With its latest show, Silk Road Cabaret: Broadway Sings the Silk Road, [Silk Road Rising] has hit on a truly inspired idea -- gathering a diverse cast to sing songs from hit musicals that, when grouped together, traverse much of the Silk Road route.
Read MoreSilk Road Cabaret: Broadway Sings the Silk Road features songs from popular Broadway musicals set along the Silk Road—from Pacific Overtures to Two Gentlemen of Verona to Jesus Christ Superstar to The King and I to Zorba to Miss Saigon, and many more in between. This bold and harmonious East-West interplay blends music with personal stories and showcases performers of diverse backgrounds as they claim, reclaim, subvert, and poke fun at a host of old favorites from the Broadway repertoire.
Read More[It’s] inevitable that our first full production of a non-American play hail from the rough and tumble, sophisticated, and provocative world of the Israeli theatre. I’d even argue that Motti Lerner’s Pangs of the Messiah reflects the very raison d’etre of SRTP: it’s a play born of conflict yet bred of hope.
Read MoreYou may ask yourselves, “What is a nice Arab American artistic director like Jamil doing producing a play about right wing Jewish settlers living in the West Bank?” Or conversely you’re thinking “What could be more apropos?”...
Read MoreDeveloped by Silk Road Rising, SouthAsianPlaywrights.Org is a dynamic new website created to showcase and promote American and Canadian playwrights of South Asian descent.
Read MoreAsian performers put their own spin on selections from Asia-centric musicals, from South Pacific to Aida, in a revue opening October 21.
Read MoreOur online initiative, SouthAsianPlaywrights.org, allows us to generate greater exposure and more opportunities for American and Canadian playwrights of South Asian backgrounds. This initiative defines South Asians as people with ancestry in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, including people of mixed ancestries, who create works relevant to their intersectional identities. SouthAsianPlaywrights.org connects participating playwrights and their (English language) plays with theatre companies, cultural organizations, academic institutions, artistic directors, producers, literary managers, editors, publishers, and agents.
Read MoreThis exclusive event for Silk Road Theatre Project subscribers and donors featured an intimate conversation with Lauren Yee, playwright of Ching Chong Chinaman, and Artistic Director Jamil Khoury.
Read MoreThe ultra-assimilated Wong family is as Chinese American as apple pie: teenager Upton dreams of World of Warcraft superstardom; his sister Desi dreams of early admission to Princeton. Unfortunately, Upton's chores and homework get in the way of his 24/7 videogaming, and Desi's math grades don't fit the Asian American stereotype. Then Upton comes up with a novel solution for both problems: he acquires a Chinese indentured servant, who harbors an American dream of his own.
Performed as part of Chinese Cultural Week in Chicago: From the Great Wall to the Great Lakes
Read MoreWhen 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.
Read MoreThere'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.
Read MoreIn-house literature about the production of Pangs of the Messiah says the play presents Israelis and the Middle East conflict in "a myriad of complexities." It is precisely these complexities that hang in the air, like the fallout from a bomb, during Pangs of the Messiah.
Read MoreThis exclusive event for Silk Road Theatre Project subscribers and donors featured an intimate conversation with Leila Buck, playwright of In the Crossing, and Artistic Director Jamil Khoury.
Read MoreLeila, a Lebanese American of both Muslim and Christian heritage, has been performing personal stories about bridging multiple identities for years. She arrives at a conference to present a reflective new piece about her experiences in Lebanon with her Jewish American husband during the Israel-Hezbollah war of 2006. As she attempts to portray the myriad of voices they encountered, Leila soon realizes that the most treacherous journey of all is the struggle to tell her own story.
Read MoreNo matter what your view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you will be moved by the plight of the Israeli settlers in Motti Lerner's Pangs of the Messiah.
Read MoreOn April 10th's Dueling Critics segment on WBEZ’s (NPR) 848 show, critics Kelly Kleiman and Jonathan Abarbanel discuss Curtains. At the end of the discussion Kleiman's 'Pick of the Week' is Pangs of the Messiah.
Read MoreLerner avoids the temptation to demonize, leaving us with a sorrowful meditation on how it will all end. “Questions are over,” Shmuel says early on. “Maybe there’ll be some answers.” Maybe. But Lerner’s play cautions that the answers we get may not be the ones we want.
Read MoreWhatever your own personal feelings are about “the two state solution,” it is critical to remember that specific lives will be forever affected by politically-motivated decisions, and Lerner’s accomplishment is to show there simply are no easy answers.
Read MorePangs of the Messiah is curiously pitched somewhere between political thriller and family melodrama... [It] is not only a good play by a strong international writer, it’s also an experience that’s good for us as Americans right now.
Read MoreLerner has written a script with Chekhovian nuance... And frankly, the script it so compelling, you won't find yourself focusing on anything but the issues of the play, crucial concerns of the moment.
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