Omer Abbas Salem had over 5,000 new plays from the last 20 years at his fingertips, and zero reflected even a semblance of living as a gay Arab teen or young adult.
It wasn’t until his Actors Theatre apprenticeship that Salem found his way back to the page. It was his first opportunity to write something he knew would be produced and he was instructed to turn to their play archive for inspiration. In searching for plays featuring American Arab identity, Salem remembers, “I couldn’t find a single play that didn’t involve an accent or didn’t involve terrorism or didn’t involve some kind of abuse.” As MENA artists, we are familiar with these gaps and depictions, but only recently has data cemented how representation itself is not the end of the conversation.
Since this community-produced reading, Salem has risen as an emerging playwright, holding a commission with Jackalope Theater’s 20/21 New Frontier Series for his play Being Julia Roberts, then developing his play The Secretaries through the Goodman Theatre and having it land as a semi-finalist in Definition Theatre’s 20/21 Amplify Commission.
“One of my goals for writing Mosque4Mosque was to create as much space for Muslim and Arab artists in a theater that I don’t think they normally get. It feels like the sharing of something that we finally got a piece of. Knowing we’re sharing it rather than saving it for ourselves feels even better.” v
Sun 3/28, 2 PM CDT, steppenwolf.org, F, but reservations required.
