ENGLISH Comes to The Wallis in April
ENGLISH, a Pulitzer Prize-winning exploration of language and identity, comes to The Wallis this season
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Straight off its critically acclaimed Broadway run, the Pulitzer Prize winning English by Sanaz Toossi, directed by Knud Adams, in the Atlantic Theater Company & Roundabout Theatre Company production, has a strictly limited engagement of 24 performances, April 4 to 26, 2026 at the Bram Goldsmith Theater at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts.
English won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was nominated for five 2025 Tony Awards including Best Play, direction by Adams and scenic design by Marsha Ginsberg. American Theatre magazine cited English as the 20th of “50 Plays of the New Millenium that Pushed Theatre Forward.”
Toossi's dramatic comedy about an Iranian ESL class studying for the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) debuted at Roundabout on Broadway in 2025, after its off-Broadway premiere at the Atlantic Theater in 2022.
A quietly powerful play about four Iranian adults preparing for an English language exam in a storefront school near Tehran, where family separations and travel restrictions drive them to learn a new language that may alter their identities, and represent a new life.
Two words set in motion Toossi's intricate and profound New York debut: “English Only.” This is the mantra that rules one classroom in Iran, where four adult students are preparing for the TOEFL test. Chasing fluency through a maze of word games, listening exercises, and show-and-tell sessions, they hope that one day, English will make them whole -- but it might be splitting each of them in half.
English arrives at a time when its themes are particularly relevant. Iranian American Daphna Nazarian, Chair, Board of Directors of The Wallis said, “English gives voice to anyone navigating identity, language and belonging across cultures locally and globally. It celebrates individual expression, reveals our intimate stories, and reminds us that beneath our differences, our shared values connect us. It is the age old story of immigration and assimilation, with a longing for the past while yearning for the possibilities of a brighter future. At this time, it also echoes the courage of the Iranian people and all who continue to fight for personal rights and freedom of expression."
The play uses playwright Brian Friel's Translations trick: The play's Iranian American actors speak with fluent contemporary American accents when their characters are speaking in Farsi, and use stilted or studied Iranian accents when they are speaking English.
Among the few Middle East and North African-written plays on the American Theatre list, English explores identity and communication in a personal way: What does it mean to feel foreign, and what does it mean to love yourself in a different language?
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