The Selected Works of Yussef El Guindi: Back of the Throat / Our Enemies: Lively Scenes of Love and Combat / Language Rooms / Pi

Description

A prolific playwright in the US, Egyptian-American playwright Yussef El Guindi explores, through his dramatic work, the immigrant experience. Addressing the personal, political and social encounters of those trying to adapt to new western countries and cultures, his plays are conceived and shaped with intelligence, sensibility and humour. This collection brings together works that span his career, from his first major play, Back of the Throat, to his boldly topical Threesome, throughout which he delves into the complex issues commonly felt by Arab immigrants in the US: Arabophobia, Islamophobia, media orientalism and bi-cultural issues. The plays featured in the anthology are: Back of the Throat Our Enemies: Lively Scenes of Love and Combat Language Rooms Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World Threesome Packed with supplementary information that expands upon and contextualises El Guindi's work, this collection is both an excellent compendium and a resource for study. Additional material includes: an annotated timeline of the playwright's life and work; an introduction by Professor Michael Malek Najjar (University of Oregon) that draws out themes within the plays and examines El Guindi's place in American theatre in the post-9/11 era; production stills of some productions of El Guindi's work; and El Guindi's essay Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Meet Abdallah and Ahmed: Musings about Arabs and Muslims in American Theatre.

Michael Malek Najjar is an associate professor of Theatre Arts at the University of Oregon, USA with a specialization in Arab American and Middle Eastern Theatre forms. He is the author of Arab American Drama, Film and Performance, 1908 to the Present and the editor of Four Arab American Plays: Works by Leila Buck, Jamil Khoury, Yussef El Guindi, and Lameece Issaq & Jacob Kader. He is on the advisory board of Arab Stages. Yussef El Guindi is a prolific Arab-American playwright of Egyptian descent whose works have been produced across the USA since Back of the Throat first premiered in 2004. He writes full-length, one-act, and adapted plays that focus on the Arab/Muslim experience in the United States. El Guindi has been the recipient of many prestigious playwriting awards including the Steinberg/American Theater Critics Association's New Play Award, Gregory Award, Edgerton Foundation New Play Award, ACT New Play Award, Seattle Times' "Footlight Award", the M. Elizabeth Osborn Award, L.A. Weekly's Excellence in Playwriting Award, Chicago's After Dark/John W. Schmid Award for Best New Play, and the Middle East America Distinguished Playwright Award.

Rarely does cultural criticism in theater take such an entertaining form as "The Selected Works of Yussef El Guindi." This volume, with a valuable introduction provided by Michael Malek Najjar, has something for everyone. It dishes out humor in large heapings, and doles out plenty of curtain-worthy drama and surprise twists. Nor are we spared the mess of human existence; the careening intersections of dogmas and idiosyncrasies. * Al Jadid Magazine * This first collection of work from the leading Arab-American dramatist, with an impressive body of supplementary material, would be an important contribution in its own right, but Yussef El Guindi's ongoing exploration of the negotiations of a minority group in the United States today, especially a minority so symbolically central as the Arab-Americans, gives his work particular interest and importance. This collection should be on the shelf not only of anyone interested in the contemporary American theatre, but of anyone interested in the dynamics of minority populations in the U.S, today-arguably the nation's most pressing social and cultural concern. * Marvin Carlson, Distinguished Professor, Graduate Center, The Graduate Center, CUNY, USA * To refer to Yussef El Guindi as only an influential Arab-American playwright would be to taper off the width of his contributions to world theater. While the human experiences within which he writes include many liminal characters living "in-and-between" time and space, his overall dramatic view of humanity is universal and transcends the lens of hybridity. Yussef El Guindi composes his plays with precision, intellect and humor; and with a supertext that connects all his works together. Yussef El Guindi writes with both reader and spectator in mind and his work is both dramatic literature and theatrical. * Dina Amin, Associate Professor of Drama and Performance, Cairo University, Egypt *