Camyar Chai

In this sequel to the hilarious and hard-hitting The Adventures of Ali & Ali and the aXes of Evil, the agitprop collaborative team of Camyar Chai, Guillermo Verdecchia, and Marcus Youssef turns its idiosyncratic brand of political satire to new global realities. Following the election of U.S. president Barack Obama in 2008, collective optimism for a more tolerant, peaceful, and co-operative post- Bush world spreads to Canada -- and to the backroom of Salim's Falafel Shoppe in Toronto. There, Ali Hakim and Ali Ababwa, refugee entertainers from the fictitious, war-torn country of Agraba, are inspired to write a stage play in celebration of the new president's message of "hope and change." The premiere of their Yo Mama, Osbama! (or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Half-Black President) halts abruptly when an RCMP constable arrives at the theatre and arrests the pair for its financial ties to the Agrabanian People's Front, an alleged "terrorist organization" on the Canadian government's watch list. Continuity becomes more apparent than change when Ali and Ali are swiftly put on trial.As the hapless playwrights try to defend themselves in the farcical deportation hearing that unfolds, racial and cultural stereotypes are invoked -- and lampooned -- as quickly as dubious evidence is presented. But, in the midst of the biting comedy, more serious questions are raised about the cost for some when we endeavour to protect the "freedoms" of others. Cast of 1 woman and 3 men.

In this elaborate agitprop theatrical collaboration, the internal contradictions and duplicitous double-speak of the "war on terror" are exposed as the propaganda vehicles for the neo-colonialism of the West that they are. "Ali Hakim" and "Ali Ababwa," refugees from the imaginary country "Agraba," attempt to seduce their audience into providing them with food, refuge, security, freedom and the material benefits of Western consumer society, failing miserably at every step. A hard-hitting presentation of a play-within-a-play assaults the audience as Youssef, Verdecchia and Chai do Shakespeare, Shaw and Swift one better with an endless string of buffooneries and absurdities derived from an inversion of the cliches defining the geo-politics of the Middle East at the beginning of the 21st century. Informed by the research of Paul Krugman and Noam Chomsky, sent up by the post-modern cultural relativism of "Jean Paul Jacques Beauderrieredada," this political satire is not for the faint of heart. Cast of 4 men.