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.What I hope I’m discovering is that by writing from the particular that I know—that I find fascinating and that I have a lot of love for and a whole lot of problems with—I can perhaps open onto the universal.Which is something that I couldn’t do before, when I was trying to write in some universal way.ACKNOWLEDGMENTSSo many helped bring this work to life.First and foremost, Chris Ashley and Gabe Green and everyone at La Jolla Playhouse, where this play first saw the light of day.Paige Evans and Andre Bishop and the amazing staff of LCT3 / Lincoln Center Theater, where it found its finished form.Judy Clain, Terry Adams, Nicole Dewey, and the rest of Little, Brown and Co., for this edition.My indispensable agents Chris Till and Donna Bagdasarian.And of course, Marc Glick.A play is a collaboration with so many artists.Kimberly Senior, my director from day one.Bernie White, ever Afzal.The amazing design teams in La Jolla and New York: Jack Magaw, Jill BC Du Boff, Elisa Benzoni, Jaymi Lee Smith, Emily Rebholz, Japhy Weideman.Casting directors Sharon Bialy and Gohar Gazazyan on the West Coast and Daniel Swee on the East Coast.And the wonderful actors who participated at every stage of this process: Greg Keller, Nadine Malouf, Tala Ashe, Meera Rohit Kumbhani, Karen David, Dieterich Gray, Sheila Vand, Monika Jolly, Jolly Abraham, Ryan O’Nan, Faran Tahir, Stephen Plunkett, Roxanna Hope, Demosthenes Chrysan, and Anitha Gandhi.I benefited from the insights of so many: Don Shaw, Steve Klein, Ami Dayan, Poorna Jagannathan, Dan Hancock, Shazad Akhtar, Shirley Fishman, Gaye Taylor Upchurch, Eric Rosen at Kansas City Rep, Seth Gordon at The Rep of St.Louis, Polly Carl, Natasha Sinha, Michael Pollard, Madani Younis at the Bush Theatre in London, Amanda Watkins at the Araca Group, Stuart Rosenthal, and Jerry Patch and Annie MacRae at MTC.Finally, I want to acknowledge the support of Ritu Sahai-Mittal and Manish Mittal, as well as the Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation.ABOUT THE AUTHORAYAD AKHTAR is a screenwriter, playwright, actor, and novelist.He was nominated for a 2006 Independent Spirit Award for best screenplay for the film The War Within.His plays include Disgraced, produced at New York’s Lincoln Center Theater in 2012 and recipient of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.He lives in New York City.… AND HIS NOVELAmerican Dervish was hailed by People as “a particularly fresh and touching coming-of-age story.” Following is an excerpt from the book’s opening pages.MinaLong before I knew Mina, I knew her story.It was a tale Mother told so many times: How her best friend, gifted and gorgeous—something of a genius, as Mother saw it—had been frustrated at every turn, her development derailed by the small-mindedness of her family, her robust will checked by a culture that made no place for a woman.I heard about the grades Mina skipped and the classes she topped, though always somewhat to the chagrin of parents more concerned with her eventual nuptials than her report card.I heard about all the boys who loved her, and how—when she was twelve—she, too, fell in love, only to have her nose broken by her father’s fist when he found a note from her sweetheart tucked into her math book.I heard about her nervous breakdowns and her troubles with food and, of course, about the trove of poems her mother set alight in the living room fireplace one night during an argument about whether or not Mina would be allowed to go to college to become a writer.Perhaps it was that I heard it all so often without knowing the woman myself, but for the longest time, Mina Ali and her gifts and travails were like the persistent smell of curry in our halls and our rooms: an ever-presence in my life of which I made little note.And then, one summer afternoon when I was eight, I saw a picture of her.As Mother unfolded Mina’s latest letter from Pakistan, a palm-sized color glossy tumbled out.“That’s your auntie Mina, kurban,” Mother said as I picked it up.“Look how beautiful she is.”Beautiful, indeed.The picture showed a striking woman sitting on a wicker chair before a background of green leaves and orange flowers.Most of her perfectly black hair was covered with a pale pink scarf, and both her hair and scarf framed an utterly arresting face: cheekbones highly drawn—gently accentuated with a touch of blush—oval eyes, and a small, pointed nose perched above a pair of ample lips.Her features defined a perfect harmony, promising something sheltering, something tender, but not only.For there was an intensity in her eyes that belied this intimation of maternal comfort, or at least complicated it: those eyes were black and filled with piercing light, as if her vision had long been sharpened against the grindstone of some nameless inner pain.And though she was smiling, her smile was more one concealed than offered and, like her eyes, hinted at something mysterious and elusive, something you wanted to know.Mother posted the photo on our refrigerator door, pinned in place by the same rainbow-shaped finger magnets that also affixed my school lunch menu.(This was the menu Mother consulted each night before school to see if pork was being served the following day—and if, therefore, I’d be needing a bag lunch—and which I consulted each school morning hoping to find my favorite, beef lasagna, listed among the day’s offerings.) For two years, then, barely a day went by without at least a casual glance at that photograph of Mina.And there were more than a few occasions when, finishing my glass of morning milk, or munching on string cheese after school, I lingered over it, staring at her likeness as I sometimes did at the surface of the pond at Worth Park on summer afternoons: doing my best to catch a glimpse of what was hidden in the depths.It was a remarkable photograph, and—as I was to discover from Mina herself a couple of years later—it had an equally remarkable history.Mina’s parents, counting on their daughter’s beauty to attract a lucrative match, brought in a fashion photographer to take pictures of her, and the photo in question was the one that would make its way—through a matchmaker—into the hands of Hamed Suhail, the only son of a wealthy Karachi family.Hamed fell in love with Mina the moment he saw it.The Suhails showed up at the Ali home a week and a half later, and by the end of their meeting, the fathers had shaken hands on their children’s betrothal.Mother always claimed that Mina didn’t dislike Hamed, and that Mina always said she could have found happiness with him.If not for Irshad, Hamed’s mother.After the wedding, Mina moved south to Karachi to live with her in-laws, and the problems between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law began the first night Mina was there.Irshad came into her bedroom holding a string of plump, pomegranate-colored stones, a garnet necklace and family heirloom which—Irshad explained—had been handed down from mother to daughter for five generations.Herself daughterless, Irshad had always imagined she would bestow these, the only family jewels, on the wife of her only son someday.“Try it on,” Irshad urged, warmly.Mina did.And as they both stared into the mirror, Mina couldn’t help but notice the silvery thinning of Irshad’s eyes.She recognized the envy.“You shouldn’t, Ammi,” Mina said, pulling the stones from her neck.“I shouldn’t what?”“I don’t know… I mean, it’s so beautiful… are you sure you want to give it to me?”“I’m not giving it to you yet,” Irshad replied, abruptly.“I just wanted to see how it looked.”Bruised by Irshad’s sudden shift, Mina handed the necklace back to her mother-in-law.Irshad took it and, without another word, walked out of the room.So Irshad’s enmity began [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]