Ayad Akhtar

"I am trying to write to the universal. That is what I'm trying to do, period. Stories that say "Muslim Americans and Muslims are people too" can't necessarily reach everybody in the audience where they live and breathe. It can illuminate things for them, but it can't necessarily force them to ask the deepest questions of their own lives. What I hope I'm discovering is that by writing from the particular that I know - that I find fascinating and that I have a lot of love for and a whole lot of problems with - I can perhaps open onto the universal." - Ayad Aktar, 2013

Playwright Biography

  • Of Pakistani heritage, Ayad Akhtar was raised in Milwaukee, WI and credits his high school teacher for introducing him to writing. He studied acting and theatre at Brown University and received an MFA from Columbia University in Film Directing.
  • His college thesis screenplay became the independent film The War Within, which was nominated for Best Screenplay at the Independent Spirit Awards.
  • His first play Disgraced won him the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama (and was also nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play).
  • Akhtar was the recipient of the 2015 OBIE Award and Outer Circles Award for his play The Invisible Hand.
  • As an actor, Akhtar also appeared in his college thesis film The War Within and the HBO original film Too Big To Fail.
  • In 2017, Akhtar's play Junk premiered at New York's Lincoln Center, directed by Tony Award winner Doug Hughes (Doubt). Junk is set on Wall St. in the 1980's and tells the story of a financier's ruthless takeover of a manufacturing company.

Highlighted Play

"THE WHO & THE WHAT"

(Photo credit: Ruby Washington/The New York Times)

Summary of Action

As his daughter Zarina suffers from writers block, widowed father Afzal, eager to arrange a marriage for her, poses as Zarina online and meets a white Islamic convert named Eli. Zarina and Eli are introduced and they eventually marry as Zarina is finishing up her book, a reimagining of the Prophet Muhammad. When Afzal stumbles upon the manuscript in Eli’s bag and reads it, he and his younger daughter Mahwish lash out at Zarina over what they believe to be heretic subject matter, ending with Zarina and Eli leaving and Afzal banning her from his home. Two years later, Zarina returns to Afzal and apologies to him for what she wrote but shares wonderful news - not only has her book been positively received by many in the Islamic community but she and Eli are also pregnant, with a granddaughter for Afzal.


Educational Purposes

The Who & The What is a great play to help teach playwriting or creative writing. Keying off what Akhtar discusses in his interview, the idea of “writing what you know”, it would be interesting to see what stories or pieces of a student’s culture that they went to explore further or adapt and view through a different lens, just as Zarina does with the Prophet Muhammed and the Qur’an. This could be part of a larger unit exploring personal narrative in playwriting so it may be for a more advanced audience in high school or a college level playwriting class. The teacher could have students free-write on the idea of cultural traditions and their feelings about those traditions, how they experience them, or how they would want to share them with people outside their culture.

SAMPLE QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER: Is there a piece of your culture (a practice, a story, a person) with which you disagree? Why? If given the opportunity to tell your truth about this practice, story, or person, what would it be?


Sample Activity

Have students adapt a story that has been told, passed down, or shared over and over again within their family or as part of their cultural heritage.

    • Using free-write or journal prompts, students should brainstorm a story that they have read, told, or heard many times that is tied to their family or culture heritage. Use prompts such as “At family gatherings, we always tell the story about…” or “Whenever I meet someone new, I always tell them the story of…” or "The story of ________________ is very important to me".
          • Question to consider: Is this a story that you love to hear or something that you are just sick of hearing?
    • After some free-write sessions or journaling, have the students adapt the story into a script, adding or embellishing details for dramatic effect. What can we change to make the story more interesting? What details are important, what can be left out of the overall story?


Questions for Discussion

  1. In the interview following the play, Ahtar says that his goal when writing plays is to "speak to the universal." How does Akhtar attempt to do this in his play and does he succeed? Why or why not?
  2. There are several levels of representation at work - Zarina's portrayal of the prophet, Eli representing Islamic traditions as a white man and Akhtar writing a female character and discussing issues of femininity. What authority or expertise does each character in the play speak from? What can we learn from how they use their expertise (or lack thereof) and furthermore, how can we best teach from our own expertise?
  3. How strongly do we as teachers (and as theatre practitioners) have to adhere to the maxim “write (teach) what you know”?

Other Works

DISGRACED

(Photo credit: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)

Summary of Action

As his wife Emily is embracing the influences of Islamic tradition in her paintings, Muslim lawyer Amir Kapoor is approached by his nephew Abe to help defend an imprisoned imam accused of raising money for Hamas. The following day, Emily’s paintings catches the eye of Isaac, a curator from the Whitney, as Amir reels from the morning’s papers, portraying him as one of the imam’s defense lawyers after he attended the hearings. Amir and Emily host Isaac and his wife Jory (Amir’s co-worker) for dinner where Jory reveals that Amir has been passed over for a partnership and Emily tells Amir that she has an affair with Isaac, all of which pushes Amir into a fit of uncontrolled violence at Emily. Months later following Amir and Emily’s divorce, Abe returns to Amir asks for help after he is arrested by the FBI and his immigration status is brought into question, but Amir refuses.

Educational purposes

This play could also be used in a dramatic writing course as an example of the classic “dinner scene”. The majority of the play is 4 characters having a dinner party and the conversation seamlessly moves from intense discussions of Islamic culture and representation and casual conversation between friends, gradually building to a climax. It is a perfect representation of how to write this very common trope in American theatre.

SAMPLE ACTIVITY: Individually and then comparing notes in pairs or small groups, have your students break up Scene 3 (the dinner scene) into beats of action. How much time does each beat take (in pages)? What are the characters discussing in each beat? Who is driving that discussion? How much time does Akhtar take to build to the moment of climax?

In pairs or small groups, discuss how each of you divided up the scene. Why did you make the choices that you did?


THE INVISIBLE HAND

Summary of Action

After being captured by a Pakistani organization led by Imam Saleem, financial expert Nick Bright arranges a deal to play the international stock market in order to secure his own ransom and simultaneously teach his methods to the Imam’s right hand man, Bashir, so that the Imam may fund his future operations. Using information about specific terrorism targets and betting against those targets, Nick and Bashir rake in millions of dollars; but the Imam invests this in real estate and other liquidities, causing Bashir to become suspicious and usurping the imam. Bashir then uses his knowledge of currency and the stock market to make an enormous sum after he organizes the bombing of an annual meeting of Pakistani bankers and ultimately releases Nick into the war torn country, completely alone.


Educational purposes

This play provides more opportunities with applied theatre work in pre- and post-show discussions as part of an educational resource project more so than Akhtar’s other works. Given the gravitas of the play’s content (manipulating the stock market, raising money for violent ends, acts of terrorism), post-show discussions exploring the idea of choice could be very fruitful. The play’s characters and their choices can be explored through a variety of games and exercises. For example, using the dramatic structure “Conscious Alley” to reflect the “should I/shouldn’t I” debate that Nick has, deciding whether or not he should raise his own ransom and help out a terror cell in the process. Also, the group can investigate how Nick feels at the end of the play, after realizing that his sharing of his knowledge and his skill set has resulted in violence and unrest in an already unstable country.

SAMPLE ACTIVITY: “Conscious Alley” (adapted from Neelands and Gould, Structuring Drama Work). Students form two lines facing one another, each side with an opposing opinion and one actor takes the role of Nick. As “Nick” walks down between the two lines of students, as he passes by each individual student, they whisper to him their thoughts on his decision (i.e. “Help the Imam, you’ll be free soon” or “You can’t do this, it will mean helping a very bad man!”). At the end of the row of students, the instructor stands as the Imam and asks the student playing Nick to help him. The student can then respond “Yes” or “No”.

List of Works

2016: Junk: The Golden Age of Debt (unpublished)

2015: The Invisible Hand

2014: The Who & The What

2013: Disgraced

2012: American Dervish (novel)

2005: The War Within (screenplay)

Additional Resources

Bibliography

Afzal-Khan, F., Bose, N., & Khoury, J. (2016). Commentary: The dramaturgy of political violence: Muslim Americans on American stages. Performing Islam, 5, 29-41.

Afzal-Khan, F., Bose, N., & Khoury, J. (2016). Roundtable: Ayad Akhtar and the politics of representation and reception of Muslims on American stages. Performing Islam, 5, 7-27.

Green, G., & Akhtar, A. (2014). The particular and the universal: An interview with Ayad Akhtar. In Akhtar, A. (Ed.), The Who & The What (95-101). New York: Back Bay Books.

Harris, D. (2000). Limited access only: The problems of researching performing arts in a Muslim Pakistani community. Music Education Research, 2, 193-201.

Paulson, M. (2014, October 24). American Identity, Muslim Identity. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/theater/american-identity-muslim-identity-.html

Pressley, N. (2016, April 22). A Pulitzer for his play ‘Disgraced’ in hand, Ayad Akhtar comes to Washington. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/a-pulitzer-for-his-play-disgraced-in-hand-ayad-akhtar-comes-to-washington/2016/04/21/f2c49d0e-0555-11e6-a12f-ea5aed7958dc_story.html?utm_term=.d518098854a6

Qureshi, B. (2014, July 10). In stories of Muslim identity, playwright explores fault ines of faith. NPR. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/07/10/329899941/in-staging-muslim-identity-playwright-explores-fault-lines-of-a-faith

Sokolove, M. (2017, September 6). Plunging his pen into the dark heart of 1980’s Wall Street. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/theater/taking-on-wall-streets-church-of-big-money.html?smid=twnyttheater&smtyp=cur&_r=0&referer=http://www.lct.org/shows/junk/

Umrigar, T. (2017, September 14). I’m Indian. Can I write black characters? The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/14/opinion/sunday/when-a-novelist-writes-across-race.html

Vanasco, J. (2017, March 17). A program to tell stories about Muslim children is suspended from public school. WNYC. Retrieved from http://www.wnyc.org/story/program-tell-stories-muslim-children-suspended-public-school/

Younis, M. & Akhtar, A. (2013). An interview with Ayad Akhtar. In Akhtar, A. (Ed.), Disgraced (89-96). New York: Back Bay Books.


Web page compiled by Andrew Wagner (2017)