Silk Road Rising and the Goodman Theatre current Doing It For Ourselves: SWANA and Queer within the Global Story livestreaming on the worldwide, commons-based, peer-produced HowlRound TV community on Sunday 26 March 2023 at 2:30 p.m. PDT (San Francisco, UTC -7) / 4:30 p.m. CDT (Chicago, UTC -5) / 5:30 p.m. EDT (New York, UTC -4).
Join playwright Martin Yousif Zebari and director Sivan Battat for an internet dialog moderated by Co-Executive Artistic Director of Silk Road Rising Jamil Khoury in regards to the intersections of SWANA and Queer identities. Panelists will embrace Adam Ashraf Al-Sayigh, playwright behind Drowning in Cairo, Revelation, Memorial, and Jamestown/ Williamsburg; Evren Odcikin, Director of Artistic Programming at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, a founding member of the MENA Theater Makers Alliance steering committee, and a founding father of Maia Directors; and Sara Razavi, director, actor and resident artist with Golden Thread Productions.
Panelists
Jamil Khoury, Moderator
Jamil Khoury is the Founding Co-Executive Artistic Director of Silk Road Rising, an art-making and humanities service group that shapes conversations about Pan-Asian, North African, and Muslim Americans. A theatre producer, playwright, essayist, and filmmaker, Jamil’s work focuses on Arab World themes and questions of Diaspora. He is especially within the intersections of tradition, nationwide identification, faith, and belonging.
Sivan Battat
Sivan Battat (Director) is a theater director and group organizer who has developed work with firms together with Roundabout, NYTW, Drama League, Atlantic, Ars Nova, National Queer Theatre, New Georges, New York Stage & Film, Cape Cod Theatre Project, MCC and extra. New York credit embrace Who the Fuck is Ahmed (Lincoln Performing Arts Centre); She He Me (National Queer Theater); Baba Karam & McArabia (Atlantic Middle Eastern Mixfest); Pie Shop Play (Corkscrew Theater Festival) and East o’, West o’!, (ANTFest, Ars Nova). Assistant directing credit embrace Trouble in Mind on Broadway. Regional credit embrace Heroes of the Fourth Turning (Studio Theatre); Edessa of Baghdad (B-Street Theatre); His Majesty, Herself (Adventure Theatre MTC); The Night Traveller (Cutting Ball Theater); Close to Home (Uprising Theatre) and Coexistence My Ass (Harvard University/Tour). They are the affiliate inventive director of Noor Theatre, and an alum of the Roundabout Directing Fellowship, the Musical Directing Fellowship with the Drama League and Theatre Communications Group’s Rising Leaders of Color. SivanBattat.com
Martin Yousif Zebari
Martin Yousif Zebari, he/they (Playwright) is an Iraqi-born, Assyrian-American actor and playwright based mostly in Los Angeles. Their play Layalina acquired two workshops and staged readings as a part of Goodman Theatre’s Future Labs and National Queer Theatre’s Criminal Queerness Festival, and most not too long ago acquired a workshop manufacturing in Goodman Theatre’s New Stages Festival. As an actor, their credit embrace Yasmina’s Necklace and The Winter’s Tale (Goodman Theatre); Drowning in Cairo (Golden Thread Productions); For the Right Reasons (Atlantic Theatre Company); Mosque4Mosque (National Queer Theatre); Guards on the Taj (Steppenwolf Theatre); Mary Stuart (Chicago Shakespeare Theater); The Hard Problem (Court Theatre); Human Terrain (Broken Nose Theatre); A Christmas Carol (Milwaukee Repertory Theatre); Macbeth, Comedy of Errors, Failure: A Love Story and The Magical Mind of Billy Shakespeare (Illinois Shakespeare Festival). They have appeared on NBC’s Chicago Med. They maintain a BFA in Acting from the Arts University of Bournemouth, England and are represented by Stewart Talent Chicago. MartinYousifZebari.com
Adam Ashraf Al-Sayigh
Adam Ashraf Elsayigh was born in Cairo, Egypt to folks who had been reluctantly docs. When quickly thereafter, Adam’s dad and mom relocated the household to Dubai, Adam grew up in a non secular Muslim family with American cable tv, going to a British college in a Gulf state the place over 90% of the inhabitants had been migrant staff. This upbringing on the cross-section of cultures is on the core of the artist Adam is.
Today, Adam is a a author, theatermaker, and dramaturg who writes and develops performs that interrogate the intersections of queerness, immigration, and colonialism. Adam’s performs (together with Drowning in Cairo, Revelation, Memorial, and Jamestown/ Williamsburg) have been developed and seen at New York Theater Workshop, The Lark, The Tisch School of the Arts, The LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, and Golden Thread Productions. Adam is a fellow at Georgetown University’s Laboratory for Global Performance and an Alliance/Kendeda Award Finalist. He holds a BA in Theater with an emphasis in Playwriting and Dramaturgy from NYU Abu Dhabi and is an MFA Candidate in Playwriting at Brooklyn College.
Evren Odcikin
Evren Odcikin is a theater director, author, and humanities administrator with a deep dedication to bringing underrepresented tales and voices to the American stage. He serves because the Associate Artistic Director at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and is a founding member of the MENA Theater Maker Alliance steering committee, a founding father of Maia Directors, and a resident artist at Golden Thread Productions. A celebrated new performs director, he has labored with NYTW, Geva, Berkeley Rep, South Coast Rep, The Lark, Kennedy Center, InterAct (Philadelphia), Cleveland Public Theatre, Magic Theatre, Golden Thread, and Crowded Fire. As a author, he’s underneath fee with Leila Buck to create 1001 Nights (A Retelling) for Cal Shakes. Recognitions embrace: a 2016 “Theatre Worker You Should Know” function in American Theatre Magazine; a 2015 National Director’s Fellowship from the O’Neill, NNPN, the Kennedy Center, and SDCF; and a 2013 TITAN Award from Theatre Bay Area.
Sara Razavi
Sara Razavi (Director and Actor) graduated from UC Davis with a level in sociology and theatre research, which included a year-long theatre focus at University of Birmingham, in England. Razavi has been energetic within the MENA house for a while, first collaborating with Golden Thread Productions as a performer in ReOrient 2007, returning quite a few occasions, with one in every of her most notable performances in 2009 because the monologist in The Monologist Suffers Her Monologue by Yussef El Guindi. In addition to efficiency, Razavi has directed a number of productions together with Mona Mansour and Tala Manassah’s The Letter (2012) and The House (2015), Farzam Farrokhi’s 2012 (2012), Nahal Navidar’s Songs of our Childhood (2015), E.H. Benedict’s War on Terror (2017), and Sevan Okay. Greene’s A is For Ali (2017). In addition to Golden Thread, a few of Razavi’s favourite Bay Area collaborations embrace varied productions with Elastic Future, Maryam Rostami’s, Persepolis, Texas for CounterPULSE, and Denmo Ibrahim’s BABA for Alter Theatre (winner for San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle award for “Best Original Script” and nominee for “Best Solo Performance”) and DARVAG manufacturing’s Death of Yazdgerd, directed by Evren Odcikin. In 2013 she accomplished her MBA with a concentrate on social finance and is the CEO of Working Solutions CDFI, a group lender which gives capital and companies to native small companies serving Northern California. She lives in Oakland along with her spouse, and two younger kids.