a BA in Norwegian and Studio Art from St. Olaf College and his MA and PhD from University of Washington, Seattle, in Scandinavian Languages and Literature. His research has focused on Norwegian drama and Nordic film. He has translated plays written by Norwegian playwrights Jon Fosse, Per Schreiner, and Marius Leknes Snekkevåg. He currently teaches Norwegian language courses and Nordic literature and film courses in English translation at the University of Minnesota.

The Shroud Maker | Palestine

Playwright: Ahmed Masoud

Director: Maren Rosenberg

Partner: Uprising Theater, Medina Theater Collective, Intercultural Music Production

Synopis: From the critically acclaimed Palestinian writer Ahmed Masoud, who was born and raised in Gaza. Hajja Souad, an 80-year old Palestinian woman living on the besieged Gaza Strip, knows about business. She has survived decades of wars and oppression through making shrouds for the dead. A compelling black comedy, The Shroud Maker delves deep into the intimate life of ordinary Palestinians to weave a highly distinctive path through Palestine’s turbulent past and present. Loosely based on a real-life character still living in Gaza, this one-woman comedy weaves comic fantasy and satire with true stories told first hand to the writer and offers a vivid portrait of Palestinian life in Gaza underscored with humor.

Ahmed Masoud is the author of the acclaimed novel Vanished - The Mysterious Disappearance of Mustafa Ouda. Ahmed is a writer and director who grew up in Palestine and moved to the UK in 2002. Last year he worked with Maxine Peake on Obliterated, a theatrical experiment and artistic protest. You can learn about it here.  Ahmed's theatre credits include Application 39 (WDR Radio, Germany 2018) Camouflage (London 2017) The Shroud Maker (London 2015-2019), Walaa, Loyalty (London 2014, funded by Arts Council England), Go to Gaza, Drink the Sea (London and Edinburgh 2009) and Escape from Gaza (BBC Radio 4, 2011)  Ahmed is the founder of Al Zaytouna Dance Theatre (2005) where he wrote and directed several productions in London, with subsequent European Tours. After finishing his PhD research, Ahmed published many journals and articles including a chapter in Britain and the Muslim World: A historical Perspective (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011). An earlier version of Vanished won the Muslim Writers Awards (London 2011 supported by Penguin Books). For more information, please visit www.ahmedmasoud.co.uk.

Maren Rosenberg (she/her) is the co-artistic director of Uprising Theater. Uprisings is an interdisciplinary arts non profit dedicated to giving voice to the people of Palestine and other historically marginalized communities.  

www.uprisingtheater.org Maren, in addition, is an actor, producer with a focus on immersive experience. Maren lived and worked in Palestinian on theater, television, film, and circus for many years before resettling in Chicago. www.marenrosenberg.com

Synopsis: A nearly-fossilized village in a desert suddenly goes into turmoil when Yeon-Ahm, a “four-legged beast,” starts talking about the world outside. When an inspector from the Emperor arrives, her talking makes her the scapegoat to save the village from being “erased.”

Date/Time: Thursday June 4 at 6:30 pm

Country: South Korea

Title: Inching Towards Yeolha

Playwright: Sam-Shik Pai

Director: David Rhee

Translator: Walter Byongsok Chon

In collaboration with Token Theatre

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Synopsis: A dark comedy about a clown from the "unhappiest country in the world," Moldova, who pins her hopes on a US work visa. Chased by Homeland Security, a deportation letter deflates Nadia's enthusiasm and a pair of spike heels might be all it takes to burst her American Dream (or turn it into a nightmare...). New York City, with its special energy, seems like the perfect solution for her problems, but is it really? Luckily, Nadia is not alone in her journey: A Russian illegal immigrant, Borat, her fellow clown, tries to find his own path in the Big Apple, by working as a cab driver. Lupita, her Latina roommate, an exotic dancer and wanna-be actress, shows Nadia the tough side of the city. Meanwhile, Bob, an American washed-up musician finds himself in the relationship with the Moldovan girl. Aliens With Extraordinary Skills is based on true stories of immigration explored and fictionalized by a playwright who tries to understand her own story. The moral of the "fable" might be that - regardless our passport and native language - we are all "aliens" in search for love, understanding and a place to call "home."

Date/Time: Tuesday May 30 at 6:30 pm

Country: Romania

Title: Aliens with Extraordinary Skills

Special Guest Playwright: Saviana Stanescu

Director: Patrizia Acerra

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Synopsis: The Balkan Spry is Serbian playwright Dušan Kovačević’s classic comedy about the dark side of communism under Tito and its effects on the daily lives of people in Yugoslavia.  One of Kovačević’s most popular plays, both hilarious and disturbing, The Balkan Spy is a cogent exploration of the persistence of violence and the damage it does to the human psyche.

Date/Time: Tuesday May 28 at 6:30 pm

Country: Serbia

Title: The Balkan Spy

Playwright: Dusan Kovacevic

Translator: Dennis Barnett

Director: Liz Carlin-Metz

In collaboration with Vitalist Theatre and the Consulate General of Serbia

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Synopsis: George Kaplan the character is the fictional spy in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, and George Kaplan the play is at once an anarchic comedy, a spy thriller, and a dizzying exploration into the relationship between reality and fiction. A hall-of-mirrors journey through conspiracy theories, the quality of coffee, and the nature of identity itself, the play forces an uneasy reckoning with the ways in which media narratives drive our politics and shape our understanding of the world. George Kaplan was first produced in Copenhagen in 2013 and since then has become an international phenomenon translated into a dozen languages, receiving countless readings and fifteen full productions throughout Europe as well as North and Latin America.

Date/Time: Thursday May 23 at 6:30 pm

Country: France

Title: George Kaplan

Playwright: Frédéric Sonntag

Translator: Samuel Buggeln

Director: Warner Crocker

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Synopsis: Gardenia, by Elzbieta Chowaniec, is a story about four generations of women from one Polish family who are fighting with their belief systems, personal experiences, and heritage. They all exist at the same age simultaneously: great grandmother, grandmother, mother and daughter are all 33 years old, a pivotal age for a woman, but they are able to easily reach across space and time to encounter one another. Gardenia allows each woman’s personal drama to unfold, while viewing those issues in the context of WWII, Communism, and contemporary Polish culture.

Date/Time: Tuesday May 21 at 6:30 pm

Country: Poland

Title: Gardenia

Playwright: Elzbieta Chowaniec

Translator: Aleksandra Kneifel

Director: Monica Payne

In collaboration with Trap Door Theatre

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Synopsis: Spun is the story of best friends, Safa and Aisha, both from working-class British Pakistani families in Newham, London. We meet them as they finish university and, for the first time, are forging different paths. Safa is going off to work at a large organization in central London and Aisha is staying in Newham to become a teacher, but both with the promise that they will meet every Thursday. However, when London is attacked one day in July, Safa and Aisha feel the whole world spinning. As extremes from all sides take hold of the city, they each find themselves on the receiving end of questions. Aisha is asked by her Muslim students why they are all blamed for the actions of a few, and Safa is on the receiving end of microaggressions from her colleagues about where she stands as a British Muslim. As Safa tries to distance herself from her working-class Muslim roots, Aisha embraces her identity in order to defend her own. Safa starts to drink and Aisha starts to wear a headscarf and, when police shoot someone in Forest Gate, Aisha takes to the streets to march for an apology but Safa doesn't join her. As they each redefine who they are, cracks in their friendship start to appear and the debates happening in the outside world seep into their day-to-day conversations. When their priorities shift against the backdrop of politics and social change, their friendship ends in a dramatic way.

Date/Time: Thursday May 16 at 6:30 pm

Country: United Kingdom

Title: Spun

Playwright: Rabiah Hussain

Director: Alka Nayyar

In collaboration with Rasaka Theatre

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Notebook for Winter - "Best playwrighting" Ubu Award 2017 - is a two-actor-piece which is in three acts and tells the story of an introvert professor of literature who finds a burglar on his way back home. The knife-wielding burglar wants something unexpected from him: it is a question of life or death. During the entire night the two characters talk, exchange ideas, feelings, ask painful questions out of hope and desperation, in a completely new and unexpected atmosphere. They will meet again years later, both affected by that night.  Although their personal memory of that night is different, it may have triggered a change in both of them, by offering a further comprehension and awareness of each other. 

Events Horizon – "Best new play" Riccione Award 2016 - tells the story of Olga who is stuck in a studio apartment, which has a wall with many doors and cupboards, a front door which doesn’t open and no windows: she cannot figure out what has happened, she only knows that she cannot escape. When she tries to open one of the doors on the wall, she immediately comes back from another one and continues to stay there. At some point, however, she realizes that time is messed up and that every time she leaves, she enters a different time of her life. 

Date/Time: Tuesday May 14 at 6:30 pm

Country: Italy

Title: A Notebook for Winter - Un quaderno per l’Inverno

Playwright: Armando Pirozzi

Director: John Green

Translator: Adriana Rossetto * The translation of Events Horizon would not have been possible without the involvement and support of Premio Riccione

Title: Events Horizon - l’Orizzonte degli Eventi

Playwright: Elisa Casseri

Director: Matt Masino

Translator: Adriana Rossetto

In collaboration with Italian & American Playwrights Project and Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago

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Join the conversation at 6pm immediately before the performance between Patrizia Acerra, Director of the International Voices Project, Valeria Orani, curator of the Italian and American Playwrights Project and the translator of the plays Adriana Rossetto. 

The performance is followed by a reception. 

The panel and reception are supported by the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago.

Alfred Farag is one of Egyptian theater’s leading contemporary playwrights and has had a profound influence on shaping Arabic drama and Egyptian cultural politics. The two one-act plays presented (along with a third one which is not presented, The Visitor) were written in the Seventies. The 1970’s ushered a crisis for Egyptian theater resulting from censorship and political pressures, but it also marked Farag’s transition towards bold experimentation and successful embrace of modernist, absurdist, and postmodern styles. 

These plays form a series that portrays female subjects interacting with male aggressors who threaten their lives as well as their dwellings. All three plays depict women who are trying to find their way out of a world of male danger. The plays suggest neither social change nor moral reform. Instead, they portray individual angst, deprivation, solitude and alienation. The principle that governs their dramatic action is that, when attacked, one has no option but to defend oneself in the most effective way possible.  These one-act plays seem to be telling the story of the same woman, one who feels that she has something to defend and fight against the predator man. 

Date/Time: Thursday May 9 at 6:30 pm

Country: Egypt 

Title: The Stranger and The Peephole

Playwright: Alfred Farag

Translator: Dina Amin

Director: Anna Bahow 

In collaboration with The Egyptian American Society

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