NY Times: The New 'Arab' Playwrights

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The New 'Arab' Playwrights

PEOPLE who came to Layla Dowlatshahi's play "The Joys of Lipstick" last December at the Producers Club thought they were lining up to see a comedy about pretty Iranian women and makeup. What they got was a drama about an Iranian lesbian who goes to visit relatives in Los Angeles so she can get a sex change and return to Tehran to live with her American girlfriend as a man.

"After one performance," Ms. Dowlatshahi remembered, "a man came up to me and said, `I'm an Iranian professor, and this is filth.' I said to him: `I'm glad you hated the play. For me, as a playwright, if you love it or hate it, at least you left with something unforgettable.' Americans loved it," she added. "And this play was for an American audience. If I wanted to write for an Iranian audience, I would write in Persian."

Ms. Dowlatshahi is a non-practicing Shiite Muslim who moved to California with her family from Iran in the early 1970's, when she was a toddler. Today, she is part of a new generation of female playwrights, born in the 1960's and 70's, most of them brought up in the United States by parents who left war-torn countries in the Middle East. Some of the women are ethnically Iranian, which means (essentially) that they are Indo-European, and speak Persian. Some are ethnically Arab, which means (essentially) that they are Semitic, and speak Arabic. Their religious roots vary: they are Christian, Muslim or Zoroastrian (a faith that advocates good thoughts and deeds), and their national ancestry may be, to name a few, Iranian, Palestinian, Lebanese or Indian. But they are united by a commitment to take their hyphenated experiences to the New York stage, and by their perception that, although many of them are not Arab, that is how they often are seen in the United States at this tense moment in the country's history. Moreover, they embrace the confusion: "It's an honor to be called an Arab for me," said Ms. Dowlatshahi, who is Iranian, not Arab. Together, they are trying to put a familiar, human face on Arab identity.

It is not surprising that their voices are only being heard lately; the women belong to a new demographic. They are breaking a path not only creatively, but socially, overcoming pressures from the immigrant community to find husbands, not agents.

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The New 'Arab' Playwrights

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