Disgraced

A Play

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By Ayad Akhtar

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$11.99

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$15.99 CAD

From the Pulitzer Prize winner for Drama and author of Homeland Elegies, a "sparkling and combustible" play about identity in America after September 11 (Bloomberg).

"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

 

  • "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, AP

    "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, The Village Voice

On Sale
Sep 10, 2013
Page Count
112 pages
Publisher
Back Bay Books
ISBN-13
9780316324472

Ayad Akhtar

About the Author

Ayad Akhtar is a novelist and playwright. His work has been published and performed in over two dozen languages. He is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Edith Wharton Citation of Merit for Fiction, and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Akhtar is the author of Homeland Elegies (Little, Brown & Co.), which The Washington Post called “a tour de force” and The New York Times called “a beautiful novel…that had echoes of The Great Gatsby and that circles, with pointed intellect, the possibilities and limitations of American life.” His first novel, American Dervish (Little, Brown & Co.), was published in over 20 languages. As a playwright, he has written Junk (Lincoln Center, Broadway; Kennedy Prize for American Drama, Tony nomination); Disgraced (Lincoln Center, Broadway; Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony nomination); The Who & The What (Lincoln Center); and The Invisible Hand (NYTW; Obie Award, Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award, Olivier, and Evening Standard nominations).

Among other honors, Akhtar is the recipient of the Steinberg Playwrighting Award, the Nestroy Award, the Erwin Piscator Award, as well as fellowships from the American Academy in Rome, MacDowell, the Sundance Institute, and Yaddo, where he serves as a Board Director. Additionally, Ayad is a Board Trustee at New York Theatre Workshop, and PEN America, where he serves as President. In 2021, Akhtar was named the New York State Author, succeeding Colson Whitehead, by the New York State Writers Institute.

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