{"id":6150,"date":"2016-10-27T07:22:18","date_gmt":"2016-10-27T11:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6150"},"modified":"2016-11-08T07:41:29","modified_gmt":"2016-11-08T12:41:29","slug":"disgraced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6150","title":{"rendered":"Disgraced"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"disgraced,

Caroline Kaplan & Maboud Ebrahimzadeh, photo: T. Charles Erickson<\/p><\/div>\n

McCarter Theatre Center<\/a>, Princeton, N.J., is presenting Ayad Akhtar<\/a>\u2019s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Disgraced<\/em>, through October 30. The production, directed by Marcela Lorca<\/a>, tells the story of four Manhattan friends with diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds. They are a successful, congenial group until a dinner party devolves into a series of confrontations that painfully reveal the schisms beneath the surface. It is a blistering commentary on identity politics and the nation’s most-produced play in the 2015-2016 season.<\/p>\n

The characters are lawyer Amir (played by Maboud Ebrahimzadeh<\/a>), who has masked his Pakistani and Muslim heritage, \u201cpassing\u201d as Indian. Amir is pressured by his wife and nephew, Hussein (Adit Dileep<\/a>)\u2014who has changed his name to the more American Abe Jensen\u2014to look in on legal proceedings against a controversial imam accused of terrorism. Amir initially resists, fearing his act may be misinterpreted by his firm\u2019s Jewish senior partners.<\/p>\n

His beautiful wife Emily (Caroline Kaplan<\/a>), Caucasian and apparently Christian, is a painter and in her own work is entranced with the artistic language of Islam. In turn, she entrances their Jewish friend and Whitney curator Isaac (Kevin Isola<\/a>), who wants to include her paintings in a high-profile exhibit. Isaac met Emily through Jory (Austene Van), his African-American wife and another associate in Amir\u2019s law firm.<\/p>\n

These convoluted relationships could go wrong in many ways, and do at the ill-fated dinner party. The social landscape under their feet crumbles. By the play\u2019s end, all of them are disgraced, one way or another, publicly or not.<\/p>\n

It is director Lorca\u2019s aim that the audience empathize with each of the characters. She says, \u201cA play like Disgraced<\/em> has the power to hold mirrors to us, invite us to embrace complexities, ponder our contradictions, widen our view of others, and invite us to practice empathy, one character at a time.\u201d Her success in achieving this is evidenced by the dead silence in the theater for many seconds after the play ended and the standing ovation the cast received.<\/p>\n

The play raises important questions about identity and self-identity, passive observer and activist, and religious and secular choices in a fragmented American society, as well as the persistent and entangling prejudices (in the original, pre-judging sense, emphasis on \u201cjudging\u201d) that lurk inside each of us. \u201cWho is an American?\u201d it asks, and \u201cWho gets to decide?\u201d It\u2019s a 90-minute production that rapidly moves into the quicksand of what the playwright calls our \u201cdegraded social discourse.\u201d<\/p>\n

McCarter has prepared a show website<\/a> rich with information, including an essay on Islamic art and a\u00a0Vel\u00e1zquez painting that provide an important symbolic backdrop in the story. Call the box office at 609-258-2787 or visit http:\/\/www.mccarter.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

McCarter Theatre Center, Princeton, N.J., is presenting Ayad Akhtar\u2019s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Disgraced, through October 30. The production, directed by Marcela Lorca, tells the story of four Manhattan friends with diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds. They are a successful, congenial … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Disgraced - last weekend to see this terrific production of Ayad Akhtar's Pulitzer-winner on stage at Princeton's McCarter Theatre","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[366,268,104,147],"tags":[656,657,329,203],"class_list":["post-6150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drama","category-politics","category-the-morgue","category-theater","tag-ayad-akhtar","tag-marcela-lorca","tag-mccarter-theatre","tag-pulitzer-prize"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1Bc","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6150"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6152,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6150\/revisions\/6152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}