March 26, 2009
By Brennen Jensen
Like other Americans, the playwright Jamil Khoury was horrified by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. But as a man of Syrian descent, he was also troubled by the anti-Muslim, anti-Arab sentiment he saw spring up in the tragedy's wake.
He decided in 2002 ? together with Malik Gillani, his Pakistan-born partner ? to confront the burgeoning prejudice the best way he knew how: on the stage.
He founded Chicago's Silk Road Theatre Project, says Mr. Khoury, "to use storytelling and particularly the theater as a medium for creating dialogue and conversations between communities in a frank and honest way."
The theater takes its name from the ancient trade routes crisscrossing the Middle East and Asia, stretching from Italy to Japan.
The company stages the works of playwrights whose heritage goes back to one of the numerous ethnicities along these ancient pathways: Asian, Middle-Eastern, and Mediterranean-area voices Mr. Khoury says are "largely absent from the repertoire of American theater."
Two-thirds of the theater's $600,000 annual budget comes from foundation grants. It has staged 10 plays to date, including works by Chinese, Egyptian, Indian, and Korean writers. An Israeli play is in rehearsal now.
Here, actors perform a scene from a Silk Road Theatre Project production of Merchant on Venice, the Indian-American playwright Shishir Kurup's retooling of Shakespeare that is set on Venice Boulevard in Los Angeles and features characters who are Muslim or Hindu.