New Arab American Theater Works

Rosette follows a 16 year old Palestinian Christian woman as she is discovering her identity as a Palestinian refugee living in the city of Haifa; and as she grapples with loss of home post-1948, family separation, and gender in Palestinian society. Rosette is a coming of age story of survival, resilience and resistance. Living in Haifa with what is left of her family, Rosette is questioning her place in her family and society in a post-Nakba Palestine, and daring to dream about her future.

The country has come under the spell of a despotic leader and rising anti-immigrant and Islamophobic sentiment.  Arab American school teacher Zafira Khoury and her community get swept into the chaos. What will happen when the local high school becomes a center for the government's new agenda? This compelling play takes a critical look at Arab American identity, institutional racism, the generational struggles and fears of Arabs and Muslims and the possibility of collective punishment.

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TALES OF TIME is a short play about an uncle who has raised his second generation Somali-American niece. Now that she is an adult who is about to face the world, he is wrestling with whether to share an unforgiving past.  

In a post 9/11 America, flight attendant, Alex Khoury, a Palestinian who had left Israel to escape discrimination, mistrust, suspicion, and second-class existence, finds that he continues to be the target of such treatment in his newly adopted home.

Against the backdrop of the great Lebanese famine of 1918, two brothers leave to find their fortunes in the Dominican Republic.  Along the way, they encounter both the future and the past as their journeys in life take different paths.

In Algeria, they say you don’t marry one finger, you marry all ten. In this heartfelt and humorous one woman play, Minnesota raised Taous Khazem travels to her father’s homeland to work as a theater artist, and unexpectedly falls in love with an Algerian clown. Caught in between traditions, religions and misconceptions, Taous struggles to find a sense of belonging in a foreign land, but ultimately discovers a fresh meaning of home, family, art and bicycle rides.   

Mohamed Yabdri's tragic clown goes on a journey to overcome his sense of cultural inferiority. After searching the world for a place to call home, he discovers that his dreams sit on the wings of a paper plane. A Clown in Exile premiered at the Alliance Française in Minneapolis, MN and went on to perform in Paris at the Algerian Cultural Center, at the National Theatre of Algiers, at the French Cultural Institutes of Oran, Tlemcen and Constantine, Algeria, and at the 2013 Minnesota Fringe Festival.

Road to the City of Apples tells the story of Ahmed and Khairy - two undocumented Palestinians on a road trip from New Jersey to Wisconsin. Their individual stories intertwine as they discover the meaning of friendship and cope with changing cultural norms - both American and Arab on their winding road to an American dream. The Israeli occupation, gay rights, American treatment of Arabs and Muslims, and the plight of undocumented immigrants are explored in this show.