Four Plays from the ReOrient Festival 2015 Arab Stages, Volume 1, Number 2 (Spring 2015) ©2015 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Publications
Arab Stages is delighted to report that, thanks to the generosity of Golden Thread and its director Torange Yaghiazarian, we have the honor of publishing four plays in this issue from the most recent offering of its ReOrient Festival. In the words of founder Yeghiazarian:
Golden Thread Productions’ ReOrient Festival of Short Plays was inaugurated in 1999 to present alternative perspectives of the Middle East and to showcase the multiplicity of stories, voices, and styles from the region and has since become Golden Thread’s most recognized and celebrated program. This ambitious festival, now presented biannually, turns San Francisco into a Mecca for innovative, spirited, and thought-provoking theatre from and about the Middle East. It has served as a springboard for the careers of top Middle Eastern-American playwrights such as Yussef El Guindi, Torange Yeghiazarian, and Betty Shamieh, and has introduced Bay Area audiences to significant and rarely-produced dramatic works from the Middle East by authors such as Sadegh Hedayat, Fatma Gallaire, and Tawfiq Al-Hakim. Alongside Middle Eastern voices, ReOrient also features the work of non-Middle Eastern playwrights, and has included premieres by distinguished American playwrights such as Naomi Wallace, Eric Ehn, and Israel Horovitz. Since 2009, in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the festival, Golden Thread has organized the ReOrient Forum, a weekend-long conference in San Francisco aimed at expanding the dialogue on theatre, the Middle East, and current hot topics that illuminate the region’s relationship with the US.
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