Playwright Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Directed by George Potter
Featuring Gloria Imseih Petrelli and Priya Mohanty
A Muslim feminist responds to the hijacking of Islam by patriarchal extremists. Her unfiltered, stream-of-consciousness reflections deliver a potent indictment of the surreal and sardonic world we now inhabit, and a welcome reminder that sisterhood is powerful.
Jihad Against Violence: Oh ISIS Up Yours! is the latest incarnation of a play that has been morphing, meandering, and evolving for more than a decade. First produced as Sext of Saudade at NYC's Dixon Place in 2008, I had set out to respond to a world in which masculinist and homophobic ideologies, propagated in the name of Islam, have stuck a wedge between the spiritual and sensual longings of us human beings. As a colleague who had described watching Sext of Saudade as a “Brechtian experience” put it: Jihad Against Violence -- the second incarnation of this morphing play -- is far more "Beckett-sian.” Its third iteration at Silk Road Rising, Oh ISIS Up Yours!, combines the spirit of both earlier versions and then some...
I wanted in this latest version, to reflect the deepening crisis of the Muslim world as religious extremism and western imperialism, working hand-in-glove, have spread their conflagration from South Asian to Arab lands. In such a transnationally disastrous moment, I ask: What solidarities must be found? What affiliations and alliances forged? And how can theatre provide part of the answers we are all so desperately seeking?
