Arab American Drama, Film and Performance
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Also by Michael Malek Najjar Four Arab American Plays: Works by Leila Buck, Jamil Khoury, Yussef El Guindi, and Lameece Issaq & Jacob Kader (McFarland, 2014) 2 Arab American Drama, Film and Performance A Critical Study, 1908 to the Present Michael Malek Najjar McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina 3 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE e-ISBN: 978-1-4766-1865-4 © 2015 Michael Malek Najjar. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. On the cover: Amal (Chelsee Carter) in the University of Oregon production of Heather Raffo’s 9 Parts of Desire, directed by Michael Malek Najjar, produced by the University of Oregon (photograph by Ariel Ogden) McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com 4 Table of Contents Acknowledgments Preface Introduction: Defining a Genre 1. “Unresolved sorrow and uncomprehending anger”: Contemporary Arab American Identity Formation 2. “We are not of the East or West”: Origins of Arab American Drama in the Works of Rihani, Gibran and Naimy 3. “There’s nothing funny about your people”: Arab American Comedy and Stand-Up Performance 4. “It’s not profiling, it’s deduction”: Post–9/11 Arab American Drama 5. Suffering for Palestine: Palestinian American Playwrights 6. Arabs Filming Arabs: Contemporary Arab American Films 5 7. “A psychic civil war onstage”: Arab American Solo Performance Conclusion Appendix: Abridged Chronology of Arab American Drama, Film and Performance, 1896–2015 Chapter Notes Works Referenced List of Names and Terms 6 Acknowledgments Creating a manuscript takes a great deal of time and support. I wish to thank the talented writers, filmmakers, and performers included here who have devoted their careers to dramatizing the experiences of Arab Americans in their plays, films, and performances. Your works are truly inspiring, and I hope this volume helps to make those unfamiliar with this genre aware of your talents. I also thank my mentors—professors Sue-Ellen Case, S.I. Salamensky, Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei, Nouri Gana, and Susan Slyomovics—for their guidance during my studies at UCLA. Thanks to the Eugene V. Cota-Robles Committee for allowing me the opportunity to study within the University of California System. I especially wish to thank Jamil Khoury and Malik Gillani for supporting my artistic endeavors by allowing me to direct both Precious Stones and my own play Talib at Silk Road Rising. Of course, I wish to thank all of my colleagues at the University of Oregon for their continued support and guidance. I have found both an artistic and academic home at the University of Oregon, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to work at such a supportive and collegial institution. I wish to especially thank May-Britt Ostersen for her assistance in securing the permissions for the photographs included within this book. I could not have done this without your help. Also, I wish to thank the Oregon Humanities Center and the University of Oregon College of Arts and 7 Sciences for providing me subvention funds for this publication. I also thank everyone who aided me with my research in the United States and abroad. There have been many who assisted me, including Mona Arslan, Cherien Dabis, Christine Fish, Joseph Fakhri, Guita Hourani, Hisham Naimy, Nadeem Naimy, Ameen Albert Rihani, Nefertiti Takla, and Christopher Tayback. Special thanks to those who allowed me permission to utilize photographs, including Andrea Assaf, Holland Baird/The Alliance Theatre, Sayed Badreya, Sarah Bazzi/AJYAL Theatrical Group, Cherien Dabis, Malik Gillani, Bill Huntington, Jennifer Jajeh, Jamil Khoury, Nadeem Naimy, Rana Halabi Najjar, Noor Theatre, Ariel Ogden, Ameen Albert Rihani, Heather Raffo, Christopher Tayback, Leon Milad Tuma, Wesleyan University, and Winnie Hershewe. Lastly, I must thank my family, especially my cousin, Dr. Nada Najjar, and my uncle Dr. Abdallah Najjar, for instilling in me the inspiration to learn more about my rich heritage and culture. To my mother, Samia, and my sister Dina: your love, patience, and support have made this entire venture possible, and I could not have achieved my life goals without you. Thanks to my cousin Dr. Linda Najjar and my dear friends Roger Jameson, Jason Riggs, Khaled Hamadeh and Gary M. Bowne. Thanks too, to my extended family: Abbas, Julie, and Deanna Halabi and to my mother-in-law, Salwa Kantar. Thank you for welcoming me to your beautiful family and helping me achieve my goals. To those actors, choreographers, stage managers, assistant directors, and designers with whom I’ve collaborated, I thank 8 you for helping me bring my own productions to fruition. Also, thanks to my students who teach me so much every day. Finally, I dedicate this volume to my beautiful wife, Rana, and my precious daughter, Malak. You’re my heart, my soul, and my inspiration. I love you always and forever. 9 Preface The idea for writing a book about Arab American drama, film, and performance came to me years ago when I spoke to another theatre colleague about an Arab American play I was reading. This colleague, who was well versed in many forms of intercultural and international theatre, asked me, “Is there such a thing as Arab American drama?” I realized then that there were few, if any, in the theatre who knew of the many playwrights, filmmakers, and performers who are, and have been, inadvertently creating a genre for over a century. The omission of these works from the theatrical canon is worth questioning. As a former theatre student with three advanced degrees who has studied in the United States and abroad, I can tell you that I was never assigned a novel, play, or book of poetry by an Arab American. Why was that, I wondered? Was it a matter of ignorant omission or outright exclusion? My desire to meld my passion for the theatre and my interest in my Arab culture has led me to examine the history and literature of those writers who have traditionally been excluded from the theatrical canon. I have come to realize that this exclusion has occurred for many reasons: the inability (or aversion) of scholars to translate these plays from Arabic to English, the lack of access to many unpublished works, the exclusion/omission of these plays and productions by professional and semi-professional theatres, and the lack of books and anthologies about the subject that attempt to define 10 and study this literature. Because of the paucity of information on the topic, I decided to focus my energies on directing, writing, and writing about Arab American drama. My first strategy was to direct plays by these playwrights. I have directed Jamil Khoury’s Precious Stones, Heather Raffo’s 9 Parts of Desire, Denmo Ibrahim’s Ecstasy: A Water Fable, and my own play Talib. Second, I edited and published an anthology of Arab American plays titled Four Arab American Plays: Works by Leila Buck, Jamil Khoury, Yussef El Guindi, and Lameece Issaq & Jacob Kader (also published by McFarland). Now a historical analysis of the genre seems in order, which is the book you see before you. My interest in this field of study is twofold: I am a theatre practitioner and scholar, and I am a second-generation Arab American of Lebanese Druze heritage. My parents, who immigrated to the United States in the 1940s and ’50s, brought with them many important traditions and values from their upbringing in the villages of Lebanon. In fact, I might have been a third-generation Arab American had it not been for my grandfather’s unexpected return, with his two young children, to Lebanon from the United States after the tragic death of his wife. My grandfather remarried in Lebanon and died there, leaving my father a naturalized American citizen. My father emigrated from Lebanon at the age of 17, worked in the coal mines of West Virginia, served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, and spent the rest of his life as a self-employed businessman. My mother, a registered nurse who treated patients as far back as the 1958 crisis in Lebanon, immigrated to the United States in the 1960s and worked as a registered nurse her entire life. I was born and raised in the United States and, as with many of my contemporaries, I feel 11 neither fully Arab nor fully American. Instead, I am a hybrid of two vibrant and profound cultures, and I am a self-proclaimed Arab American. Indeed, I didn’t even know my birth name was Malek until well into my teen years. As with most Arab Americans, I was given a “safe” name (Michael) that my parents believed would deflect any anti–Arab prejudice that they thought I was sure to encounter in school. Little did they know that it takes more than a name to hide one’s Arabness. I am not proposing that my “descent relation” to this Arabness makes me any more or less qualified to write about Arab American literature. I do not claim an authenticity as an essentialist, or a “biological insider” as Werner Sollors suggests.1 Instead, I come to this work as one who is deeply interested in his Arab and American roots and sees these plays as a scholar and theatre practitioner first, and as an Arab American second. However, despite this caveat I will say that growing up in an Arab American household and having the Arabic language and culture as part of my life provides insights into these works that one who has not interacted with this culture might not have.