Theatre makers are often called upon to respond to the challenges facing our world. It is assumed, rightfully so, that we contemplate those challenges, pose relevant questions, and conjure would­be “real life” scenarios through dramatized storytelling...

Theatre makers are often called upon to respond to the challenges facing our world. It is assumed, rightfully so, that we contemplate those challenges, pose relevant questions, and conjure would-be “real life” scenarios through dramatized storytelling. And the global challenge I find most alluring? That beckoning gulf dividing nation-states and how they define national identity. I think a lot about nation-states and the cultures and identities they produce and export. Some of these polities are quite durable (including, I believe, the US), while many others won’t survive to see the 22nd century.

I think a lot about the representation of Muslims, particularly the representation of Muslim Diasporas, and especially the representation that occurs on stage. But what happens on stage rarely begins on stage. Images have a way of filtering up, gestating first in mainstream media before seizing dramatic license...

For years we’ve been planning a special commitment to solo performance artists, and the time for that commitment is now. Solo plays occupy an important space in the canon of plays suitable for Silk Road Rising, and for reasons that align conspicuously well with our mission of harnessing one’s own representation...

On November 12, 2014, in a ceremony at the Chicago History Museum, Silk Road Rising will be inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame. The significance of this honor, with its myriad of cultural and political meanings, cannot be overestimated...

Some people thought me heroic, even thanked me for being so brave. I had said what others thought but were afraid to speak. Afraid of retribution, afraid of never working again. And it was that expression of fear that I heard over and over again, usually couched within anecdotes, one more disturbing than the next...

My name is Jamil Khoury and I study the political utility of art. Too general. My name is Jamil Khoury and I study the diplomatic efficacy of theatre. Too ambiguous. My name is Jamil Khoury and I study the dialectics of storytelling and social change. Too academic. My name is Jamil Khoury and I study the empathic functions of humor. Whatever...

In her review of Silk Road Rising’s Midwest premiere production of Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s play INVASION! (August 6, 2013), Chicago Sun-Times theatre critic Hedy Weiss begins by asserting that “The global terror alerts dominating the news in recent days certainly do not help the arguments being made by Jonas Hassen Khemiri in his play, Invasion!...” It is from there that Hedy proceeds to make the case for racial profiling...

I want an Arab American theatre movement. I want an Arab American theatre movement that is vibrant and visible and daring and unafraid of its own power. I want an Arab American community that champions and supports our movement, and I want an American theatre that embraces and celebrates us. I want Arab American plays to be woven into the fabric of American storytelling...

Silk Road Rising was born of what I like to call an “activist impulse.” We do not bifurcate art and activism. For us, they constitute a continuum. Activism and advocacy is as integral to our organizational DNA as is creating and producing great art...

For years I have bit my tongue about director Mary Zimmerman. After all, she is much beloved in Chicago theatre and has even been declared a “Genius.” I simply went ahead with my business, voicing the occasional criticism behind closed doors...

You 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?”...

Writers write about themselves, we are told. Yet for reasons dictated by “the market” or the “mainstream” or the ever shifting parameters of “universality,” a writer’s subjectivity is often asked to realign itself...