It's 1978 and protests are breaking out all across Iran encroaching on this suburb where a tight-knit circle of girlfriends plans weddings trades dirty jokes and tries to hang onto a sense of normalcy. But as the revolution escalates each woman is forced to join the wave of emigration or face an equally uncertain future at home. With breathtaking humanity and cutting wit Wish You Were Herechronicles a decade of life during war as best friends forever become friends long lost scattered and searching for home.
Winner! 2023 Pulitzer Prize in DramaWinner! 2023 Obie Award for Best New American PlayIt's 2008 and four Iranians assemble triweekly in a TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) class in Karaj Iran. The students are led by Marjan an anglophile who abolishes Farsi from her classroom. They translate Ricky Martin and endure major preposition confusion; they discover how to be funny in English and ponder what they will lose in the process. As the class slowly devolves into a linguistic mess some students cling tighter to their mother tongue while others embrace the possibilities of a new language.
Obie Award for Best New American Play: EnglishTwo breakout plays by an Iranian-American playwright that examine the human costs of migration, both for those who leave their home country and for those who stay. Sanaz Toossi's English is a comic and empathetic play about a group of Iranian students taking an English language class in the hopes of passing the challenging TOEFL exam. Navigating word games and listening exercises, the students make every effort to become fluent enough to migrate abroad in order to pursue their disparate goals--one hopes to reunite with her Canadian son, another wishes to pursue medical school in Australia. All feel a tension between their Iranian homeland and their hoped-for future. In Wish You Were Here, the focus shifts to a close-knit group of women who initially decide to remain in Iran following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. However, priorities shift as their fluctuating friendships begin to mirror the quickly changing political realities of the country. Taken together, these two plays provide a deeply humanizing portrait of the complex effects of diaspora both within and outside of Iran.
