New Plays Initiative: Middle East America

 
Project marks first-ever national effort to support Middle Eastern American playwrights
 
 
Artistic Director Jamil Khoury and Executive Director Malik Gillani announce Silk Road Theatre Project's collaboration with San Francisco's Golden Thread Productions and New York City's Lark Play Development Center in New York to form Middle East America: A National New Plays Initiative. This tri-coastal initiative represents the first-ever national effort to actively cultivate and support development of Middle Eastern American playwrights and their plays.
 
Khoury comments, "Silk Road was founded in response to the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent backlash against peoples of Middle Eastern and Muslim backgrounds. In establishing Middle East America, we are taking a proactive stance in assuring that playwrights of Middle Eastern backgrounds receive the nurturing and support they deserve. It is high time that Middle Eastern American voices be heard as integral to the mosaic of American storytelling."
 
Torange Yeghiazarian, Golden Thread Production's Founding Artistic Director, says of the initiative, "It is critical in ensuring that playwrights, such as Yussef El Guindi and Betty Shamieh, continue to be discovered, nurtured, and produced. Not only because the work of Middle Eastern American artists is worthy of broader audiences, but more importantly because American audiences can no longer afford not to see their work."
 
Middle East America will provide a $10,000 commission to a Middle Eastern American playwright to write a new play. Awarded through an application process, the prize also provides intensive developmental support from the Lark, staged readings and possible productions at Golden Thread Productions and Silk Road Theatre Project, and travel expenses for the writer to be present at all stages of the process. During the play's development and production arc, representatives of partner organizations will travel to each city—Chicago, New York, and San Francisco—to observe the process and to engage in public conversations and panel events about Middle Eastern American voices.
 
The initiative is designed to encourage other theatres, both American and international, to produce work from Middle Eastern American writers, and to creatively challenge the lack of representation and one dimensional, stereotypical depiction of persons of Middle Eastern descent often seen on America's stages. Lark Producing Director, John Clinton Eisner says the initiative "supports with dollars and deeds the stories and perspectives of a still-marginalized community that has the potential to change our national –and global—conversation for the good."
 
For more information and application guidelines on Middle East America: A National New Plays Initiative, visit: www.middleeastamerica.org. The application deadline is July 31, 2008. The selected writer will be announced in September 2008.
 
Golden Thread Productions is dedicated to theatre that explores Middle Eastern cultures and identities as represented throughout the globe. Our mission is to build an organization that consistently produces the highest quality theatre about Middle Eastern culture and to establish a dynamic artistic community and an expanding audience. And to make the Middle East a regular part of the American Theatre Experience and make theatre a regular part of the Middle Eastern community's cultural experience. Golden Thread Productions is led by Artistic Director, Torange Yeghiazarian. For more information: www.goldenthread.org.
 
A laboratory for new voices and new ideas, the Lark Play Development Center provides playwrights with indispensable resources to develop their work. The Lark brings together actors, directors, playwrights and the community to allow writers to learn about their own work by seeing and hearing it, and by receiving feedback from a dedicated and supportive community. The company reaches into untapped local populations and across international boundaries to seek out and embrace unheard voices and diverse perspectives, celebrating differences in language and worldviews. The Lark also plays a leading role in advancing unknown writers and their works to audiences through carefully stewarded partnerships with a host of theaters, universities, community-based organizations, and NGOs, locally, nationally and globally. The Lark is led by Producing Director, John Clinton Eisner and Managing Director, Michael Robertson. For more information, www.larktheatre.org.
 
Silk Road Theatre Project showcases playwrights of Asian, Middle Eastern, and Mediterranean backgrounds, whose works address themes relevant to the peoples of the Silk Road and their Diaspora communities. Through the creation and presentation of outstanding theatre, we aim to promote discourse and dialogue among multi-cultural audiences in Chicago. Silk Road Theatre Project is led by Artistic Director, Jamil Khoury and Executive Director, Malik Gillani. For more information, www.srtp.org.

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