by Jamil Khoury, Artistic Director of Silk Road Rising
Staging the Stans has long been a dream of mine. In many respects, Central Asia’s newly independent and former Soviet Republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan comprised the heartland of the historic Silk Road. Unbeknown to many, Russia, too, is of Silk Road patrimony, and its Autonomous Republics of Bashkortostan, Dagestan, and Tatarstan reflect that which is Eurasian and Islamic about the largely Slavic and Eastern Orthodox Russian Federation.
It is a bit odd that in over sixteen years of producing theatre, Silk Road Rising has never once worked with a Central Asian or Russian playwright. Perhaps it seemed that all roads lead to Moscow and we just didn’t have any relationships there. But then along came John Eisner, Producing Artistic Director of New York City’s The Lark, and introductions ensued. First, a meeting in Chicago, then a series of Skype calls, followed by a trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg, and, voila, we had ourselves a network!
And yes, all roads did lead to Moscow, which is why curating Staging the Stans would not have been possible without our Moscow-based collaborators, Kazakh playwright Olzhas Zhanaydarov and Russian playwright Evgeny Kazachkov. Their insider knowledge and connections, their ability to get work translated, and their excitement for the concept we were proposing, turned a vigorous vetting process into a joyous learning curve. The three plays selected, including Zhanaydarov’s The Store, are each set in Moscow and grapple with migration and Muslim identity amid the warring passions of cosmopolitanism and xenophobia.
Americans had grown accustomed to a face of Russia and the Soviet Union that was European and white, not Asian and Muslim. With Staging the Stans, we’ve set out to introduce our audiences to landscapes that are multicultural, multilingual, and multireligious, yet shaped, in part, by cultural interchange and periodic “bouts” of pluralism. It is our hope that “the Stans” enter the consciousness of the American theatre as a source of stories and discoveries. As we believe this to be a seedling, may it yield abundant fruit.
