Political Acts: The Emerging Arab-American Theater Movement
Monday, April 21, 2008 7:00pm
At Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art
220 E Chicago Ave

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Next Theatre Company, in collaboration with Silk Road Theatre Project and the Museum of Contemporary Art, invites you to an in-depth panel featuring the three most potent forces in Arab-American theater today. Playwrights Yussef El Guindi, Heather Raffo and Betty Shamieh – Americans of Egyptian, Iraqi, and Palestinian descent respectively – will come together for the first time to discuss the politics in their work, their careers as outsider artists, the ability of art to transcend cultural differences, and the political challenges of negotiating the east-west divide.

Simon O’Rourke, of the Chicago Council of Global Affairs will lead this in-depth roundtable. Don’t miss this exciting opportunity to hear from Yussef El Guindi, the talented and celebrated author of Our Enemies: Lively Scenes of Love and Combat (seen at Silk Road in March), as well as internationally acclaimed author and performer Heather Raffo. Her work, 9 Parts of Desire, will be presented this May at the MCA in collaboration with Next Theatre.

This event is free and open to the public. Seating is limited and reservations are recommended by calling the Next Theatre at 847-475-1875 x 2 or by emailing Chelsea Keenan at chelsea@nexttheatre.org

This program is made possible in part by a grant from the Illinois Humanities Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Illinois General Assembly.