PLAYWRIGHT DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM
In line with our mission to cultivate SWANA participation and excellence in the arts, we develop new works by emerging and established playwrights in the creation of new works for the stage. Our goal is to equip SWANA playwrights with a culturally-supportive resource network to bring their vital stories to the theater scene. We've worked with numerous SWANA playwrights to develop 22 plays, and have gone on to showcase these plays in staged readings and productions.
Developmental Assistance Opportunities:
PLAYWRIGHT INCUBATOR PROGRAM
Our Playwright Incubator Program is our capstone playwright development opportunity. This program selects a group of national emerging and established SWANA and Muslim to be a part of an intensive cohort workshop new plays. The cohort members are selected from a competitive national application process.
The program was launched in 2022, with eight national playwrights hailing of multiple SWANA and Muslim backgrounds, including Somali, Palestinian, Lebanese, Egyptian, Armenian, Pakistani, and Indian descent. The program culminated in a Playwright Showcase, which presented the eight playwrights' new works in a public reading, followed by audience talkbacks.
Our second cycle of the program, which runs from 2025-2026, is a program offered for Midwestern SWANA playwrights--a demographic which is historically underrepresented in the arts. After a competitive application process, we selected seven playwrights hailing from Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Minnesota; representing multiple SWANA nationalities including Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, and Palestine.
2022-2023 COHORT:
2025-2026 COHORT:
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PLAYWRIGHT SHOWCASES
Our Playwright Incubator Programs culminate in public showcases of the developed work by the cohort members. Learn about our past and upcoming showcases.
2023 SHOWCASE
In our 2023 Playwright Showcase, we presented readings of plays by eight SWANA playwrights in our inaugural playwright incubator program. The readings were directed by Detroit-based theater artist Sherrine Azab, and were followed by audience talkbacks led by organizers and educators in the SWANA community. Pictured are photos from our 2023 showcase.
2026 FESTIVAL OF NEW SWANA PLAYS
Our Festival of New SWANA Plays will showcase readings of seven plays by Midwestern SWANA playwrights! The festival is a culmination of our second Playwright Incubator Program; our program selects a cohort of seven SWANA writers from across the Midwest to develop and workshop new plays for half a year. Don't miss your chance to see the incredible work developed by our talented playwrights! More info on their plays TBA.
WHEN: June 4-7, 2026
WHERE: Open Book Performance Hall | 1011 S Washington Avenue, Minneapolis, MN
2025-2026 PLAYWRIGHTS
Midwest SWANA Playwright Incubator Cohort
Alexander Attea
Alexander Attea is the Artistic Director of Avalanche Theatre and the Creative Director of the Fine Arts Building & Studebaker Theater. He is also a playwright, actor, musician, and artist. His plays have been performed across 15 states, including with Bramble Theatre, Silk Road Cultural Center, The Plagiarists, Eclectic Full Contact Theatre, Three Brothers Theatre, Bower Theatre Ensemble, the International Museum of Surgical Science, and others. He has held residencies with Mackinac State Historic Parks and Three Brothers Theatre. More at AlexanderAttea.com.
Zeyy Fawaz
Zeyy is an actress and vocalist who speaks five languages and sings in more than ten. A community organizer and activist, Zeyy weaves her advocacy into her artistic expression. Her body of work spans film, television, theater, commercial, and voiceover productions. A firm believer in art as a powerful political tool; Zeyy is committed to centering activism in her work, contributing to numerous productions that spotlight pressing social justice issues. In addition to holding a degree in the arts, she earned a master’s in International Relations and Development, with a concentration in Languages and Diaspora Studies. It is this unique intersection of diplomacy and artistry that informs and propels her creative and professional pursuits.
Zainab Hussein
Zainab Hussein is a writer born in Basra, Iraq and raised across Iran, Yemen, and Syria; then Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio. She received her M.F.A. from the Programs in Writing at the University of California, Irvine, where she taught in the Composition and Fiction programs. She is a MacDowell Fellow and lectures at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Denmo Ibrahim
Denmo Ibrahim (she/her) is an American playwright, actor, and theatre educator of Egyptian descent. Her plays include Arab Spring (Finalist: O’Neill, Princess Grace Award), BABA (Winner: Theatre Bay Area “Best Original Script”; SFBATCC “Best New Play” & “Best Solo Show”), and A Country Made of Salt (Winner: Legacy Playwrights Award; Civilians R&D Lab). Her work has been produced or developed by Audible, Round House Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, Capital Stage, Noor Theatre, Golden Thread, and others. She holds an MFA from Naropa University and a BFA from Boston University. denmoibrahim.com
Kayla Karnesky
Kayla Karnesky (she/her) is a Palestinian American playwright and actor from Livonia, Michigan, and a recent graduate of Columbia College Chicago with a degree in Playwriting. Her work has been featured through Columbia’s showcases, including Playwrights Aloud (a series highlighting new 10-minute plays), One Acts Aloud, the One Act Play Festival, the 24-Hour Playfest, and the New Musical Workshop, as well as with Chicago Dramatists. Her debut full-length play, Percentages (2022), premiered at Columbia. Her second play, Ramallah, a deeply personal story inspired by her grandparents’ immigration from Palestine, earned her a place in the New Horizons Play Festival in Atlanta. She is currently developing How to Lose a Prince in 10 Paintings and adapting the Palestinian folktale Abu Jmeel’s Daughter for the stage.
Novid Parsi
Novid Parsi’s plays have been produced or developed by theaters including Atlanta Shakespeare Company, Boise Contemporary Theater, Golden Thread Productions, The New Group, Playwrights Foundation, Queens Theatre, The Road Theatre Company, Silk Road Rising, and St. Louis Shakespeare Festival. Novid has been named a MacDowell Fellow, two-time winner of the Ashland New Plays Festival, winner of the Diverse Voices Playwriting Initiative, and Relentless Award honorable mention recipient. A son of Iranian immigrants, Novid was born in New York and raised in Texas. He has degrees in literature from Swarthmore College and Duke University. Novid and his husband live in St. Louis.
Sana Wazwaz
Sana Wazwaz is a Palestinian American writer, theater artist, and musician. Her writing has been seen in Hayden's Ferry Review, Water~Stone Review, Overtly Lit, The Ghassan Kanafani Arts Anthology, and at the Colorado College Fine Arts Center. Her creative nonfiction essay, "How to Say 'Survival' in Latin" was nominated for Best American Essay 2025. Sana is a two-time member of New Arab American Theater Works' Playwright Incubator Program, where her debut play, "Birthright Palestine," was developed and subsequently performed in the 2023 Playwright Showcase. In addition to writing, Sana is also a long-time member and associate instructor of the Yalla Drum Ensemble. She holds a BA in English with a creative writing concentration from Augsburg University.
2022-2023 PLAYWRIGHTS
Inaugural SWANA Playwright Incubator Cohort
Adam Ashraf Elsayigh
Adam Ashraf Elsayigh is an Egyptian writer, theater maker, and dramaturg. Adam writes theater and TV scripts that interrogate the intersections of queerness, immigration, and colonialism from his lens as a queer, Arab, immigrant. Adam’s ethos is to tell and amplify stories from communities that have been historically under and misrepresented on American television screens and stages. Adam’s plays (including Drowning in Cairo, Revelation, Memorial, and Jamestown/ Williamsburg) have been developed and seen at The Lark, The Tisch School of the Arts, The LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, and Golden Thread Productions. Adam is a fellow at Georgetown University's Laboratory for Global Performance and an Alliance/Kendeda Award Finalist. He holds a BA in Theater with an emphasis in Playwriting and Dramaturgy from NYU Abu Dhabi and is an MFA Candidate in Playwriting at Brooklyn College. Learn more about what Adam is up to at https://www.adamaelsayigh.com/.
Ifrah Mansour
Ifrah Mansour is a Somali, refugee, black, Muslim, multimedia artist and an educator based in Minnesota. Her artwork explores trauma through the eyes of children to uncover the resiliencies of blacks, Muslims, and refugees. She interweaves poetry, puppetry, films, and installations. She's been featured in Middle East Eye, BBC, Vice, OkayAfrica, Star Tribune, and City Pages. Her critically-acclaimed, “How to Have Fun in a Civil War” premiered at Guthrie Theatre and toured to greater cities in Minnesota. Her first national museum exhibition; “Can I touch it” premiered at Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Her visual poem, “I am a Refugee” is part of PBS’s short Film festival. "My Aqal, banned and blessed" Premiered at Queens Museum in New York.
Learn More: facebook.com/ifrahmansourart
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Nabra Nelson
Nabra Nelson is a community organizer and theater creator from Egypt, Nubia, and California. She is currently based in Seattle, WA. As a playwright, director, dramaturg, consultant, administrator, and teaching artist, she works with theaters, universities, and community organizations across the nation to strengthen community and amplify under-heard voices. She is a founding company member of the Seattle based MENA theater company, Dunya Productions, a founding company member of the Milwaukee-based womxn-of-color performance troupe Heard Space Arts Collective, leads the Nubian Foundation for Preserving a Cultural Heritage, and is the co-host of the Kunafa & Shay Theater Podcast (produced by HowlRound Theatre Commons). She is also the Director of Arts Engagement at Seattle Rep, and a graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Playwriting credits include: What to Expect When You’re Simulating Expecting (Golden Thread Productions’ New Threads Reading Series), Nubian Stories (The Scratch’s In Pencil: Staged Readings, and Renaissance Theaterworks’ Br!NK New Play Festival), Induced Labor (Golden Thread Productions’ ReOrient 2019 honorable mention), Creation Gossip and Lillith (Heard Space Arts Collective), and Minute to Minute and Le Serious Shit (MultiCultural Drama Company). https://newplayexchange.org/users/39590/nabra-nelson
William Nour
William Nour is a Palestinian American Writer. His work appeared in Mizna Journal and he has performed his poetry at several community functions and local public schools. William Nour has acted in several plays, and studies traditional Arabic drumming. He’s 2018 recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board grant for his play “Turbulence which was part of the New Arab American Theater Works reading series, and he has participated in workshops at the Loft with David Mura and Elmaz Abinader at VONA.
Aamera Siddiqui
Aamera was going to be a doctor, but plans changed and she settled into a life as a playwright and performer in Saint Paul, MN. Her stories exist the intersections where race, culture, politics and gender meet with power and patriarchy. She has penned six full-length plays including Freedom Daze, CLOTH, American as Curry Pie, CHUP, Log Kya Kahenge, and Please Don’t Feed the Children. Her work has been produced at Southern Theater, History Theater, Illusion Theater, Intermedia Arts, Dreamland Arts, and Pillsbury House Theatre. Siddiqui has received a Naked Stages Fellowship and two Many Voices Fellowships a Cultural Community Partnership Grant and two Artists Initiative Grants. S he was a featured playwright at the Women Playwrights International Conference in Mumbai, India. Aamera is also the Co-Artistic Director of Exposed Brick Theatre, an organization dedicated to telling untold stories through theater and performance art.
Sana Wazwaz
Sana Wazwaz is a Muslim and Palestinian-American writer, performer, and organizer. Spanning a range of genres, her writing seeks to dismantle Zionist narratives and advocate for Middle East justice. Her poetry has been published in Palestinian Youth Movement’s 2021 Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Anthology, titled “Tomorrow: The Futures of Resistance.” She is a junior at Augsburg University, where she studies creative writing and political science, and served as the 2021-2022 assistant editor of the Augsburg Thó Wiŋ Literary Magazine. She is currently on the board of the Minnesota chapter of American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), where she coordinates education programs and grassroots campaigns.
SEVAN
SEVAN is an award-winning actor-playwright whose work has been produced and developed in London and New York. www.justsevan.com
Ahmed Ismail Yusuf
Raised in a nomadic upbringing, Ahmed Ismail Yusuf is the author of three books: Gorgorkii Yimi, a collection of short stories in Somali, The Lion’s Binding Oath, a collection of short stories in English, and Somalis in Minnesota. His short stories appeared in Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali studies, Mizna: An Arab-American literary magazine. His play ”Tales of Time” was given several staged readings at New Arab American Theater Works in collaboration with Pangea World Theater. “A Crack in the Sky” was produced at the History Theatre in Saint Paul and others at Mixed Blood. His mental health publications appeared in Journal of Muslim Mental Health; Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology; International Society for Traumatic-stress Studies, Psychiatry Times. He has a BS in creative writing and psychology from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut; and an MPA (Master of Public Affairs) from the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs of the University of Minnesota.