Hostages
Play Description
Two college professors have left their homeland for a country that soon devolves into a war zone. They're accustomed to lives of comfort, but it's hard to get comfortable when you're chained to a radiator. HOSTAGES explores the intricacies of human nature when it's deprived of personal contact and torn from the pleasantries of everyday life.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (3 male)Full Length Drama (about 80 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
- Productions
Press Quotes
“As the play opens two blindfolded early-middle-aged men are chained to an old-fashioned steam radiator in an otherwise empty room. Kidnapped by terrorists, both are college professors, who had been teaching at a foreign university … The starkly different personalities of the two are revealed [in] dialogue [that] is incredibly witty and full of gallows humor, yet psychological insights abound … Enlightening without being didactic, [HOSTAGES is] outstanding creative theatre.” —Marie Bonfils, Drama in the Hood
“This is must-see theatre, for if the role of theatre is not solely to entertain but to provoke contemplation about our humanity — even if it means assaulting our senses, sensibilities, and assumptions and creating discomfort — then HOSTAGES fits the bill … It is a measure of El Guindi’s genius and craftsmanship that he pulls the audience aboard the excursion.” —Herbert Paine, Broadway World Review
“HOSTAGES is about our individual humanity and the related concept of fellowship. Echoing, in different ways, works by Sartre and Beckett, El Guindi explores how we survive on our own and how we survive with each other; what makes us ourselves and what makes us — and prevents us from being — free. HOSTAGES ranks as compelling and worthy theatre.” —Martin Denton, nytheater.com
“El Guindi’s dialogue and humor are sharp enough to cut.” —Thom Taylor, Spectator Magazine
Author(s)
Yussef El GuindiBorn in Egypt, raised in London, and now based in Seattle, Yussef El Guindi’s work frequently examines the collision of ethnicities, cultures, and politics that face Arab-Americans and Muslim Americans. El Guindi holds an MFA in playwriting from Carnegie Mellon University and has worked as resident playwright at Silk Road Theatre Project; literary manager for Golden Thread Productions; and playwright-in-residence at Duke University. He is the recipient of many honors, including the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award and the 2010 Middle East America Distinguished Playwright Award. El Guindi's most recent productions include THE TALENTED ONES at Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland (Santa Barbara Independent Indy Awards); THREESOME at Portland Center Stage, ACT, and at 59E59 (winner of a Portland Drammy for Best Original Script); PILGRIMS MUSA AND SHERI IN THE NEW WORLD (winner of the Steinberg/American Theater Critics Association's New Play Award in 2012; and the 2011 Gregory Award) also at ACT, and at Center Repertory Company (Walnut Creek, CA) 2013; and LANGUAGE ROOMS (Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award), co-produced by Golden Thread Productions and the Asian American Theater Company in San Francisco; at the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia (premiere), and at the Los Angeles Theater Center. Other productions: OUR ENEMIES: LIVELY SCENES OF LOVE AND COMBAT was produced by Silk Road Theater Project and won the M. Elizabeth Osborn award. His play BACK OF THE THROAT (winner of L.A. Weekly's Excellence in Playwriting Award for 2006), PILGRIMS MUSA AND SHERI IN THE NEW WORLD, JIHAD JONES AND THE KALASHNIKOV BABES, SUCH A BEAUTIFUL VOICE IS SAYEDA and KARIMA’S CITY have been published by Dramatists Play Service. TEN ACROBATS IN AN AMAZING LEAP OF FAITH, COLLABORATOR, THREESOME, and THE TALENTED ONES have been published by Broadway Play Publishing Inc. OUR ENEMIES: LIVELY SCENES OF LOVE AND COMBAT is published in the anthology FOUR ARAB AMERICAN PLAYS published by McFarland Books. In January 2019, Bloomsbury will publish SELECTED WORKS BY YUSSEF EL GUINDI. Currently a Core Company playwright member at ACT in Seattle, 2018.
Special Notes
If original stage producers credits appear in bold below, all licensees are required to include them in the following form on the title page in all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play and in all advertising in which the full cast appears in size of type not less than ten percent (10%) of the size of the title of the Play:
In addition, the following must appear within all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play:
by special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing Inc, NYC
www.broadwayplaypub.com
Related Plays
$0.00–$15.95 Play Description
East meets West meets mayhem in this Muslim-American family comedy evoking universal themes of faith, culture, belonging, and desire. TEN ACROBATS adds a new chapter to the American immigrant narrative.
Production Info
Cast: 10 total (4 female, 6 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
Play Description
BETWEEN THIS BREATH AND YOU takes place after hours in the waiting room of a clinic in West Jerusalem, where a Palestinian father confronts a nurse's aide, a young Israeli woman, about the meaning of the loss of his son and the impact it had on her life.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (1 female, 2 male)Short Drama (about 30 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
Play Description
Based on a true story, a kidnapped “cowboy” Marine serving the U N in Lebanon’s maze of rival Muslims drags America into this new world as the mystery of his capture unfolds.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (1 female, 6 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
O JERUSALEM centers around an American State Department official who becomes entangled in Middle Eastern politics before and after September 11, 2001. Along the way, the protagonist encounters a Palestinian woman from his past.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (3 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
MORE LIES ABOUT JERZY explores the life of a celebrated Polish writer, who comes under fire when the veracity of his award-winning Holocaust memoir is questioned. A startling meditation on art, truth, celebrity, and the artist’s responsibility to his subjects and himself.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (2 female, 5 male, doubling)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00 Play Description
The play chronicles the selfless acts of Janusz Korczak, the teacher and director. Korczak strove to give the children of the Warsaw Ghetto a sense of normalcy despite the horrific conditions and eventually chose to leave with them for the Treblinka death camp.
Production Info
Cast: 13 total (4 female, 9 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
Before heading off to war in Iraq, Casey Johnson neatly organizes her life into a box of lists, envelopes, and registration forms for her son's activities. Months later, she returns to Western Pennsylvania forever changed, with deep psychological scars that no amount of arranging seems to be able to fix.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (3 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
In this lyrical, searing one-act, an American soldier has an unexpected encounter with two Afghan sisters who are ready to embark on a new life. Their fates — and his — become entangled as the lines between their divergent realities become dangerously blurred.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (2 female, 1 male)Full Length Drama (about 50 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00 Play Description
Three years ago, Sarah Kennedy thought she was hired as a translator for a corporate military prison in Baghdad, only to discover that she would be acting as an interrogator instead, retrieving information from prisoners of war — by any means necessary. Now, Lily Strauss, a disgraced reporter in the waning days of newspaper journalism, must uncover Sarah's story, cutting through webs of corporate lies and government deception until finally faced with the choice between her own journalistic ideals and the devastating consequences of telling the truth. A political thriller, ON THE HEAD OF A PIN is an exploration of who watches the watchers and what happens when they look away.
Production Info
Cast: 9 total (5 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 170 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
Midway through Albert Camus's The Stranger, an Arab is killed. Leaping from this moment and working backwards through possible histories of tangled romance, ethnic conflict, and random violence, Betty Shamieh has crafted a play inspired by this unnamed character. Infused with elements of Middle Eastern oral storytelling traditions and set in French Algiers on the brink of revolution, THE STRANGEST is an absurdist murder mystery about three Algerian brothers who vie for the love of the same woman. Their bitter rivalry ends with one brother being inexplicably gunned down by a French stranger.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (2 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
A comedy about the Iran-Contra affair.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (1 female, 7 male)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes