Out at the Playhouse

Wednesday
This afternoon we were out at a matinee performance at the Playhouse. The Playhouse in the park has two theatres, the main theatre and the Shelterhouse theatre, a smaller, more ‘intimate’ theatre. The play we were seeing was in the latter. I would generally prefer to go in the evening, but this production is drawing to a close, and has been very popular, and this was all we could get, and even then, we couldn’t get seats together. The play was called English. The setting was 2008 Iran. Four Iranian adults gather in a classroom to learn English with the hopes of passing the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign language). “As Marian, their Iranian-born English tutor abolishes their native tongue from the classroom, questions and conflicts arise about identity seep into their minds and hearts. Equal parts touching and funny, this new play offers a glimpse into the human desire to belong.” The playwright Sanaz Toossi, was born in California, but of Iranian descent. Her father, an engineer emigrated to the US before the Iranian Revolution, and her mother, a chemist, did so after. She is an only child, spoke Farsi at home, and English outside it, and visited Iran regularly when she was growing up. It is certainly very topical, as she originally wrote it as her New York University graduate school thesis. She described it as an angry reaction to President Trumps 2017 executive order, known as the “Muslim ban” prohibiting travel to the U.S. from Iran and six other Muslim majority states.