New Threads 2021 Staged Reading Series

by Hassan Abdulrazzak, Hannah Khalil and Mona Mansour directed by Evren Odcikin

Cast

Love in the Time of by Mona Mansour

Lee Gianna DiGregorio Rivera* Sam Abraham Makany* Will Patrick Russell* Helen Elissa Beth Stebbins*

A Delicate Poison by Hassan Abdulrazzak

Carla Gianna DiGregorio Rivera* Dan John Ferreira Fabio Abraham Makany* Chris Liam Vincent*

The Cure by Hannah Khalil

MaaMaa Nora el Samahy* Mummy Elissa Beth Stebbins* Nurse Gianna DiGregorio Rivera* Voice Liam Vincent*

The Believers by Mona Mansour

Charlotte Nora el Samahy* Brock Patrick Russell*

Stage Manager Lisa Tateosian Zoom Manager Wendy Reyes

* Member of Actor’s Equity

Hassan Abdulrazzak’s plays include The Special Relationship (, 2020), And Here I Am (, 2017 and UK tour; Europe, Middle East and Africa tour, 2018-2019), Love, Bombs and Apples (Arcola Theatre, 2016 and UK tour; Golden Thread, San Francisco, 2018 followed by a second UK tour; Kennedy Centre, Washington DC, 2019), The Prophet (Gate theatre, 2012) and Baghdad Wedding (Soho Theatre, 2007; BBC Radio 3, 2008; Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney 2009; Akvarious productions, Delhi & Mumbai 2010). He had translated numerous Arabic language plays including Chronicles of a City We Never Knew by Wael Qadour (reading at the Gate Theatre 2019), Voluntary Work by Laila Soliman (reading at The 2012) and 603 by Imad Farajin (reading at the Royal Court Theatre 2008). He has adapted Baghdad Wedding into a feature film for Focus Features, wrote an original screenplay called Cutting Season about FGM for New Century. He has also written four episodes for HWJN, an upcoming TV series commissioned by O3 and Image Nation productions. He is the recipient of George Devine, Meyer-Whitworth, Pearson theatre awards as well as the Arab British Centre Award for Culture. Love, Bombs and Apples won the Bay Area theatre award for outstanding production in 2018. And Here I Am won best monodrama at Sharm El Sheikh International Theatre Festival for Youth in 2019. He was a Sundance Theatre Lab Fellow in 2020. He is also a Golden Thread Productions Resident Artist.

Hannah Khalil’s stage plays include A Museum in Baghdad (Royal Shakespeare Company) which marked the first play by a woman of Arab heritage on a main stage at the RSC, The Censor Or How to Put on A Political Play without Getting Arrested (Central School of Speech and Drama, London), Interference (National Theatre of Scotland), Bitterenders (ReOrient Festival San Francisco, Golden Thread Productions) and the critically acclaimed Scenes from 68* Years - shortlisted for the James Tait Black Award (Arcola Theatre, London, 2016). Scenes has also been mounted in San Francisco by Golden Thread Productions and in Tunisia in a British Council supported production. Further work includes The Scar Test (Soho Theatre, London) and Plan D (Tristan Bates Theatre, Meyer Whitworth Award nominee). Hannah's radio plays include The Unwelcome, Last of the Pearl Fishers and The Deportation Room all for BBC Radio 4. Her first short film The Record took the Tommy Vine screenplay award and premiered at the Palestinian Film Festival in London in November 2019. Hannah was the London’s writer on attachment in 2016/7 as part of Project 2036. With Hassan Abdulrazzak she is a founder member and Artistic Associate of Manara Theatre, whose mission is to champion the work of Arab writers. She is also a Resident Artist at Golden Thread Productions, San Francisco. Her awards include the Arab British Centre’s Award for Culture in 2017 and the prestigious Heimbold Chairship for Villanova University, Philadelphia in 2021. She has been named a Creative Associate of the Samuel Beckett Archive, Reading University for 2021/22.

Mona Mansour’s play The Vagrant Trilogy will make its New York City debut in March 2022 at the Public Theater, directed by Mark Wing-Davey; the production was postponed from March 2020 to covid-19. Unseen will make its West Coast debut in Spring 2022 at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, directed by Evren Odcikin. The Vagrant Trilogy was presented at Mosaic Theater in June 2018, (dir. Wing-Davey.) Of the trilogy: The Hour of Feeling (dir. Wing-Davey) premiered at the Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville, and an Arabic translation was presented at NYU Abu Dhabi, as part of its Arab Voices Festival in 2016. Urge For Going: Public Theater (dir. Hal Brooks) and Golden Thread (dir. Evren Odcikin). The Vagrant was commissioned by the Public and workshopped at the 2013 Sundance Theater Institute. Other plays: We Swim, We Talk, We Go to War premiered at Golden Thread in 2018 (dir. Odcikin). The Way West: Labyrinth (dir. Mimi O’Donnell); In the Open, for Waterwell, directed by James Dean Palmer, and Across the Water, written for third-year MFAs at NYU (dir. Scott Illingworth). Mona was a member of the Public Theater’s Emerging Writers Group. With Tala Manassah she has written Falling Down the Stairs, an EST/Sloan commission. Their play Dressing is part of Facing Our Truths: Short Plays About Trayvon, Race and Privilege, commissioned by the New Black Festival. 2020 Helen Merrill Award, 2012 Whiting Award. 2014 Middle East America Playwright Award, MacDowell Colony 2018, New Dramatists Class of 2020. Mona is working on a script for AMC International and is currently writing for New Amsterdam. In 2019, she formed a theater company, Society, with Scott Illingworth and Tim Nicolai. In September 2020, Mona received the prestigious Kesselring Prize, awarded by the National Arts Club to one playwright a year. She was nominated by Seattle Rep for her play The Hour of Feeling.

Evren Odcikin is a theater director, writer, and arts administrator with a deep commitment to championing underrepresented voices in the American theater. He serves as the Associate Artistic Director at Oregon Shakespeare Festival and is a founding steering committee member of the MENA Theater Maker Alliance, a founder of Maia Directors, and a resident artist at Golden Thread Productions. As a director, he has worked at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Guthrie Theater, A.R.T., Woolly Mammoth, Portland Center Stage, PlayCo, NYTW, Geva, Berkeley Rep, South Coast Rep, The Lark, Kennedy Center, InterAct, Cleveland Public Theatre, Magic Theatre, Golden Thread, Crowded Fire, and Playwrights Foundation with such writers as Melis Aker, Kevin Artigue, Guillermo Calderón, Christopher Chen, Jeesun Choi, Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, Yussef El Guindi, Denmo Ibrahim, MJ Kaufman, Hannah Khalil, Jonas Hassen Khemiri, Mona Mansour, Baruch Porras Hernandez, Betty Shamieh, Caridad Svich, and Amir Nizar Zuabi, amongst many others. As a writer, he is under commission with Leila Buck to create 1001 Nights (A Retelling) for Cal Shakes and to create translations of short plays by Zehra İpşiroğlu and Ebru Nihan Celkan for NYU Abu Dhabi. His adaptation of Plautus’s Braggart Soldier premiered at Custom Made Theatre Company and his translation of Sedef Ecer’s On the Periphery premiered at Golden Thread and Crowded Fire. Recognitions include a “Theatre Worker You Should Know” feature in American Theatre Magazine; a National Director’s Fellowship from the O’Neill, NNPN, the Kennedy Center, and SDCF; and a TITAN Award from Theatre Bay Area. Evren was born and raised in Turkey and is a graduate of Princeton University. odcikin.com

Join us next Tuesday, August 17th for our next New Threads reading!

WE’RE ALL HERE by Leslie Kalarchian, directed by Sahar Assaf

Maro Thompson, a widowed music teacher resolved to admit her rapidly deteriorating mother, Zada, into a nursing home, hires Emilio, an impassioned artist in need of a day gig to help clean out the family house. Unbeknownst to Maro, the willful Zada has other plans that evening and invites the family over to celebrate her 84th birthday. The party gets turned on its head when Emilio discovers a cache of abstract paintings hidden away in an upstairs closet. As the mystery behind the decades-old artwork unravels, Maro learns of her connection to Armenia’s painfully dark history.

These plays were commissioned by Golden Thread with the support of our generous sponsors:

May Allam, Nora El Samahy and Patrick Kaliski, Youssri and Fatma Helmy.

Golden Thread Productions, founded in 1996, is the first American theatre company to devoted to the Middle East.

www.goldenthread.org