This is Sanaz Toossi’s dedication for Wish You Were Here in its publication book-bound beside her Pulitzer Prize-winning English. 

The play’s first draft came "in a frenzy during the tense week in 2019" when the United States had approved plans to deliver military strikes on Iran. Those strikes were called off at the last minute. However only months ago, in June 2025, the US carried out attacks on Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. These actions make Toossi’s response to world events, unfortunately, all the more timely.

But Wish You Were Here isn’t a war drama. What came from Toossi’s frenzied week was a love letter to her mother, who emigrated from Iran to California shortly after the 1979 Revolution. It’s a play about five friends. And it’s funny (among other things).

“It’s lazy,” Toossi says, to expect stories from Iran and the Middle East to be political. But she finds a paradox there: aren’t we all acting within political circumstances? The circumstances here are a country where growing discontent with the monarchy is giving rise to protests. Decades of westernization and a growing wealth gap create a false equivalence against expanding women’s rights. At the same time, an unprecedented Islamic regime is waiting in the wings. Not far behind that, a neighboring dictator is ready to take advantage of this time of transformation. “There’s static in the air.”

And while the characters may be shaped by these circumstances, they are not defined by them. “They demand to be seen in their full humanity,” says Toossi, “as do all refugees, immigrants, and almost-migrants, no matter what part of the world they’re from.”

Rana, Nazanin, Salme, Shideh, and Zari are all these things: “brash, tender, obnoxious, fragile, inappropriate” and more. In rehearsals, it’s been a gift to watch these actors connect to one another through and around their characters; discovering shared experiences and learning how to hold their differences. The room has been full of laughter; many tears, but mostly joy.

It should be a happy day. It’s a wedding, after all.

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Jacob C. Shuler, Production Dramaturg