The Waiting Room

Iranian American playwright

Layla Dowlatshahi

Fri., Nov. 5, 2-4 p.m.
PENN Studio Theatre, Annenberg Theatre

After the performance, the playwright will discuss “Research and Writing” and will invite questions from the audience. A Halal reception will follow.

Set in Bosnia in 1992 and at the U. N. Tribunal in 2002, this play investigates the institutionalized rapes of thousands of Muslim women and girls in Foca, Bosnia, as part of a campaign of genocidal ethnic cleansing in which Christians murdered thousands of men and boys and then for nearly a year imprisoned and repeatedly raped their grandmothers, mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters. The New York Times on April 4, 2004, featured Ms. Dowlatshahi, who immigrated to California as a child with her Shiite Muslim family. In December 2003, her earlier play, The Joys of Lipstick, had a successful run at the Producers Club in New York City.

For more information, please contact the director of the staged reading:

Dr. Mera Moore
Penn Writing Fellow
tmlaffer@sas.upenn.edu

Sponsored by PENN Theatre Arts Program (http://www.english.upenn.edu/~tharts).
Special thanks to the University of Pennsylvania Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, Comparative Literature and Literary Studies Program, Critical Writing Program, Department of English, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Department of Religious Studies, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, and Department of Women’s Studies, Kelly Writers House, Muslim Students Association, and Penn Tower Hotel.

All opinions presented in the performance are exclusively those of the playwright, director, and actors and are not to be construed as representing the opinions of all Middle Eastern Americans or the University of Pennsylvania.