PlayCo will present a free, virtual roundtable discussion entitled Story as Resistance: The Joys, The Heartbreak, and the Food, this Sunday, DECEMBER 20, at 2pm EST (1pm CST, 11am PST), as part of the company s Idea Lab Series. The event seeks to illuminate themes in Amir Nizar Zuabi s This Is Who I Am, whose world premiere runs through JANUARY 3, directed by Evren Odcikin and co-produced by PlayCo and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in association with American Repertory Theater at Harvard University, the Guthrie Theater, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
For Story as Resistance: The Joys, The Heartbreak, and the Food, PlayCo has convened an extraordinary group of artists and organizations from across the U.S. and around the world, who are leading conversations about, and changing representations on stage of, the Middle Eastern diaspora. They include Nora el Samahy, Resident Artist and Board President at Golden Thread Productions; Lameece Issaq, actor, writer, and Founding Artistic D
Ramsey Faragallah as the Father and Yousof Sultani as the son in “‘This Is Who I Am.” Image courtesy of Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company.
Written on an accelerated schedule (commissioned in June 2020 and ready in August 2020), then cast, rehearsed, and produced by five companies across the United States by December 2020, Sunday night’s opening was a revelation and a reminder.
This is an achingly human show you don’t want to miss.
Amir Nizar Zuabi writes from a deep understanding of grief all kinds of grief. He knows the ugly, unspoken parts of it, as well as the role it plays in affirming life the lives and objects that have passed, and the lives and objects still here. And he understands that sometimes grief can be a fragile armor to hold inside the pain until we’re ready to integrate it into a new, softer, stronger thing. Zuabi is a generous enough writer to give us moments to catch our breath and find humor and connection.