Off-Broadway's PlayCo, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, The Flea, and Kelly Strayhorn Theater have extended their co-presentation the New York premiere of Amm(i)gone, an intimate exploration of love that goes beyond faith.
Partially inspired by Sophocles' Antigone, the piece is created, co-directed, and performed by Adil Mansoor, with co-director Lyam B. Gabel. The piece began performances March 13, and will now continue through April 14, adding a week to its originally announced run at The Flea.
As the show self-describes, "Adil Mansoor is a Virgo Pakistani-American theatre queerdo. His mother is an Aquarian hijabi Quranic scholar. Since she discovered Adil鈥檚 queerness online, their once-close bond now needs rescue. In Amm(i)gone, a portmanteau of 'ammi' ('mother' in Urdu) and the Greek heroine Antigone, Mansoor invites us on a journey of heartbreak and repair between mother and son as they embark on an examination and translation of Sophocles鈥� Antigone into Urdu. Passionately mining Greek tragedy, Islam, and their own memories, they seek to recover their love across faith."
Said Mansoor in a previous statement, 鈥淚n an attempt to connect with my mom and do the thing that makes me feel the most alive, I asked her to make a play with me. I asked her to adapt Antigone, this play about the afterlife and God and loving your family so hard that it could break you, and have her filter it through her lens as a hijabi Muslim woman. I had imagined we鈥檇 end up with a script for actors and set design鈥攖hat was my thesis pitch in graduate school. But it was never interesting to see it on other bodies. What was always the most powerful was my mom's voice. How she talks about Ismene, how she understands the world, the dramaturgy of this. Quickly, it became very clear the play was for me and my mom.鈥�
Using photos and artifacts from Mansoor鈥檚 childhood, videos of productions of Antigone from across the globe, and audio recordings of his mother, the piece of a rigorous autobiography, exploring how art and artist co-mingle into one.
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