Disgraced

by Ayad Akhtar

Genres: Cultural Heritage; Family Life; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

"Sparkling and combustible" (Bloomberg Businessweek), "DISGRACED rubs all kinds of unexpected raw spots with intelligence and humor" (Newsday). "In dialogue that bristles with wit and intelligence, Akhtar puts contemporary attitudes toward religion under a microscope, revealing how tenuous self-image can be for people born into one way of being who have embraced another.... Everyone has been told that politics and religion are two subjects that should be off-limits at social gatherings. But watching these characters rip into these forbidden topics, there's no arguing that they make for ear-tickling good theater" (New York Times). "Add a liberal flow of alcohol and a couple of major secrets suddenly revealed, and you've got yourself one dangerous dinner party" (Associated Press).

Release date: September 10, 2013

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 112

Sample

“The best play I saw last year.… A quick-witted and shattering drama.… Disgraced rubs all kinds of unexpected raw spots with intelligence and humor.”

—Linda Winer, Newsday

“A sparkling and combustible contemporary drama.… Ayad Akhtar’s one-act play deftly mixes the political and personal, exploring race, freedom of speech, political correctness, even the essence of Islam and Judaism. The insidery references to the Hamptons and Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and art critic Jerry Saltz are just enough to make audience members feel smart.… Akhtar… has lots to say about America and the world today. He says it all compellingly, and none of it is comforting.”

—Philip Boroff, Bloomberg Businessweek

“Compelling.… Disgraced raises and toys with provocative and nuanced ideas.”

—Jesse Oxfeld, New York Observer

“A continuously engaging, vitally engaged play about thorny questions of identity and religion in the contemporary world.… In dialogue that bristles with wit and intelligence, Mr. Akhtar… puts contemporary attitudes toward religion under a microscope, revealing how tenuous self-image can be for people born into one way of being who have embraced another.… Everyone has been told that politics and religion are two subjects that should be off-limits at social gatherings. But watching Mr. Akhtar’s characters rip into these forbidden topics, there’s no arguing that they make for ear-tickling good theater.”

—Charles Isherwood, New York Times

“A blistering social drama about the racial prejudices that secretly persist in progressive cultural circles.”

—Marilyn Stasio, Variety

“Terrific.… Disgraced… unfolds with speed, energy and crackling wit.… The evening will come to a shocking end, but before that, there is the sparkling conversation, expertly rendered on the page by Akhtar.… Talk of 9/11, of Israel and Iran, of terrorism and airport security, all evokes uncomfortable truths. Add a liberal flow of alcohol and a couple of major secrets suddenly revealed, and you’ve got yourself one dangerous dinner party.… In the end, one can debate what the message of the play really is. Is it that we cannot escape our roots, or perhaps simply that we don’t ever really know who we are, deep down, until something forces us to confront it? Whatever it is, when you finally hear the word ‘disgraced’ in the words of one of these characters, you will no doubt feel a chill down your spine.”

—Jocelyn Noveck, Associated Press

“Offers an engaging snapshot of the challenge for upwardly mobile Islamic Americans in the post-9/11 age.”

—Thom Geier, Entertainment Weekly

“Akhtar digs deep to confront uncomfortable truths about the ways we look at race, culture, class, religion, and sex in this bracingly adult, unflinching drama.… He writes incisive, often quite funny dialogue and creates vivid characters, managing to cover a lot of ground in a mere four scenes and 80 minutes. Akhtar doesn’t offer any solutions to the thorny issues he presents so effectively. What he does is require us to engage them, and that’s a very good and necessary thing.”

—Erik Haagensen, Backstage.com

“Disgraced stands among recent marks of an increasing and welcome phenomenon: the arrival of South Asian and Middle Eastern Americans as presences in our theater’s dramatis personae, matching their presence in our daily life. Like all such phenomena, it carries a double significance. An achievement and a sign of recognition for those it represents, for the rest of us it constitutes the theatrical equivalent of getting to know the new neighbors—something we had better do if we plan to survive as a civil society.”

—Michael Feingold, Village Voice

Plays on the page are neither fish nor fowl. A play is seldom meant to be read. It is meant to be pored over, interrogated, dissected, obeyed. A play is a blueprint, a workman’s plan drawn for a group of collaborating artists, and it must contain the seeds of inspiration, the insinuations of truth that will spur the actors and the director and the designers handily to tell the playwright’s chosen tale. The end result of the process that begins with a play is not the encounter with an individual reader in the privacy of a moment, but rather the boisterous and public encounter with a living audience, an act of collective hearing and seeing that is at the root of the theater’s timeless and ritual magic.

There can still be a magic to the reader’s silent encounter with dialogue on a page. This encounter can hav. . .