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
$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
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
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
$11.95–$15.00 Play Description
In October 1983 a truck filled with explosives blew up in a Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 242 soldiers. SEMPER FI explores the aftermath of that terrorist attack on the Marine Lt Colonel who was in charge.
Production Info
Cast: 7 total (2 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
THE TALENTED ONES looks at the thwarted dreams of immigrants eager to make it in their adopted country. As converts to the American Dream, how much more challenging and lethal do the notions of success and failure become? Omar is falling down in his attempts to make a success of his life, while his wife, Cindy, a fellow immigrant, appears to be doing much better, and is becoming increasingly frustrated by Omar’s struggles. His American best friend, Patrick, may be Cindy's way out. Mixing realism with memory and dance, THE TALENTED ONES dissects with increasing ferocity this couple's marriage and aspirations.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (2 female, 3 male, doubling)Full Length Comedy (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
Leila and Rashid, Egyptian Americans, attempt to solve their relationship issues by inviting a relative stranger into their bedroom to engage in a threesome. What begins as a hilariously awkward evening soon becomes an experience fraught with secrets, raising issues of sexism, possession, and independence.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (1 female, 2 male)Full Length Comedy (about 95 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
Recovering alcoholic John Owens was estranged from his family for decades before his son, a Marine, was killed in Afghanistan. Now, six years later, he receives an invitation to meet his widowed daughter-in-law and his grandson for the first time. From the streets of Los Angeles to a cramped apartment in Phoenix, he prepares to face the ghosts of his past. But nothing can prepare him for the people he'll really meet along the way — and their capacity for forgiveness.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (1 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
An action-adventure about a mission behind enemy lines during the Gulf War.
Production Info
Cast: 6 total (1 female, 5 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
A creative writing professor is called to the office of the college president for questioning. What has been going on in his classroom to provoke a growing controversy and attract the attention of the United States military? Is there a real threat, or is it imagined?
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (1 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$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
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
A groundbreaking masterpiece of the modern theatre. The play tells the tale of a poor soldier, a barber in the army, who is overwhelmed by the military and forced to become a human guinea pig for quasi-medical research. Consumed by jealousy over his lover’s infidelity, Woyzeck is driven to despair, to madness, and to murder. Poignant and grotesque, insightful and all-too-human, the play broke every theatrical mold of its time, paving the way for theatre as we know it today.
Production Info
Cast: 16 total (4 female, 12 male, doubling, bit parts, children, extras)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Period Costumes