A funny, ferocious drama post-9/11
An Egyptian-born writer mingles the immigrant experience, the war on terror, and office politics.
By Tirdad Derakhshani
Inquirer Staff Writer
What do I love when I love my country?
What must I do to prove that devotion?
What if I'm asked to sacrifice love itself?
Those are some of the questions raised by playwright Yussef El Guindi's Language Rooms, a new black comedy about the immigrant experience, the war on terror - and office politics - that will have its world premiere tomorrow night at the Wilma Theater in Center City.
Think The Office meets 24.
The Egyptian-born El Guindi may be familiar to Philadelphia theater audiences for his highly praised satire about racial stereotyping, Jihad Jones and the Kalashnikov Babes, which was staged last spring by the InterAct Theatre Company.
Language Rooms, which has been in previews since March 3, is set in a secret U.S. detention center in an unnamed country. It tells the tragic, and tragically funny, tale of an Arab American interrogator named Ahmed (played by Sevan Greene) charged with extracting information, by whatever means necessary, from fellow Muslims suspected of terrorism.
Ahmed's life begins to unravel when he realizes that his colleagues harbor the same resentment and suspicion toward him that he feels toward his interview subjects, who he is convinced are evil.
"The play speaks to the sense of alienation" Muslim Americans felt after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Seattle-based El Guindi says. "At least for a few years, it was very, very strange. The paranoia level was high and much suspicion fell among Muslims, Arab Americans, South Asians, Iranians. It was not a particularly pleasant time for those groups."
El Guindi was raised in England, to which his family immigrated in 1963, when he was 4. He was 23 when he came to the United States to attend grad school at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He stayed on, eventually becoming a naturalized citizen in 1996, because he felt he was more welcome here than in England.
"At that time, it wasn't open to immigrants and foreigners. And, as you know, America is a country built on foreigners and immigrants," he says.
"Like Ahmed says [in Language], being American means never having to apologize for being foreign-born."
But it seems, some do. Or at least they did after 9/11.