Kareem Fahmy on Bringing More Middle Eastern & Muslim Stories on Stage

In 2020, there seemed to a seismic shift in the theater world. Companies across the country were seeking more diverse seasons and more accurate portrayals of BIPOC culture or communities. But while there has been much written about the need for more diversity, plays about Muslims or those of Middle Eastern descent feel few and far between. According to Pew, there are 3.4 million Muslims in the US (a number that is likely closer to double), but there have only been a handful of widely produced plays that tells those stories. Kareem Fahmy is making it his life's work to change that. 

Fahmy was born in southeastern Quebec to Egyptian parents and raised in a devout Muslim household. Fahmy eventually went to McGill University to study physical therapy but quickly got involved in the school's active theater program. After graduation, he joined a group of friends in starting a theater company that garnered positive press in Montreal. Already a writer and director there, he was encouraged to get his MFA in directing, which he did at Columbia. Although Fahmy says his work in Montreal "wasn't written from the standpoint of the Middle Eastern experience," that changed when he found himself in post-9/11 New York. "I never felt defined by my race," he says, "but in New York in the early 2000s, I certainly felt conspicuously Arab." That led him to start seeking out a network of Middle Eastern theater-makers to collaborate with. 

Almost twenty years later, Fahmy is a leading voice in the American Middle Eastern theater, a celebrated writer and director, the co-chair of the Middle Eastern American Writers Lab at The Lark, and a co-founder of Maia Directors. Maia is a consulting group that works with theater companies and writers across the country on producing authentic Middle Eastern and Muslim stories.

I spoke to Fahmy over Zoom to hear more about Maia Directors and why he thinks Middle Eastern stories are still rare in the American theater. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What is Maia Directors and how did it begin?

KF: After graduate school, I found that there was a growing community of writers and actors of Middle Eastern descent who were trying to seize back the narrative of anything related to Middle Eastern or Muslim identity and politics. There were a whole series of plays exclusively written by non-Middle Eastern people about every aspect of the War on Terror, the Iraq War and later Afghanistan - really thorny issues. What would happen to me time and time again is that people from outside my community would reach out and say, 'Hey, I hear you're the expert on Middle Eastern actors and plays. Can you help me cast this reading?' For many years, I was doing that as a volunteer to create opportunities for members of my community and make sure it was well represented.

In 2016, I was at this convening at The Lark for Middle Eastern theater artists and, it just so happened, all four members of what would be Maia Directors were there. We recognized that we were all getting the same types of casting and script consulting requests. Over the course of several months, we recognized that there was an opportunity to ascribe value to the work we've been doing for free for all of these years. It started primarily around the issue of casting and we developed a pretty far-ranging database of Middle Eastern actors around the country. That grew into all forms of consulting on culture, scripts, design, sometimes marketing and outreach. I think of it as advocacy work. We advocate on behalf of our community. We try to make sure that when the work is done, it's done with a lot of nuance and specificity.

You mentioned plays about the Muslim or Middle Eastern experience by white playwrights. How do you work with writers who want to tell stories outside their own culture?

KF: What I really respect is when a person says, 'I have a particular interest in this story or this part of the world, but I need someone with lived cultural knowledge to reflect those ideas back and be a collaborator.' We give them our reflection and hopefully illuminate things that might not have been seen before.

We are able to contextualize how a story is responding to the various other stories that have come before it. The writers, invariably, are very happy to get that sort of honest feedback because who doesn't want to do their job better? My job as a consultant is never to say 'you shouldn't do this' but to encourage them in directions that we think are going to help unlock the work and make it thrive. It's often about identifying the right collaborators that can help give that project some grounding, whether that's a director or a dramaturg. 

So many works that focus on this topic tend to be either problem plays or very political, how does that influence these plays getting produced?

KF: It's a lens issue. For so long, stories about Middle Eastern or American Muslim people were told from a non-Middle Eastern lens. Post-9/11, [the depictions] tended to problematic - I hate that word, but it's right in this context - very shallow, surface and skewed. That happened even with Middle Eastern writers because they were giving in to the prevailing narrative. [Every work] becomes a problem play. Being Arab or being Muslim is a problem the play is trying to solve. I think what happens - and this is a greater issue with the industry - is that the plays that cross over into consciousness are problem plays. This is true of every under-represented community.

I hope we're moving towards a future where the idea of theater isn't only a place to deal only with societal problems and that problem is your race or religion. People don't know how to say, 'I'm committing to telling a Middle Eastern story that isn't making a statement about politics.' This sort of de-politicization is exactly what I'm personally trying to move towards in my work as a playwright and director. Just because you choose to see our community through this politicized lens, it doesn't mean that is the only way to tell our story. I think for our community to really thrive and to reach the level of nuance and specificity where we can see all of these different types of stories, we have to shift away from the idea that it's political theater. I think we'll be in a much better place when we have a Middle Eastern version of "Crazy Rich Asians." Something where it's truly a romantic comedy. I think it's happening. We're starting to have more Middle Eastern family stories. I'm seeing it with some of the new plays that are starting to get produced. 

Why do you think problem plays cross over into the consciousness more?

KF: Audiences like them because they think they're ‘doing the work’ just by seeing the play and having empathy for the characters. End of story. But there's a more difficult and complicated conversation that could come. I'm really curious to see what will happen post-COVID as we're grappling with programming in this post-shut-down reality. Particularly for my community, there are certain areas of the country where I think our stories can be very useful and those are not the parts of the country where our artists are getting represented. That's something that, on a personal level, I'm doing a lot of work to try to change.

For instance, I'm having a meeting with a theater in Arkansas. What would it mean for people in Little Rock to see a nuanced, complicated, thought-provoking story about Middle Eastern or Muslim life? Even if there are little to no Middle Eastern people locally? What is the conversation that could stem from that when white audiences actually have to do more work beyond just empathy? I'm really interested in this ‘post-empathy conversation.’ Empathy is low-hanging fruit.

There's a huge influx of Latinx/Black/queer stories being seen on stage, why do you think Middle Eastern plays aren't being discussed in that conversation as often?

KF: What's disappointing is that it's a bit of a follow-the-leader approach where essentially New York leads the charge. For a while, ‘Disgraced’ was one of the most produced plays in America. But what does it take for theaters in New Haven or Arkansas or Kansas to say, 'I'm committing to doing this Middle Eastern play even if it wasn't reviewed in the New York Times or win a Pulitzer prize?' They might not blink at the idea of taking a chance on a play by a white playwright, but when it's a Middle Eastern writer, it takes a push. I think my community is doing now what Black theater-makers were doing 30 years ago. We're saying that we want our stories to be told in every region of the country. Yes, we're smaller percentage-wise than a lot of others, but arguably, the stories relating to our community have had a massive impact on world events in the last 20 years. 

Do you have advice for theater companies who want to include more Middle Eastern representation in their season?

KF: I would say the best thing to do is read the work of and interact with members of the Middle Eastern community. What people will start to see quite soon is that there are more stories out there than they had imagined. I've heard industry people say a lot, 'If only I had more access to these plays.' I call bullshit on that. There's the internet, there are PDFs, there's the New Play Exchange, there are agents. If a theatre really wanted to identify a Middle Eastern play for consideration, it's very easy for them to get their hands on something. And I'm trying to make that even easier. If somebody reaches out to me and says, 'I want to read eight Middle Eastern plays,' I'm like, 'done, here they are in your inbox, go, enjoy.' Now is a great moment for people to read and get excited by the work of Middle Eastern playwrights because so much already exists.

When we start to zoom out and recognize, 'Oh, there are lots of interesting writers telling these stories,' it will become easier for a theatre to finally say, 'I need to bring them into my community.'

For more information on Kareem Fahmy, you can visit his website or Maia Director’s website. To learn more about the new generation of Middle Eastern American playwrights, visit the Middle Eastern American Writers Lab at The Lark. A virtual reading of Fahmy’s latest play, “A Distinct Society?,” will be airing for 72 hours starting at 7pm CT on October 21st as part of the International Voices Project Chicago. It can be viewed for free at: https://www.ivpchicago.org/calendar/2020/adistinctsociety-canada.