 At the end of this session, I just want to thank everybody and then we'll go directly downstairs to another session in this room. Okay, let me get my program. Okay, this session is Arab American and Arab Artists in Conversation. Two of them have been remarks by Yusuf El Dendi, one of the leading Arab American dramatists today, and then a wonderful panel of Arab American writers and conformers, some of whom we've heard before, some of whom are now in the first presentation at this conference, and we're very, very important and familiar figures in the New York important world. I'm delighted this afternoon to be together with Yusuf El Dendi and Yusuf El Dendi, so they will be Sahara, Salam, Dahlia, Sunni, Balaq, Reina, Khalil, Amal, Kuri, and the Rothfield and Pendi Shabia. Frank Schubert will moderate this for you. Okay, so I'm saying to Dahlia, if he's going to review any of my plays and productions in the future, I admire you greatly. I'm just, I'm a bit very scared. Okay, these, this is more sort of, what should we do with Nessay, they don't have a name remark, so apologies for the slight dryness of just being Nessay, but it's short. So, okay, I'll get through this quickly so we can get to the panel. Okay, just reflections on Arab American data. Okay, when it comes to countering the implicit and sometimes explicit prejudices that the larger society exhibits towards Arabs and Muslims, American theaters are not particularly ahead of the curve. While some theaters have bravely and commendably gone out of their way to address the delusion of negativity, the mainstream culture exhibits towards most things when least in those theaters are rare. This is disappointing. What expects theater to write about the crassness that swirls through the currents of mainstream culture? You would hope that theaters espouse values that more commercial fare might shy away from. You want theater, especially non-profit theater, to channel in values that might interfere with the bottom line. Not that we want theaters to touch with a wide audience, but we want theaters to become perceived as being even more detestable over the years, crassness after all, and fun. Theater has some of its roots firmly planted in the mud and the foibles and awareness of human nature. Rising above mainstream culture doesn't mean theater should achieve any of the broad popular means currently in circulation in it. By all means, artists should feel free to infuse their work with whatever is most fashionable current, style, aesthetics, popular thought, songs, etc. But theater should also have a critical heart. It should offer opportunities to contextualize about some kind of critical framework through which to view the culture and politics of today. Because most theaters are non-profits, there should be more daring in terms of the such a matter they choose, staging stories and perspectives that might be hard to find elsewhere. This is the ideal. And given this ideal expressed by many theater fishing statements, I wonder why there are more plays by writers who come from the Middle East. Never has any one area of the world had more impact on the US than the Middle East repeatedly, every year for as long as most of us can remember. In every decade of my life, Arabs and Muslims have made headlines in some capacity, almost always in a negative light. One gets a little punch drunk during some news cycles dealing with this, from my perspective, battery of bias reporting in which Arabs and Muslims had always come across a seemingly genetically prone to mindless violence, wars, the oppression of women, etc. The go-to images are always large amounts of angry Arab men, frail women, bearded Muslims in prayer, bombsites and so on. I've spent most of my life being gubsmacked by all this, contrasting what I see in mainstream American culture, with what I live and know when I travel back to Egypt and hang out with friends and family, and invite the culture around me. Quite naturally, in a desire to make sense of all this, I turn to the arts as one potential source to put some of these Middle East happenings in perspective. I want to step away from the objectionable, objective use, and the bias underclass for their conservative think tank opinions and see how the culture around me processes these events. I hold our little hope that movies will give me the other side of the story. Black and white perspectives sell water against their graves or areas still view points directly from the enemy. The best you can hope for in a popular movie that the older Middle East is something that came to be a car voice and ancient narrative in which the vast majority of the Arabs are portrayed as menacing and hostile, except for the good Arab whose sides were the West and his agents invited a particularly nasty leader and his fanatical whores. Movies, money, follows prejudice because simplifying the world into us and them is more satisfying than having to deal with all the ambiguities and qualifies that are part of most people's daily lives. I expect more from the stage, but in the American theatre over the past 15 years for all its talk wanting to be inclusive, I've read a scene in place that addresses what's going on in the Middle East and what is happening to Muslims and people of Middle Eastern descent here in the US leaving aside the almost total absence of such a place before September 11, 2001. The ancient Greeks made it a point to address their wars and their dramas. Why is it that American theatre with rare exceptions should fail so drastically in this regard? It's an often repeated observation of American culture that people don't like politics in their entertainment. This outside limited purview of this essay to explain the subversion to political theatre in the US are the fact remains that a width of politics would expose you to the charge of having an agenda of being too didactic or rich. It's odd that, by contrast, a small island like England can create big campus plays that address the political culture and they're standing in the world while the US, a world power and a country that surely begs for a vicious place mostly produces small, intimate plays that deal with matters of the half-and-half. This often argued that some types of able-gazing can be deemed political. Or the user comment phrase, it's not that it's political. Domestic drama may be said to act as metaphor encapsulating larger political concerns. But most of the time, the politics are so deeply cloaked in metaphor that they can be safely ignored. It's a repeated oddity that the American protagonist rarely seems to care or understand his or her place in the historical and political forces that play. As a consequence, the default setting for American drama is generally warm, at his or her predominate, uplifting. Dreams can be realized in spite of obstacles if they're not it's an American tragedy and domestic. The individual is paramount with just enough social commentary thrown in to give it a little bite. The problem is that for most people outside of the West active politics is part of their daily life and conversation. To self-realize, to pursue happiness means having to pay attention to government policies and how they affect you. You can't do too much able-gazing when bullets, tear gas and arrests are real possibilities or if you're simply trying to gain basic freedoms and human rights. Consequently, the whole life of a lot of Arab Muslims is filled with political chatter. To dramatize the daily lives of these two groups and to other non-West peoples is to unavoidably include the political element as part of normal domestic interactions. Here, the personal truly is political. Americans are so immersed in politics in their entertainment that the simple act of including Arab or Muslim characters in their play exposes it to the charge of being overly political or didactic. But if you buy an Arab or a Muslim, the writer must surely then be putting some political agenda. Even if, for example, the big player revolves around an Arab or Muslim fan of American Thanksgiving dinner. Though nothing political is uttered, the play is regarded as making some kind of statement. Or worse, the play gets dismissed as social activism rather than being judged by the autistic merits. The very act of rendering a group of people usually depicted negatively in a three-dimensional way is deemed a political act. Whether the writer intends it or not, they're seen as trying to address something to a right or a wrong. Such criticism has been led to this on my place, even though I never had a conscious political agenda when I set out for a good play. Like most playwrights, I am focused on seeing to the needs of my characters. I am focused on craft and character passions rather than trying to spout or trying to sneak into some political agenda or to have a character read the political acts I'm grinding. Where's the fun in that? I've always surprised when I gave my reviewer the having some calculated agenda as if the play was written as a platform to express my political views. Artistically speaking, Arabs and Muslims are in predicament in the theatre. We cannot work on stage unburdened by the political framework in which we exist offstage. As a group, we are fought with all the accrued bad news he does. As characters can play, regardless of what we do, it's hard to shed the manufacture of political narrative we've been assigned. Existentially and dramaturgically, we become politicized. While other characters can come on stage with a question mark hanging over them as we wait to find out who they are and what they want, whether Arabs and Muslims in our entrance sets out a set of expectations, usually all negative which these characters will either suffer at which point the political agenda accusation might be brought up or confirm at which point the play might then be safely celebrated since the audience's prejudices have been validated. The scapegoating echoes the way other ethnic groups have been treated on stage in the past and are still up. African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Native-Americans, and Latinx characters and historically-mated stage entrances carrying their share of political baggage. Baggage that is spilling over with other people's stuff, not their own. The political burden attached to these and other minorities has begun to lessen as more varied depictions make their way into the mainstream culture. It takes a while and the struggle to unpack that baggage is still ongoing, but for Arabs and Muslims, that unpacking has barely begun. Arabs and Muslims, even at liberal western eyes, have come to embody the sense of patriarchy, sexism, religious magnetism, mindless violence, and the cheese-mobile kind that is seen as particularly dark and menacing. Never mind that these sins are as rampant in other groups all over the world. In Jungian terms, Arabs and Muslims are currently the groups upon which others get to project their shadow elements. In theaters, fitful embrace of multiculturalism that Arabs and Muslims have really been included as we tend to fall outside the multicultural comfort zones. That's because multiculturalism, as it stands now often operates as a deep, criticize zone, a place where diversity has been smoothed over to appeal to the greatest number of people, with at least a amount of friction. Commonalities are solved, differences ignored or diminished. It's a way to bring people out of politics and into a gentrifying history. If you can't be gentrified or depoliticized in this way, you can't be welcomed into the multicultural world. Arabs and Muslims, it seems, will have to wait and wait until we can somehow share the disconcerting political trends that can actually hang over us. Or perhaps, the trajectory of an ideal like multiculturalism is inevitably to open up a new opportunity. I'm not an optimist to believe that the promise of diversity will eventually have to include the voices of the nearly two million people that comprise Arabs and Muslims in aggregate around the world. I believe that more and more theaters will start to program the days by Arabs and Muslims as some already have. But it's only likely to start happening in our nation's regional theaters that Arabs and Muslims can be seen as people not as mere triggers or symbols of political conscience. But how do we want to? So, first of all, I'm just going to say thank you. So thank you so much for this and for speaking about unpacking and how can you unpack your language really and how can people share that experience and also doesn't the multiculturalism that's buzzed over from the 90s seems to be a bit too deep on the besides and so everybody is singing together holding hands. It's not really allowed anywhere. So these are significant questions on the question really, how do they feel like to make theaters in Arab artists and Arab-American artists? So I would like to ask maybe first our panelists who hasn't been here yet was in their own presentation and I mean I'll just go with it down the line and start at the risk right now. Have you taken, I hope it's kept on from what you heard and I know it's also one of the lives of you. How does it feel to make art as an Arab-American artist? I'm just going to think for one second. I think it's been on my mind lately is the way in which we as Arab-American artists have to somehow function on top of this place where all of our people abroad are being murdered and that that is so deeply normalized in our society. So I'm thinking specifically of the way in which plays have these characters where Ashid also says that I know performance artists are not from particularly theatrical theater. So I wish I had to go chest first. Sure. Alright. I'll just do one thing at a time. So when we're and I also want to thank you so much for your talk. I'm a big fan of your work by the way. Big fan of your work. We go to the theater and we see people dying, people hurt and we're still I feel as Arab-Americans somehow at this place where we're living in a culture that has a kind of massive amnesia about the fact that we're we're dying on math. The Palestinians are the subjects of genocide and for me that is what it means. It's about you and your work and your success. I agree with you entirely. I mean there's a there's a weight on the lens through which one feels like there's annihilations and genocides and wars and traumas and PTSD's so that even when one looks at we're saying we want to write about a family drama about anyone in Louisiana who cares. The weight is still on the person and the person is the playwright so no matter what angle one takes I agree. I agree. There's a pressure to the DNA, right? And as Amal was talking about earlier about impossibility, I feel that that's equally true in the American theater. I know that sometimes people artists from the Middle East question how is it, why does it feel so impossible in America but I would say that this idea as Betty was saying earlier if for how many plays she writes which ones get produced it's getting your play produced is nearly impossible as a fact as a technical fact when you look at all the people of color plays and the percentage that any of those plays share in the landscape of American theater and to think that the Middle Eastern voice American voice and the Latinx voice and the Native American like the technical it's a near feat anyway. Let alone one of the things we're going to talk about is if we're being supported by institutions and if we are is it only to write the thing that they want us to write versus coming to the table as an artist to the lens through which whatever we might write could be informed by experience you know and the last panel spoke about the in between everyone up here well that's a pretty big category but one thing that I'm working on in my work right now where I'm flipping the lens on myself quite like Dalia was talking about the catharsis the need for catharsis well I'm forming an idea so I'm not going to be brilliant in my own specifics of it but the idea I'm forming is that so much of the American theater is focused on empathy so that when you are in the female slot or the Middle Eastern slot or the African American slot you're in the empathy slot now I'm not saying that it's not true for all plays in the American theater but I will say that it's empathy on the whole might be a goal of the American theater where we want to go I want to feel something I want to feel an empathy rate and I'm starting to feel like perhaps empathy is perpetuating the problem to begin with so I'm personally in my own work flipping the lens and looking at value over empathy and I don't know where that lives exactly yet but it's the thing in a place where I'm interested in somebody saying my female character is not sympathetic and me going to anybody watch the trial yesterday right? like different trial look I called it a trial but it wasn't as if you see a job interview like just to flip these lenses on how I'm myself in my own work with a successful play that did reach people in the middle of a war I can go okay well that was 14 years ago and it's still ongoing and I get emails every month about how it's changed somebody's life but then what right? that's has the nation changed what's changing and how do we get it value so that's what I'm changing that is just forgive me I have my phone here because I one of them is the idea of solidarity and reflection on how we connect to other communities so I'm in my ignorance because and I want to name this I know this I use it as practice but I forgot until two minutes ago because of the data it's been to look up and I should know this because I live in New York who are the people's whose land we are sitting and speaking on right now so from my sense of Google search and I welcome those watching those here to please correct me some of the drives actually the word is not track some of the first nations the first peoples of the land that we are sitting and speaking about these issues on were the Apanaki the Kaeyuga an emotional way the Erie, the Laurentian, the Mohawk the Mohican including Montauk and Shinnecock the Muncie Delaware tribe the Oneida tribe peoples forgive me for the language it's on here the Onanda and the Seneca and the So just to name for me right now in this moment as multiple backgrounds my father is Lebanese my next Muslim Christian family like Anglo-Saxon Protestant American I have inherited all of those things and the privileges and the challenges that come with them and so for me a lot of my work is about creating spaces to use theater which is such a unique tool in the world we live in especially right now because it requires people gathering live with each other and engaging with not only words and images but experiences with each other's energy each other's breath, each other's laughter so to me the opportunity to create spaces for that and doing so as a performer as well as a writer is why for me we do what we do and because we all know how much stories matter I presumably I think one would commit one's life doesn't think it's hard if one didn't believe that with that comes a responsibility I grew up watching how our policy towards the people that are dying every day as Ramya mentioned that began so importantly with from our peoples those things happen in large part because of the stories people in this country hear because of the stories they choose we choose to believe because of the stories that are passed on I've lived on the other end of the world when that narrative changed and suddenly we were bombing people or stopping bombing people because we didn't believe a different story and so just because of all that I'm reflecting a lot as an Arab-American artist on my privilege because of my name being relatively pronounceable because I don't wear hijab because I speak with a relatively American accent because I carry this citizenship and because I pass for many things that are not Arab and the challenge, the charge of reflection on how do the stories I'm choosing to tell in the way I'm choosing to tell impact the minds and hearts of the people who hear them and see them and how does that impact the lives of people sometimes thousands of miles away and I don't mean to say that my work is so grand but I do believe that when you see a story that moves you about a group of people or a story that makes you think a group of people are dangerous and frightening and violent as Yusuf was pointing out so beautifully in his introduction that shapes what people in this country vote for what they are willing to possibly ignore what they are willing to allow to happen in our name here and all over the world and those things we all know very well so for me that's what it means is to struggle with wanting to allow your voice to write about whatever you want and also bearing as we've all spoken of this responsibility for the weight those stories can and I think should carry with their power no pressure if there's a gathering about what you feel what can be or should be done in the ideal world and what's missing if you have personal voices what are you talking to in general for yourself as an artist I feel because some of us are in the Arab world some are here, some are between it's a completely different context let's hear about it that's the idea I'll say one thing that's being talked about in America inside the Middle Eastern with African American artist community is how to allow for multiplicity of voices to be supported by the American theater so when there is only one slot and that one voice kind of gets put up and then they say well that's the Middle Eastern experience and as we all know that's like one aspect of an experience so this idea of how to create festival structures or how to get multiple theaters on board with producing plays and or readings from diverse voices from the Middle East but all at the same time so that audiences can and press can in when they're interacting in that kind of situation they really see that there's a multiplicity of voices and perspectives a censorship because one of the things about being a Palestinian American artist is most communities of color work in the face of indifference we are working in the face of active hostility and it's a different thing to be facing active hostility as opposed to just indifference and I feel that when you're talking about the American context I would love to one of the things that I found was so fascinating but the first panel was that I really felt for the first time that the connection between the struggle artists of the era to set out here was very connected to the struggle and I think sometimes I did a show called the alter ego in American assimilations in which I talk about gamma racism where you're functioning in a society where they don't know their races so it's actually harder to deal with so I'd love for the Arab artists to be pulled in and for us to have a real exchange about how what we're facing is connected to what you're facing with active versus subversive ways of silencing us I hear you and I feel like the essence of our work as theater maker and there's a similar struggle with the issues you deal with here probably are different than the issues we deal with back home back home I don't have to this idea of identity for me at least is not a challenge but the question of why are we doing theater to whom are we doing theater and is it really going to change anything that's a valid question every day and what Dalia was saying in her presentation and especially in that quote that you shared at the end you know not to challenge what your criticism of the play because I don't know the player talking about and I understand that sometimes it can be very dangerous to just ridicule like issues like rape or just for the sake of making comedy but I think when I think sometimes we put a lot of pressure on theater like we want theater to change the world you know but in my view at least I kind of made peace with that idea I'm not making theater to that would lead for a revolution I wish like I can do that I wish people would burst out of the theater counter the straight change of the governments but I kind of made peace with the idea that if I can transform one individual in the auditorium if I can touch one person it's enough for me you know because I think it's too much to ask of theater like I hear everything you're saying it's a load really you know because you have to be an activist to do theater these days like you have to be really committed and you have to be really you know for me not only in love you have to there's nothing else I can do otherwise I would be doing something else for sure you know so I just wanted to say that this is you know this is something probably in common rather than the issues are different I think it's it's hard for everywhere I mean in Germany you're expected to perform being a refugee and that's like here it's like you're terrorist I mean everywhere comes with that kind of idea of what you have to do that you have to perform and then when we go back home we're faced with censorship of a different kind and that's like financial or actual censorship of government institutions I think theaters has a lot of risk and potential and that's understood everywhere we go in any context it's always a dangerous and very difficult it's a very protected thing and we're not allowed in for different reasons for different reasons in different places but also for the same reasons also it's wonderful to be among you know women here and just we're all going to feel the same thing it's a very powerful moment for me I just wanted to thank you better you move between two worlds and often I can use that between the fronts and tell us a bit about that experience I just have to laugh when you were talking about is it harder to be dealing with American theaters or being a Palestinian trying to get through a checkpoint you know I'm a Palestinian American playwright ten years ago I was much more fiery and a little calmed down this is Betty Light but in fact what has happened to me personally is what happened to the African Americans in the 1920s which is all my work is being done in translation in Europe and none of it about America about my experience here and I was very fiery about that and if I raise a light post post therapy about how profoundly hurtful that is to me especially when every theater every major theater has some sort of service like what use is so eloquently articulated as he often does in his work is it's a very hurtful thing to see people getting governmental, federal foundation funding to do diverse works and to completely isolate and ignore the most vulnerable members of our theatrical community so I've come to peace with that and the joy of only being able to focus on the work is something I don't feel I have a luxury of doing I do it in the space where I'm creating but when I'm speaking about it I feel like it's very important that I advocate for how difficult this space is and the difference again between the African American community is nobody was saying we're getting funds from the government and foundations to do diverse works we are doing what we want to do so it's a profound dislocating falsehood at the heart of our funding situation in this country but yet I'm not going to be so fiery about it I'm just going to do my work and really celebrate the fact that this panel is something that I could not have a vision coming out of drama school in which I spent three years not writing about Palestinians or only writing about them in my little closet and never showing them because I was so sure that there was no space for my voice in this culture until I realized I had to write about it or I couldn't write so it came down to very I just want to say quickly on your point that I'm piggybacking on as I agree about her point about funding in the American theaters there are still slots called the meeting slot or the workshop slot and that's where we can get a foot in and that's what gets them the grants but we don't get the productions so we're definitely being used we supported some Middle Eastern theater artists to come do a workshop or a meeting of such and such but that person is not on your main stage and just the difficulty of making theater wherever you are in the world I was starting a project and Karen might be, if you're familiar with the work, was starting a project here and we decided to keep a video diary of our different projects of all the hassle and the craziness that she has to be when doing her own funding for a play because her work is not funded because it's political and the million other problems like theater is not a choice of way for some of us we are doing it because if we could have done anything else we would have so there's something that is a shared commonality between people who are doing this kind of work especially a work that is controversial that is touching people's life that are saying issues that are not mainstream that's but I'm also wanting to connect to the issues of identity within the diaspora and the issues of representation if you're in other places and the voices inside my head that I self-censor sometimes because if I'm getting one chance at presenting a play, what do I want to be seen? if you're here and you're doing something, you will not want to talk about domestic abuse for instance because then they would say oh but more Arab men are violent because they will be so that one play they will have a different dynamic I'm trying to present work with women about women and if there is a voice that I'm really self-censoring constantly not the political stuff but other stuff because it might be my last play and if this is the only play that they would see what do I want them to see so it's this constant battle within before even it becomes without or with the others or to try to have a voice context of making theater about Palestine in this country just I think I'm struck there's a letter going around right now actually that I'm struggling with because there are calls to boycott for example Israeli companies that are sponsored by the Israeli government in coming here thank you for the model on that the call is to boycott the production that's coming right and as a theater maker I never want to boycott someone else's work and yet this is a call from constant needs civil society about the way that the government that many would say is an apartheid government that's certainly a legal occupation is giving money to a company to come here that's funded and sponsored as part of a campaign stated by that government to distract from military actions with artistic actions to focus on the art that comes out of Israel this is a state campaign and as a theater artist I'm struggling with this moment of I want to be in solidarity with the ask to say this shouldn't be happening or we should be protesting at the same time as a theater artist I never want to do that to another artist and we as a community especially if you're Arab will be named as though you were doing that because it is a Jewish company Israeli company when in fact Jewish voice for peace many progressive Jewish organizations also stand by this boycott so thinking about and I have been told by artistic directors of two theaters that they would love to do my play that has to do with the Palestinian Israeli conflict their board threatened to fire them and I just want to say that this is not something we make up it's real and it's hard because you can't say you can't name why someone doesn't produce your play it's not quite that easy and of course say it wasn't as good as the other plays or you know that play right now is more on their resume or whatever and that might be also a big part of the reason I'm not saying that that play wasn't produced only for that reason but I do feel it's important for us to speak to this because it is the thing that makes me afraid I'm afraid saying this to you right now I remember knowing that it's going on a live stream of the impact on my career as an artist and yet and this happens and that is nothing that I do once out compared to the daily lives of Palestinians and compared to what happens to Palestinian artists whose work is kept from coming here before it's even at the stage of being here so I just want us to be thinking about those things I encourage you to go to the Jewish voice working artist council it's easier to see in here they have a wonderful breakdown of these campaigns and also to the idea of and also call to producers because we talk I know I talk a lot about accountability of what our stories are representing that shouldn't be us we should be able to write whatever we want to produce the work that we want and I want to ask producers of the U.S. theater because we have Central and South America and all the Americas but of U.S. theater to say why am I drawn to play that fuels the stereotype of a Muslim man who is violent because his religion taught him to be so why am I drawn to plays about the woman who has an abusive father who happens to be Muslim these are stories and they should be told but why are they the stories we see so much more than so many others on the largest stages and in the most places and can producers and artistic directors and directors and even ourselves I think anyone who lives in this country has absorbed some of these stereotypes can we look at what are my biases and inevitable assumptions about this entire culture and how are they informing the work I make the work I produce, the work I direct the way I do it and the work I choose to put on stage how is that impacting the whole culture which we all know I agree with so many of the sentiments that have been raised here today I also wanted to talk about something that is very dear to me which understandably there's a huge fury at the institutions which are preventing, censoring blocking artists. I've also been living abroad for the last 10 years partly in Cairo and partly in Newfoundland so that I should just say informs also some of my thoughts and perspectives but a while ago I felt like I had to make a choice about who my work was for and I decided that I could only make work for my community people like myself I guess it's a writing tool that will write for people like you my partner and I who was also an artist who just decided that we would write for our daughter in future generations but I think that one of the things that we can draw on as Arab-Americans is the fact that as people of color we are also a part of a legacy of outside of the theater that's begun by African-Americans and carried on by Latin, Asian, etc artists and so I think that then the questions and the problematics somehow shift when the point isn't to necessarily inform or get recognition by those external structures what happens to the art I think there's also been some things floating around about activism in theater and for me I find though that dichotomy is for me they're inextricable I would have to go very far out of my way to not make political theater also to the theme of the conference to be also an occasion there was also a session on Asian dramatics in Jessica from Indonesia in Korea they felt a strong connection is there something that is there landscape that connects together form landscape do you feel like listening to what we did here the two days ago which really is a resource also do you feel is there some narratives that connect are there some dramaturgy that's specific of American to connect anything just one last thing I was thinking about I'm not sure if this speaks to your question but maybe in a roundabout way is this question of fetishization of our stories of ourselves as artists having lived and made working performed in these three very distinct places I would say that probably being in Egypt where it's like a very homogenous society that I think is divisive along class lines probably more than anything there still exist this element of commodification because I think a lot of people depending on what kind of circles we flow in Dalia is obviously like a very deep activist in Egypt so she has her own speak for you but I'm just trying to make a division here between what I witnessed in Cairo where there is a kind of like neo-colonial vying for recognition international R&C and so still that problem persist and then when Yussel Elkin said about the character performing the refugee in Europe where I think that the problematics in Europe and in America are the same but different they just have a slightly different face but how does that commodification and fetishization of ourselves of our stories of our beings as artists how does that impact our work and the things that we have to say I think like the issue of representation for us is that also Dalia has talked about and they articulate it wonderfully it's not only like you know Arab and Europe for instance or Arab Americans in America but it's also within the country like what happens in Egypt with the funding story about you have to sell your proposal and fund it because our own governments are not supporting theaters so if I'm for instance I'm one of the lucky few who doesn't have to commit to that because I have a private institution that supports the work that I like to do but I don't know if I was working outside of the B if I would have to change like big topics or issues to tackle whatever stereotype like funding mission that is meant for the country you know I think a perfect example is Muhammad Lahtar I've seen his work in Lebanon and I think he's a brilliant playwright I don't know if Muhammad Lahtar in Germany like to honestly raised a courageous question I don't know if he chooses to write about something else rather than the Syrian war if he would get funded we saw a man this morning you know we had a taste of what a playwright he is why would such a topic not get funded in the west you know is these questions like archival for sure so I think it's not only here it's not it's everywhere we I want to put part of the responsibility on us as well like what kind of image do we want like what are we doing to tackle this and that very shared this morning from the first play that we spoke about chocolate in him you know how brilliant is that, how beautiful is that can we keep on doing this I don't know I wanted to talk a little bit about also it's something I feel that that joins us is like sometimes I look at white journey people who went through the system and we know all those people from their schools and who you know they just have these social networks and they have this kind of very typical I want to say I don't have a better word in life and I'm so jealous and I think about how many like how we lack that how we don't have access how we don't have those special networks how we haven't jumped through all the hopes or we don't look like them or we don't it just like for me especially as a Trojanian your question was what it means to do theater as an Arab for me it's very hard to answer that because I have to always speak as a Trojanian and as a Trojanian it's a very funny paradox to do theater theater is a collaborative art and I have zero network as a Trojanian in Jordan itself you're expected to do theater about how do you say like your heritage or just like attempt to care or something very cliche ideas about our traditions or they don't understand it and then I go to Germany and it's like as a Trojanian I have no I have no access and it's for example a Syrian has a better chance than I do in Germany I have zero chances so I'm just curious about if we could talk a little bit about what kind of networks you do and don't have as error women doing theater and abusive as well or which ones you're lacking if we could talk a bit about that because this is a collaborative art and we find ourselves so often battling alone for me a huge contradiction theater needs so many people to get done and I'm like okay discuss my quick answer to that is what this is a project that is being developed right now and you were invited to take part in it the Mediterranean lab just to say thank you also this is my answer to it like when I first I was in Lebanon when I first pitched the idea to her and some Lebanese theater makers and one of the responses we got is why not making an Arab lab I'm not interested in an Arab I don't know what that is I would know what a Mediterranean lab could be but I don't know what an Arab lab could be so that's one of the things that we have to work to is changing the terminology that we're using it's a Mediterranean it could be any of these continents it could be Southern Europe it could be North Africa Asia but it's none of this and it's all of this but again I'm speaking from a position being independent in a way if someone is not and that means in addition to the director's lab it's a sister lab Lincoln Center director's lab that is being founded in the Mediterranean region the idea is that it will rotate Mediterranean cities so now on the committee of that lab we have directors from Lebanon, Jordan, Spain Italy and Athens with working together with Lebanese theater makers with also directors from France who hasn't taken part in the Lincoln Center director's lab so it's going to be it's going to tackle issues related to the Mediterranean but it's going to be also open to the world so it's one way one kind of network to really connect with one another to also figure out together what are some of the theatrical traditions that would inspire our work and that we actually use in our work I think part of the problem to your question about collaboration I think part of the problem is we definitely want to we want to collaborate with theaters just theaters as we've written we've been discussing in various ways don't want to collaborate with us I think as marginalized voices we're not the warm and kindly marginalized voice I think you know I think there's just there's just a way you have to be as a quote unquote minority to be included and I think as most of what I was trying to say was I think we're just too kind of pointy and spiky and fraught with all this political baggage we we're at the moment unembraceable we're too kind of fraught for things but yes we want to make I mean if they're going to include us it's going to be it's going to be the kind of controversial play of the season it's not going to be the feel good play of the season so so I think that's I think that's the I think it's just out place I mean if you look at before 9-11 where there was a total absence there was no interest in Arab and Muslim voices I wasn't even antiquity it was just a difference and I think it's just the process of the long road to inclusion if you look at other groups that where they're not included in the mainstream they become a problem whether it's the Irish Americans, African Americans you know different groups Jews Italian American they become oh we can't let this group in and then voices from that marginalized groups come forward to those mainstream negative narratives and it's just a fight you know from one generation to the next to get a very early stage I do feel that we can talk a lot about institutions and I think it's important that we do but I also should say that I don't think the Arab-American theater community and probably in some ways the Arab theater community doesn't help themselves I feel sometimes we're set with some of the problems in the Arab world and that you know there has not been an institution building there has not been cohesive kind of like that happened in the African-American community and with the Latino community and you know with my Asian community and a lot of it is because we're different our connection to Arab identity in which our politics we come from are different and I hope 20 years from now you know the next generation of Arab-American artists are like yeah because I was involved with really trying after 9-11 to create institutions that had a producing history, not even on a large scale like Miami is not a huge company with a huge budget and that hasn't happened and that's on us and I think a lot of it is comes from that kind of sense of there's only room for one so we're not going to help other people rise up whereas that's actually the opposite is true if you see more successful Arab-American plays you're more likely to produce another Arab-American play and make that the one play that knocks out the Korean-American plays and only our spots were two you know what I mean like so I have felt bad within the Arab-American theater and I'm sure in the Arab world it's that jostling for like you were saying colonialism you need the master to come and tell you oh you're the one who we're going to take and put in an international festival or give you a Fulbright or give you some sort of you know you want kind of I don't know if this makes sense in the Arab context but you want white dad to come save you and legitimize you and put you in a big house and it's something that I grapple with what is my responsibility to younger Palestinian-American artists and I'm only speaking from my own community because I do think my own community has a unique challenge you know even the word Palestinian is scary to people when I apply for grants I often put Arab-American just because I know if I go to that I'll probably be at least one of the judges who's never seen somebody identify as that you know or who you know thinks there's no such thing as a Palestinian you know so I I'm grappling with as I age and as I've been in this game what is my responsibility to younger artists and how I am or I'm not fulfilling that most of your kind of community I feel like I always say maybe alter a complimentary perspective on this which is that the five of us here in the middle like I know you all from our Arab-American theater community so I'm a little bit surprised by some of the things that you guys are saying because I feel like actually Dalia's work has like pulled us all together Dalia has written extensively I think on everyone on this channel and I think did a lot I mean in the post-911 theater community there was so much organizing I don't know what happened to it exactly I know that Nora's theater grew out of that I think they do a lot of good work that's where I've seen useless work and so maybe like we're all getting a lot older now so maybe some of that has like worn off but I think also in terms of what you're saying about communities like the room Kehan but right now I'm directing I have the honor to direct this play by Kehan Irani who is an activist and Irani Indian performance and writer and I think that I think I've taken a lot of inspiration from Kehan in the ways in which she has fused very seamlessly activist and practical concerns and so I find a lot of community in that whether it be with actual people or with people who have similar like conceptual concerns that I have right now I'm also working on a project which concerns histories of erasure in my family, my grandmother was a pan, she was an organizer I think of Cairo, a pan African Asian women's rights organization in the 60s and as I work on this project which like obviously suffers from a profound lack of information like I have all these family photographs and very little information it kind of in the same way that feminism does just kind of puts a new lens on the way that I'm living my life and the way that I've seen things and I feel that there's also like histories of erasure within Arab-American communities you know even the fact that we are struggling right now on this panel to think about our own communities you know but also I have not read this because no one read this new book that's out about Arab-American activism from the 60s to the present I mean I don't know anything about it but it's there the weight of the oppression that we're facing is what creates this erasure and it just speaks the ways in which we feel like very prickly and spiky I feel like similar to African-American communities the way that the oppression is directed at us or violent just speaks to the extreme violence that's being laid upon us you know and to normalize that somehow by making us the violent ones I'm picking back on some of what you were saying Dania and just say first of all before I forget to the book point I'm in the process of designing and teaching my first class on the creation and representation of Arabs and Muslims in the US theater and I'm getting a great education even though I thought I knew fair amount about this and I want to make sure you all also know about Michael Madicine-Majar's wonderful book Arab-American drama performance and film that also chronicles a lot of the history of this both long before and in 11 and afterwards and since that's the dividing point a lot of people tend to use so there are many, there are other anthologies of Arab-American plays many of the people here are in them so there are ways of getting to know this community and to speak to community I absolutely agree Betty that there are you see the fractures that happen in the world in the theater and I do think that is an obstacle that we face in our community and I think that's also an obstacle that you see certainly from I just came from a wonderful gathering with Art Equity which is a wonderful organization talking to different communities of activists and facilitators from native peoples from and First Nations from Latinx and Asian-American and other African-American communities and very, very similar those divisions are in every community so I also don't want this to sort of that happens with every group particularly when you're put under the gun in so many ways those fractures tend to come out I'm Lebanese-American but I also for the reason you were mentioning Betty which is I feel like Lebanese tends to be one of the sometimes easier ones for people and for me the solidarity is to put Arab but I just want to also name that yeah in the time after 9-11 and starting before it many of us and Betty is with us in the beginning and several of us for seven years ran an Arab-American theater company that started that helped support the festival in its early years which brought a lot of people together also that did a lot of one-off events but one of the events that brought people together and gave them a chance to express themselves in different ways it was not producing institutions certainly but it also gave rise to the community that then it created the relationship with the art theater workshop that we still have as a community that was a big part of giving rise to North theater both through Mahasha Ilawi the art of Negros and co-founded and through a lot of the people that we gathered and North theater well yes they do not have the production history that some theaters do has done a production is doing another production this fall has done highlight readings that many of our works have been in does a 48 hour form every spring that brings a lot of community together and I also thought we should name Silk Road Theater in Chicago that's been doing work that is Silk Road community is not exclusively Arab it certainly includes Arab for a long time now since I think 2001 actually and certainly Golden Thread at San Francisco that has been doing that for 20 years across a lot of the Middle Eastern American community so just to name that on an official institutional sort of company level there are those things and then as Rania was speaking to so many of us have connected and collaborated in different ways through the years just by finding each other and making the work as you were naming K-Hons on the work so just I think a little bit of the hope of that and certainly we see the Manasa actor group now we see more maybe the folks that are coming up now organizing, gathering, collecting, creating together even more and I think our spikiness to what you're saying you know let's also hold people accountable there's plenty of spiky plays I mean you know Disgraces was the most produced play across the country it's about an extremely spiky Muslim character but I'm saying you're in spiky as a challenger yes ok thank you for that clarification so the idea that it's hard for people to accept us challenging biases I think it's important also to mention Catherine Corley among those names because she's done so much work to bring Arab Americans and Arabs together thank you can I ask something what you're saying that forgive my ignorance how difficult or easy is it to find funding from Arab institutions here like Arab individuals or you know companies, corporate you know well I just wanted to say that's what I meant by an institution building and that's what I've actually turned to do directly going to and say and it's very hard for somebody to find them refugee camps and playgrounds in Gaza to be like can you come home being my friends to do this show and that's something that I have to grapple with and it's you know I have survivors without asking people for money so but it's something that's what I'm saying I agree with you there are beautiful things that haven't happened but I think in 20 years if there is an institution with all of this energy and all of these artists and any kind of representatives that are culture it will be a shame if in 20 years all of what I've said is that the company did a show once and we hung out there because there's a lot of energy and there was a lot of interest and I don't think we dropped the ball but we could disagree but disagree I think we did more than hang out but I think we do I think it is about getting particularly Arab funders to understand the value of the work we do to speak to that point of what is the value of storytelling, what is the value of theater and it is hard like you said when it's against very very concrete needs how do we also advocate for that so can we get close to the end of the session maybe one or two questions or remarks from listening to this I think extraordinary artists who sit next to each other though and you have it before it begins I have two things actually in the reports I think he would still tell the same stories he would just tell them differently because I think that is the thing about not speaking the language while working in that country so he has a dramaturg on it and when I watch the plays I can see their signature so I think that is how it would be different because I think it's still his stories and the other thing because there was a lot of talk about funding which I find very interesting in Germany it just works a bit differently in terms of funding so architect there are so many possibilities but what I'm just wondering is you were talking about do you want Arab institutions or are Arabs let's use that as an umbrella term to support it my question is like who would you want to support to effectively and morally really be a supporter of this because we're not going to get our governments to do it thank God but who individual wealthy patrons being also it doesn't always money it is also being on board if there were more Arabs and people who supported what we do on boards of theaters we might also have more voice in people advocating for our work and seeing its value there are cultural arts organizations I just share my experience from Brussels because I know that when we did the culture we did some studies lately for all the project production in performing art we there there is more and more kind of sum of co-producer because there is less money so all the projects all we need like a kind of diversity in partnership and this diversity in partnership to allow you to do your project it's also we imply what is your relevant partner I mean ethically, content-wise do I prefer to work with FAQ or do I prefer to work with this foundation what is the agenda of each one so there is a kind of awareness about this sum of partner because we cannot do without having like for one production like small performance we reach like 10 partners to co-produce the work so that is more and more this way of doing that is kind of pressure for all the artists as a little side comment we at the Siegel Center was probably host of the most fabulous groups of people here with African-American also nobody would come for those two days from part of this group as it is the other way around it's also always studying maybe the mindset is different to collaborate with things that they are so I hope this is a contribution in a way to open this up it's always studying to see that maybe one last question or Zod thank you so much for this discussion what I found really interesting is that of course as we listen to you we may assume that you are all on the same you know the same boat at the same time what I am hearing a little bit is that there is also a discussion within the group of Arab-American playwrights about what to write about about what is really meaningful and what is less meaningful and all that and I think that sort of a discussion within a group itself is usually very helpful in terms of and so on and so on so I was wondering whether you know there is that kind of a discussion happening and more rather than just a discussion between majority public and I think to some degree if a theater decides to stage a play to your play because you are performing in some way that sometimes I will write a play that has nothing to do with Arabs and Muslims and then at the end of the process I will go yes but why would they want to do this play they want to go well don't you have another play that addresses I wrote a play recently that they were people of color they were immigrants I got critiqued for not specifying the ethnicity of this is one time I felt I didn't need to specify one of the problems was I didn't want a theater to go we'd love to do your play but we don't have any Arab-American actors in wherever you know the small town outside of New York or Los Angeles is hard and I just didn't want that to be a reason so I just had them vague and I could get away with it but I was criticized for that and to me I felt well what kind of criticism dramaturgical criticism is it that where one line could solve the dramatically I just named them Egyptians one point I think I wonder if one more of that then should they be called an Egyptian meal it's like what level of authenticity do you want it's like when we go to Ethiopian restaurant we want the authentic experience what this critic this white critic I don't know who she was I mean that's what she was kind of suggesting I wasn't getting an authentic Arab-Muslim experience and I kept going yes but what level what did she want an Egyptian to dress me you know so anyway let me move it on I have hours I could talk about it you went to tell us a bit about your thoughts and your experience so I'm the white etiquette keeper I don't feel comfortable speaking no I mean I'll say that Sundance's impetus to support the work of people writing in Arabic that's it's a language based initiative it's not a region was really to expose US artists to artists from other places in the world it wasn't by helping anybody actually it was about the fact that US artists were hopefully isolated and not even curious about workouts at our borders decades ago so we spent 12 years in East Africa in six countries first and then turned to the region of the Middle East and North Africa because there was so much vitality there particularly in the wake of the Arab spring so the center of our work the focus is to create community and we felt that we were tired of creating from the point of view of America so we decided to move our American lab to the Middle East requiring US artists to travel to Middle East to do their work and to meet with artists from across the region at the same time doing their work I moved that twice big labs, 80 people, 10 projects 5 from the Middle East, 5 from the US and you know it's been a gift to us I mean what I've discovered mostly is this extraordinary joy from the artists working in the Middle East it's a extraordinary joy from Iraqi choreographers to artists from Tangiers, from artists from Lebanon in particular which feels like it's a real hotbed and I mean Beirut just feels like it's sort of right now sizzling in part because Cairo's had such trauma and continues to but it feels like insomnia would go on to the sidewalks festival in Beirut actually in the US and we're wanting US artists to perform but mostly just to see work and talk about what it is to do what it means you know what we don't produce we don't present and so we're the space in between when you have an idea for a project and we're not going to produce the play so if you need three weeks to work on a piece that's where you submit your piece for us to consider including and the only thing I wanted to say was when I heard everyone speaking it's such a beautiful panel and it's just got my mind going in directions but at Sundance there, one of our board members is Eva Dvorne who is an extraordinary director and she talks a lot to artists called it particularly African American but all artists and a lot of women and she keeps saying you can keep knocking on the gates but ultimately you have to build your own as well, I mean you have to also knock on the end, you have to also build your own and that's what she's basically done so the better part of her life actually creating a business she had a business plan and she had enough resources to begin to do that but when she talks to other artists I'm always very moved by that because I feel like both of those avenues are so important and that's what you're all talking about as well so I just wanted to say that I just feel that's up to you all, it's a remarkable moment and I don't know if completely changed by my the ability I have to travel and see people and see work it's been amazing, the work of Zoukak recently you should probably know has a piece called I A Theater I Love Pornography which is so much about what you're talking about which is how you fall they took the funding to do the work if you have a serian dramaturge in the room you can do the work and they're struggling quite openly what that means for their own integrity well I think over time I think much much more just said we will have no downstairs reception at 530 I hope you all will come on the 3rd floor but I think there are good words to think about gates but also to build I really would like to thank you for coming and participating it's important to listen to artists and what you're talking about here it's an incredible honour for us here to have equated this in collaboration with the American University of Rearwood the PhD programme in theatre so I would really like to thank to you also for the audience to come and I would like you all to come and join us over at 530 right now to improve some remarks and afterwards also the archive for what you're talking about but really it's a beginning I think it will be longer and we are here and we have everything I've seen it was really moving and also inspiring and I would like to thank you all for coming and supporting through adjustment downstairs at 530 the actual reception is at 6pm at the archive bar 6.15 but we're going to have to clear the green room right after the wrap up the archive bar is on 36th street between 5th Avenue and Madison Avenue just around the corner thank you