'Language Rooms' Wins ACT's 2008 New Play Award

Local playwright Yussef El Guindi has been named ACT's 2008 New Play Award winner for his new work Language Rooms. ACT will present two staged readings, followed by post-play discussions with the playwright and director, FREE to the public, on March 7 & 8 at 7:30PM in its Bullitt Cabaret space.

"Language Rooms is a play about an Arab-American interrogator at a Guantanamo-like facility whose loyalty comes into question when he is faced with the challenge of interrogating his father," explain press notes.

Language Rooms is the third play awarded as a part of the New Play Award program, sponsored by Eulalie M. and Carlo Scandiuzzi. The Scandiuzzi sponsorship provides for an annual national call for submissions playwriting competition, in which the winner receives $2,500 and the opportunity to workshop the play, including the presentation of two public staged readings at ACT. Mitzi's Abortion by Elizabeth Heffron, produced at ACT as a part of its 2006 mainstage season, was the first New Play Award winner in 2005.

Language Rooms is directed by Kurt Beattie and will feature Khanh Doan (Esther), John Farrage (Nasser), Ray Gonzalez (Ahmed), William Hall, Jr. (Kevin) and a fifth actor to be announced.

Yussef El Guindi's most recent production was Back of the Throat, winner of the 2004 Northwest Playwright's Competition held by Theater Schmeater. It won LA Weekly's Excellence in Playwrighting Award for 2006. It was also nominated for the 2006 American Theater Critics Association's Steinburg/New Play Award, and was voted Best New Play of 2005 by the Seattle Times. It was first staged by San Francisco's Thick Description and Golden Thread Productions; then later presented in various theaters around the country including The Flea Theater in New York. Another play of his, Ten Acrobats in an Amazing Leap of Faith, staged by Silk Road Theatre Project, won the After Dark Award for Best New Play in Chicago, 2006. His two-related one-acts, Acts of Desire, were staged by the Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles. Back of the Throat, and those two related one-acts, now titled, Such a Beautiful Voice is Sayeda's and Karima's City, have been published by Dramatists Play Service. Guindi holds a Master of Fine Arts from Carnegie-Mellon University and was playwright-in-residence at Duke University.