Silk Road was founded in 2002 as a response to 9/11. Had 9/11 not happened, we probably would still be leading our other lives, which were not in the theater. [Cofounder] Malik [Gillani] was an IT consultant, and I was an international relocation consultant.

About five years ago, Chay Yew, a playwright and the artistic director of the Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago, was approached by schools for copies of Asian American plays that could be taught and performed. Except Yew couldn’t find a recent compilation of Asian American plays. So when Theatre Communications Group (TCG) approached him about editing a new anthology, he agreed, and the result is “Version 3.0,” released by TCG yesterday.

Silk Road Theatre Project is rolling out a new series of short-form video plays designed to be accessible to mobile device and tablet users, shot cinematically, on theater sets, sometimes followed by live or online discussion.

There are times when staff members at Silk Road Theatre Project might look askance at Malik Gillani, the company's executive director. Sure, he's a founder of the Chicago theater company, but he's really a businessman who loves the arts.

Mr. Gillani recently finished a certificate program at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management. His focus was non-profit management.

Based on his name, 44-year-old Chicago playwright Jamil Khoury says that people expect him to be African-American or “stereotypically” Middle Eastern.

When two planes hit the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, Malik Gillani’s world turned upside down.

The information technology consultant who was born in Pakistan and moved to the U.S. went from being someone his clients trusted to someone who frightened them.

There's nothing unusual about a theatre company operating out of a church basement. The genealogy of western theatre is storied with church basements, and on a performative, perhaps even metadramatic level, the union of church and theatre routinely appears in such phenomena as storytelling, ritual, liturgy, and pageantry. Yet despite the seemingly obvious, the relationship between my theatre company, Silk Road Theatre Project, and our hosts at the First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple, where we have been theatre-in-residence since 2004, appears to have penned a whole new storyline in this age old symbiosis.

In the heat of immigration reform and the ongoing debate on racial inclusivity, I believe that the preservation of ethnic cultural heritage and ethnic art education are becoming more relevant and important every day. My own interest in ethnic arts practices, multiculturalism and cross-culture experience began with my musical training as a pipa[*] player. Ethnic and folk arts, especially in performance, fascinate me. After graduating with a master’s degree in art education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, my interest in ethnic arts practices continued to grow.

Silk Road Theatre Project (SRTP) has rolled out an innovative audience engagement strategy that reaches beyond producing plays to provide several opportunities for patrons to connect with the company. The basis of the strategy is that the more information an individual has about the process of producing theatre—why a play was chosen, what influenced the playwright, etc.—the more likely they are to support it. It seems to be working. SRTP saw a 200 percent increase in individual donations last year.

As Barack Obama prepares to take office as president of the United States on January 20, his family is saying goodbye to their neighbourhood: Hyde Park on the south side of Chicago.

Chicago theatres are hanging in there with regards to year-end fundraising. Those that succeeded this past December did so because they have been focused all year on efforts to connect with their patrons and not just going for the quick hit at the end of the year.

Best-selling author Iris Chang continues to inspire other writers even after, or maybe because of, her suicide four years ago. Last year saw the release of a book on Chang, written by a friend who had been a classmate of hers at the University of Illinois, and a feature-length documentary by a pair of Toronto-based filmmakers.

The Middle East is the nexus of American foreign policy, but it is still relatively rare to find playwrights with roots in that region on stages in the United States. Three prominent dramatists of Middle Eastern descent gathered on stage for a panel discussion at the Museum of Contemporary Art on April 21.

There are few greater pleasures in the theater than watching an actor in a role that he or she seems to have been destined to play.

If you really like the work of a particular Chicago theater company, you've probably bought a subscription ticket. Good for you. You save some bucks and get to be a part of that theater’s family of supporters. But if you prefer to spread your theater-going around, you probably rely on single tickets. They’re more expensive—but you don’t get locked into the ups and downs of one group.

The Joyce Foundation Work in Progress

A leisurely stroll through downtown Chicago on any given afternoon will likely reveal a sampling of ethnic and racial diversity that spans the globe. The richness of cultures is expressed in everything from Chicago's neighborhood restaurants to its world-class entertainment venues. But for reasons not entirely understood, Chicago's theater industry does not fully represent the diversity that is so effortlessly reflected in the rest of the city. "Theater people tend to be open-minded, sensitive, free-thinking individuals, so for us to be so far behind in this area is baffling," says Jamil Khoury, artistic director of the Silk Road Theatre Project. "We have a responsibility to lead the way to change."

One of the best things about the Chicago theater community is its diversity. Soon you will be able to sample four of Chicago's finest examples of that quality for less than $100.

Asian communities in the United States are among our nation's fastest growing minority populations, so it isn't surprising that the American theater industry has begun to pay attention on two fronts. First, little by little, we are seeing mainstream theater companies produce Asian-themed works. In Chicago, over the last two years, the Goodman, Lookingglass, Prop, Steppenwolf, and Victory Gardens theaters have mounted productions representing the stories and cultures of ancient Persia, India, Japan, and the Philippines. The second front, which drives the first, is the increase in the number of playwrights, actors, directors, designers, composers, and producers who self-identify as Asian-American. You will find them within the mainstream and also organizing and running Asian specific theater companies, such as Rasaka Theatre Company, Silk Road Theatre Project, and Stir Friday Night, among several others here in Chicago.