Disgraced: A Play

by Ayad Akhtar

"Sparkling and combustible" (Bloomberg Businessweek), "DISGRACED rubs all kinds of unexpected raw spots with intelligence and humor" (Newsday). "In dialogue that bristles with wit and intelligence, Akhtar puts contemporary attitudes toward religion under a microscope, revealing how tenuous self-image can be for people born into one way of being who have embraced another.... Everyone has been told that politics and religion are two subjects that should be off-limits at social gatherings. But watching these characters rip into these forbidden topics, there's no arguing that they make for ear-tickling good theater" (New York Times). "Add a liberal flow of alcohol and a couple of major secrets suddenly revealed, and you've got yourself one dangerous dinner party" (Associated Press).

Genres: Plays, Drama, Fiction, Theatre, School, Religion, Read For School

105 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 25, 2013

About the author

Ayad Akhtar is a playwright, novelist, the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is the author of American Dervish (Little, Brown & Co.), published in over 20 languages and named a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2012. As a playwright, he has written Junk (Lincoln Center, Broadway; Kennedy Prize for American Drama, Tony nomination); Disgraced (Lincoln Center, Broadway; Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony nomination); The Who & The What (Lincoln Center); and The Invisible Hand (NYTW; Obie Award, Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award, Olivier, and Evening Standard nominations). As a screenwriter, he was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay for The War Within. Among other honors, Akhtar is the recipient the Steinberg Playwrighting Award, the Nestroy Award, the Erwin Piscator Award, as well as fellowships from the American Academy in Rome, MacDowell, the Sundance Institute, and Yaddo, where he serves as a Board Director. Additionally, Ayad is a Board Trustee at PEN/America and New York Theatre Workshop.

Reviews

[Jeff · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I admire what Akhtar is up to here, I just don't see what Pulitzer Committee did. For one thing, this play suffers from what I like to call "God of Carnage" syndrome: let's get a bunch of upper-class, educated folk in a room and wait until they say terrible things to each other. In addition, I believe I have already read a play a character of Islamic background attempting to assimilate into the dominant culture but being driven to behave in the expected violently-stereotypical fashion by that dominant culture--it's called "Othello."

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this play on the recommendation of a friend who has seen the play and then bought a copy and promptly loaned it to me to read. My immediate response on finishing was "Wow!" I can't imagine how powerful this would be to see on the stage.

Amir and Emily are living a very good American life---she is a white artist, he an Indian/Pakistani lawyer with a high-powered New York law firm. She is hoping for her own show, he for eventual partnership. He has resoundlingly denied any and all Islamic roots/heritage in his past. She is using Islamic motifs in her art. Identity will be front and center in this drama, particularly Islamic identity in the 21st century both personal and how they are perceived by others. Self-identity is crucial.

Akhtar provides a powerful exploration of the subject and I very much recommend this to any who are interested in exploration of various facets of this topic. It's complex; it can be angry, confusing. But it also seems a conversation that should be had and should be ongoing.

[david · Rating 5 out of 5]

Three attorneys and an artist.

Two females and two males.

Two are Muslims and one is a Jew and we have a white American Muslim wannabe.

At one of the couple's apartment in Manhattan for a dinner. In four acts.

This is a great little play written by a Muslim man of Pakistani descent and born in the United States.

The play concerns itself with American Muslims, with American Muslims and Jews, with men and women, with interfaith marriages, with 9/11, with al Qaeda, with the Quran and other bibles, with Islam's attitude toward the United States.

It may have won a Pulitzer.

It covers a lot of what we all have thought about but never discussed.

It is not an emotionally easy play to read. It may be discomfiting.

I would recommend it.

(and see, no personal commentary about lawyers)

[Vartika · Rating 4 out of 5]

"For three hundred years they've been taking our land, drawing new borders, replacing our laws, making us want to be like them. Marry their women.
They disgraced us. They disgraced us.
And then they pretend they don't understand the rage we've got?"

Disgraced is a taut and incisive one-act play that puts Western ideas of tolerance under the microscope while also nuancing on the burden of 'otherness' that is carried even by those trying their hardest to assimilate.

Winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the play is captained by Amir Kapoor née Abdullah, a Pakistani-American mergers and acquisitions specialist going for partner at his all-Jewish law firm. He has changed his name to a more 'digestible' brand of South Asian (in popular parlance, his racial identity would be referred to as "7/11 brown" rather than "9/11 brown"), and distanced himself enough from his cultural roots to lead a successful life on the Upper East Side. But racial tension is ever-present in modern-day America, and we feel it the moment we meet him for the first time, being painted by his wife Emily—a white artist influenced by Islamic imagery—in a recreation of an old painting of a slave.

Emily is appreciative of Islamic culture but sheltered from the consequences of being associated with it due to her whiteness and apparent wealth—she doesn't know what it entails for someone's identity—and so urges her reluctant husband to give a statement at the court hearing for an imam (wrongly) accused of raising funds for terrorism. This is where Amir's life begins unravelling, but things really come to a head when the couple host a dinner party for two of their colleagues and the polite social band-aids come to be swiftly ripped away.

I really enjoyed the way Akhtar picks apart at white liberalism in just four short scenes: from cultural appropriation to policing someone's opinions about a religion and culture they have grown up with and you haven't, everything is covered with subtlety and, dare I say it, grace. It showcases how the idea of 'doing the right thing' has an entirely different meaning and baggage to it when you're white and when you're not, and how stereotypes often nest right under the cover of friendliness, waiting for a moment of candidness to trigger judgement.

The larger theme about the barriers that come with 'otherness' is also explored deftly: I found myself confused by the extents to which Amir goes to distance himself from his Muslim identity, until it became apparent that it is exactly the thing to destroy his chances at living peacefully in the warped psyche of a post-Twin Towers world. And if Amir does go Othello towards the end of the play, it isn't so much as him jumping back into the racist stereotypes constructed around 'people like him' as being pushed into it, despite all resistance, by the people around him (and perhaps even his own decisions as a self-declared 'apostate'). Brown skin, whatever mask—you simply can't win in the Occident.

There is so much to Disgraced than can be described in writing, and yet it amazes me how powerful this play was even when simply read off the page. I can't wait to see this performed and hope that the ten-year passage means another production may be in the works soon.

Highly, highly recommend!

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ayad Akhtar, author of the successful novel American Dervish (still on my TBR pile), is a Pakistani-American novelist and playwright whose 2013 play Disgraced has been a hit on the stage. I haven't seen it, unfortunately, but I suspect that the stage production would have all the intensity, dynamism, energy and tension that the script eludes to but lacks. This is a play that doesn't read all that well, but would be, I'm sure, a strong story in the hands of the right actors and director. That said, it is still a memorable and interesting play to read.

Disgraced is the story of a successful New York couple, Amir and Emily. Amir, a lawyer, is of South Asian origins while his wife, Emily, is a white American. This miscegenation creates instant tension for the audience in the context of place and time, not only because of our cultural understandings around mixed-race couples in post-9-11 America, but because Emily, an artist, is sketching Amir after being inspired by an old painting of a slave. Emily has an interest in middle eastern art and culture, but as much as she understands and sympathises with people like Amir, she doesn't really know because she's never lived it. Her white privilege - as well as her class and apparent wealth - shelter her, and cause her to miss the simmering tension in her husband, his prickly argumentativeness.

Religion is, as you might expect, a key element in Disgraced. Amir was raised Muslim but is now an atheist with little patience for any religion, or religious excuses. Still, he lets his nephew and his wife get him involved in the case of an imam being accused of funding terrorism. As a lawyer, he works for a profitable law firm and feels confident that he will make partner, while Emily is given a big break with a solo exhibition at the Whitney, a gallery curated by Isaac whose wife, Jory, is a lawyer at the same firm as Amir. Jory is African-American while Isaac is white; there is clear sexual tension between Emily and Isaac, two white people in mixed-race marriages.

The play builds up to a dinner scene between the two couples, where things get heated. The climax of the play, though, is both shocking in its swift and hideous violence and also inevitable. It is also the moment when you lose respect for the characters and start to feel like we are instruments of our own doom because we are incapable of escaping or surmounting cultural differences, expectations and prejudices. For all Amir is intelligent, highly educated, self-reflective and, in some small ways, a victim, he is also just as human - just as fallible and flawed - as anyone else. Ultimately, it is a play about people who disappoint, in a culture or society that disappoints even more. Several big issues and themes are raised in four short scenes, and Akhtar does well presenting the characters in all their flawed glory without moralising or making clear what course of action is the 'right' one. It is clear, however, what is wrong, and one of the interesting things about this play is just many different kinds of things can be deemed 'wrong', from adultery to disowning your birth culture, from domestic violence to terrorism.

There are so many ways human beings can stuff up, which Disgraced explores, as well as what we can lose of ourselves and each other in doing so, and what externalities we can be a slave to.

Read in October 2016.

[Tex Tourais · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a play, what a play. Act III is an absolute punch to the gut, even in the reading of it. I can't imagine seeing this play performed, but I'm sure the experience is unforgettable...

We're dealing with Post-9/11 issues of Muslim identity and the role of art (and representation) in forming/deconstructing/exploding that identity, and, goodness gracious, does Akhtar pack a heckuva lot into 90 minutes.

[Kelly · Rating 1 out of 5]

This play won a Pulitzer, which is as amazing as it is disheartening. Like many people, I’ve spent a good deal of time reading and discussing issues of faith and identity in the context of global terrorism. This play’s conversations around these topics are eye-rolling in their mundanity; which may be realistic, but constitutes a missed opportunity to raise the level of discourse—and provide some fresh insight.

In addition, we’re treated to yet another display of grotesquely fortunate people fussing and worrying about their privileged positions while swilling booze and dining on gourmet food (i.e., “I picked up the recipe when I was on a Fulbright in Seville.”) Really?! I’m sure this script popped off the page when it was staged to acclaim in New York and Chicago, but on the page its lack of depth is glaringly apparent.

[alex]

one of my favorite plays i’ve read for school.

i really enjoyed the complex discussions surrounding religion and who gets to speak on it. very interesting characters.

i have a hard time rating plays but i would recommend this for sure.

[Theo Logos · Rating 5 out of 5]

This play juggles bottles of nitroglycerin while it’s audience braces for the explosion. Strong characters and sharp, fast paced dialogue plunge into the dangerous territory of racial and religious prejudice, cultural appropriation, personal identity, and systematic discrimination. It’s characters are forced to face unsettling realities and drop comfortable illusions as personal reversals intrude and alcohol loosens the carefully constructed correct speech we have all learned to use, revealing a messier reality below the surface.

Disgraced is a reminder that our cultures have twisted all of us, and that papering over that with correct speech and liberal assumptions is not sufficient to fix the problems that still lie beneath. These characters fail rather spectacularly when these polite social bandaids are yanked away, and it makes for outstanding drama. The play’s implicit warning is that we should all look beneath our own bandaids and attend to what they hide. I highly recommend the excellent LA Theater Works production.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This play won the Pulitzer for Drama in 2012.

It is very well written with a tight script. It covers the important topic of islamophobia.

My only real criticism is that while the play is dramatic enough, I would have liked to have seen a bigger plot twist maybe one that required a second act.

4 stars

[Atheer Naeem · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although the writing was ok ( most of it anyway) and shifting between memories and current moments was easy and kept my train of thoughts. However, Amir’s point of views really made me angry because muslims dont get happy or prideful for the deaths of innocent people because of some retarded people who seriously don’t represent islam. I dont see why the author had to make Emily cheat on him and i dont see the relevance between him helping/supporting the Imam and she cheating on him. I can understand the unfairness of people when they stereotype against a group of people just because their religion and i can totally see how every group raise their children on hating the other religions and their people, but once a person is old enough to think for themselves thy can’t keep blaming their parents for the unreasonable hate they have against the world !

[Allan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been planning on putting together and teaching a class about religion and theatre in America ... I really want to teach this play. It's so interesting. I appreciate that Akhtar criticizes white liberal privilege, but he doesn't leave it toothless or caricatured like I found with Clybourne Park. Still trying to figure out what to do or make with the ending, but definitely powerful stuff.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

And so the question becomes, well, what is the reading of this play? My contention is that your reading of this play tells you a lot about yourself. And I'm reminded of that wonderful thing Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the New Wave German filmmaker, once said, about how he wished to create a revolution not on the screen but in the audience.

from "An Interview With Ayad Akhtar"

Amir: If I ever hear that name in this house again, Amir, she said, I'll break your bones. You will end up with a Jew over my dead body. Then she spat in my face.

Emily: My God.

Amir: That's so you don't ever forget, she says. Next day? Rivkah comes up to me in the hall with a note. Hi, Amir, she says. Eyes sparkling. I look at her and say, You've got the name of a Jew. She smiles. Yes, I'm Jewish, she says.
(Beat)
Then I spit in her face.

Emily: That's horrible.

Abe: Man. That's effed up.

Amir: So, when my older sister goes on to you about this way and the other way, now you'll have a better idea of the phase I'm really going through...It's called intelligence.

Ayad Akhtar's Pulitzer Prize winning play Disgraced examines a wealthy Pakistani-descended lawyer rolling with the legal high rollers in New York City. He is powerful; he screams at people on the phone, he wears $600 dollar shirts with excellent thread counts. He has a white wife, Emily, a talented, respected artist whose work is being vetted by high rollers in the art world. They have scintillating conversations, drop references to hip New York bakeries and Woody Allen films at fancy dinner parties where fennel salad garners substantive dialogue. The character roster is richly diversified: American Arab man with his talented American artist white wife having dinner with American-Jewish art director and his African American high-rolling lawyer wife. Did Akhtar miss anything?

Underneath the banality of the setting, dialogue, and plot of this play burns the question of who is the character of Amir, how are we to understand him? In a play burgeoning with clichés, Amir's character is startling in its originality. The play pivots on Amir's caustic dismissal of Islam and full-blooded embrace of Western, capitalistic culture. I wish Akhtar had placed Amir's character in a more original play. As written, the play comes across like an updated version of Othello, wherein Amir, despite his intelligence and diligence, succumbs to acting out a stereotype when emotionally provoked.

The structure of the play, in the end, is claustrophobic. Akhtar puts so much effort getting his pieces into place without any real finesse. He creates a situation where Amir's reaction is meant to shock the audience into...I'm not sure--hopelessness? Profound insights? In his final comments in the interview after the play in this edition, Akhtar emphasizes how he wants the audience to wrestle with his play. Yet, despite these noble aspirations, the play is rather preachy until the shit hits the fan. Then the play becomes elusive, enigmatic. Akhtar maintains the "emotional impact" of his drama is designed for the edification of the audience. The process kind of works, and, then again, maybe it doesn't, since it relies so much on the reception of the audience. Amir's tragic cycle deserves more: You're the dramatist Akhtar. Finish the play in a manner which still allows the audience the opportunity to piece things together but not the responsibility of cobbling together the entire conclusion.

I'll close with another excerpt from the interview where the interviewee wisely brings this aspect of the play up and Akhtar admits he's not sure what to make of his own play:

Look, at the end of the day, art's capacity to change the world is profoundly limited. But what it can do is change the way we see things individually. I aspired to accomplish with this structure a kind of shattering of the audience, after which they have to find some way to put themselves back together.

MY [Interviewer]: Let me ask you, then, in response to what you've just said: Is the play hopeful or hopeless, from your perspective as the playwright?

AA: I'm not sure that it's either. What it is, I hope, is an access point to a state of presence.

[Lani · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Disgraced” is a Pulitzer Prize winning play, talking about life in the US as an immigrants child and conflicts with growing up as “different”. The main character Amir - a renounced muslim - and his wife Emily deal with conflicts of different religions and how you are perceived different being a muslim. This results in many discussions/fights that are being talked about in the play.

The general writing style is comfortable and easily understandable with a decent understanding of the English language. The story is very fast paced and consists of four different scenes that are all weeks/months apart.
The post-9/11 life of muslims and being discriminated as a successful child immigrants had me thinking.
Generally the play is talking about many important topics and is going at it the correct way, but the main character and toxic relationships were unnecessary to me. Of course it made the play more interesting and amplified the conflict, but the way it was portrayed was not for me.
I understand why it is portrayed as so good, but I don’t think it was so good that it should’ve won the Pulitzer Prize.
Probably wouldn’t have read it on my own.

2,5/5 Stars from someone who is very critical with her book rating.

[Julene · Rating 5 out of 5]

The play is in my city with a series of discussion groups, so I read the book and went to the first of four Speak Ups! "What is the Reality of being a Muslim at this moment in time?" then went to the play. One of the original actors was on the Speak Up! panel, Behzad Dabu who plays Abe, and he commented that when the book was republished the publisher removed the two epigraphs the author had at the front of the book:
"And when one prefers one's own children to the children of others, war is near." From the Mahabharata, spoken by the character Gandhari.
And, "For the black man there is only one destiny. And it is white." Frantz Fanon from Black Skins, White Masks.
It is regretable these were removed, because this sets some of the context for this intense play, which is the most produced plays of 2015 and will be for 2016 as well.

Disgraced casts characters counterpuntal into roles they are not usually perceived in, on purpose. Amir no longer identifies as Muslim, he is successful at a law firm and expecting to be made into a partner. He is married to a caucasian artist, Emily, who uses Islamic geometrics in her art. The other couple is a Jewish husband, Isaac, a curator and high up official at the Guggenheim, and his wife Jory, an African American lawyer at the same law firm as Amir.

There is triangulation going on with Emily and Amir's nephew Abe, who is Muslim, younger, and he wants his uncle's support for friends who are having problems with immigration. Emily and Abe are insistent that he goes to a hearing, which he does against his will, and he was right, it was not be good for his career.

The dinner party is intense as it is revealed that Rory has been promoted and not Amir, and Issac and Emily had a sexual encounter on a business trip. Tensions run high and there is a violent scene.

The theater is having discussions after every show and it is the kind of play that is disturbing and good to air what people are experiencing. Many issues are raised that are pertinent to our times. I hope many people will see this play and take time to listen to people who come from Muslin cultures. Our usual sterotypes need to be broken and put together in new ways and I think this play was writen with this intention, especially given the deleted epigraphs.

[Aaron Thomas · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is well written. I mean, at least for a problem play it moves rather quickly. But it can't get past its genre. Akhtar has written a play "about" an "issue" rather than something that uses the medium of theatre in some kind of interesting way.

It is clear to me too, especially in this first Back Bay Books edition, which contains an interview with the author, that Akhtar is interested in exploring how "Westerns" see Muslims – that the modern Muslim needs to examine Orientalism and begin to deal with how he (always he in this play) is seen by "Westerners". Accordingly, this play explains a lot of what Edward Saïd called Orientalism in his 1972 book. "Westerners" see Muslims as devious, untrustworthy, violent, trapped in time, and alarmingly devoted to religion. Disgraced uses the term Muslim psyche; it does so with a level of irony, but it also doesn't really offer a critique of these orientalist ideas. Instead, the play's main character turns out to be everything the "Westerners" thought he was all along. He has tried to ignore his "Muslim psyche", but his deviousness, violence, superstitions, and backwardness are dyed in the wool, and he can't seem to deny them.

The problem with all of this is that Disgraced – although its central message seems to be one aimed at Muslims living in the US or the UK and asking Muslims to respond to how they're perceived by Europeans – basically confirms all of the Orientalist assumptions since the period of Chateaubriand and Nerval that Saïd was trying to critique!

In many ways the play itself is Orientalism in Saïd's sense – the play is part of the complex of knowledges that the "West" tells itself about the "East".

What frustrates me the most about Disgraced is the way that the play, with all of its seeming willingness to explore the "Muslim psyche", simply leaves the "West" unanalyzed. The "East", with its racist assumptions, gets explored on a surface level here. The "West" apparently needs no exegesis at all. And so the problem of this problem play remains "Muslims in the 'West'" rather than the complex of racist assumptions that Orientalism comprises.

[Ksenija Popović · Rating 4 out of 5]

In spite of many negative reviews I found here, I think this play deserves five stars.

I have lived away from my homeland almost all my life, and struggled with mentality, tradition and religion since always. It's like I never fit anywhere, because I'm too balkanic for the West, and too western for the Balkans. And that's exactly the protagonist's problem. He wants to condemn the way of life that has pushed his parents to emigrate, and embrace the western way to the point of denying and criticizing everything about his religion and heritage. The western way has brought him success and comfort, while the Muslim way, he says, is only fit for life in the desert in the VIII century.

Of course, as it usually goes, running away from oneself is a much more complex and difficult task, as the protagonist (and all of us coming from countries with conflict) learns throughout the play, especially in a post-9/11 America.

A terrific read.

[Lizzy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wasn’t sure what to think about this but I read the interview with the playwright where the author mentioned the horrific ending is “understandable.” Definitely don’t agree there. The point of his play seemed to get a reaction and make people think about how they feel on the topics covered, but I don’t think this play really did anything super new or interesting. It didn’t really make me question any of my beliefs or presumptions. It just made me annoyed with each character and the typical rich people at a dinner party angrily debating Sensitive Topics conversation. Everything just seemed really obvious and forced. Anyways, the author’s pretentious answers and the ending just didn’t really make me feel that strongly about this play. Maybe it’s better watching it.

[Jonfaith · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very intriguing and troubling statement on identity. There is also a rumination on art and representation but it overshadowed by the racial arc. A wealthy attorney of South Asian heritage lives a posh life with his white artist wife in a post September 11 NYC. The machinations of drama ensue. There are digressions on thread counts, the Koran and fennel salad.

I’ve seen a number of plays which tread a similar path. There is an abundance of type in this exercise. That served to mitigate the violence to a degree.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pulitzer Prize for Drama Winner, 2013

Amir is Pakistani-Indian-American who is a high-powered attorney in New York. He has renounced the Islamic faith of his family. His wife, Emily, is a white American woman who uses Islamic concepts in her artwork.

The story kicks off with Emily asking Amir to represent an imam who is accused of being a terrorist. This sets a series of events in motion which all come to a head at a dinner scene. The drama is cranked up to eleven as Amir argues with his dinner guest about the nature of Islam.

Like most modern dramas, this is a quick, single-sitting read. It is high drama with a bit of violence. I imagine this was very powerful to see performed on stage.

[Hari Patel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not much of a play boy but I spotted this in the library and torched through it in an evening. It was pretty ham-fisted at points and overdramatic/unnecessary at the end (maybe the nature of a 90 min play?) but the tragedy of the main characters attempt at assimilation and subsequent rejection from all sides is interesting to observe and reflect on.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

My Thoughts
Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2013

[toniii antony · Rating 4 out of 5]

before you read this book: DON’T EXPECT IT TO BE WHOLESOME OR COMING OF AGE/ACCEPTANCE.

this was a MESS. but very interesting i must admit, it definitely hooked me. i got chills after i finished, and i appreciate the rawness of the play.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe even 4.5*

[Leo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I saw Akhtar's play Disgraced as produced by Playmakers Repertory at UNC in October 2015.

It was a tough year for the triangle. In Feb, Dean Barakat, Yusor and Razan Abu-Salha, three beautiful smart and talented Arab Americans in their early 20s were murdered in their home by their neighbor at point blank. I had gone to the trial hearing of the murderer at the Durham County Courthouse on a couple of occasions. For weeks after I couldn't sleep. That same spring, a Duke student hung a noose on campus, triggering tumultuous uproar, protesting and dialogues.

In the residual heartbreak and fury of that year, weighed down by the volatility that America tries to escape but holds integral at its very core, I remember all my unprocessed emotions boiling over the edge as the dramatically explosive play concluded. It had proved to be the catalyst of the beginning of the end of my time in America, and of my realization that there is no nontoxic way of being an American or to simply exist in this country, that to exist here is to engage in an exercise of ill-perceived choice between mutually exclusive identities. One can console oneself by claiming the struggle is complex and multi-layered, and it might well be, but the country does not have the capacity to accept you in your nuanced complexity. It would be a futile mission to see the entire national enterprise since its founding as anything but a fundamentally unstable polarising trap.

Perhaps that's pessimistic. But I do think Akhtar's depiction of naked conflict and anger and its protagonists' inner volatility helped point me towards the exit sign of America.

[Rachelle Urist · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm surprised this won a Pulitzer. It has substance, sure, but there are a few too many contrivances and forced dialogue for this to have beat other contenders for that prize.

In his review in the New York Times, Charles Isherwood loved the acting, but had some reservations about the script. He wrote (towards the end of his review):

"There’s more than a little contrivance in the interlocking relationships among the play’s characters and in their schematically contrasted religious and cultural backgrounds. Admittedly, the workings of the plot in “Disgraced” are a little too preprogrammed to maximize conflict. When a late-coming revelation about a sexual secret is added to the mix, this pinball machine threatens to flop into tilt mode."

Add to those flaws the stilted (or is it hip? - as in current) lingo the playwright uses for stage directions, and I have a problem.

The Pulitzer Prize committee makes its decisions on the basis of script, not performance. Clearly this playwright has personal stories behind those he has woven together to make this play. But I'd choose a better weave.

Still, the play held my attention throughout. I read it in a single sitting. Its layering of juxtaposed identities, particularly in the Pakistani protagonist, is a feat. I would have like to see the Lincoln Center cast in action. I'm glad I read this, but it doesn't rank among the best plays I've read or seen.

[Elizabeth A · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book blurb: Everyone has been told that politics and religion are two subjects that should be off-limits at social gatherings. But watching these characters rip into these forbidden topics, there's no arguing that they make for ear-tickling good theater.

I've always loved plays, and have fond memories of both watching regular productions as a kid, and also acting in several, and to this day The Sound of Music, and Fiddler on the Roof hold a special place in my heart.

There is something magical created by the words, the actors, the setting, and the audience when one watches a play. I don't however, as a general rule, read plays. There is so much lost when all you have are the words on a page, and I quite appreciated that in the forward the author talks about what is gained and lost when you see a production, as opposed to read the words.

This won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize winner for Drama, and is really good. The characters and dialog draw out some of the experiences of being a Muslim in a post 9/11 America, and it is a frank exploration on race, religion, being an immigrant and a person of color, art, and relationships.

Life and love are complicated things, and this play sheds some light on the things we look at, but often do not see. I look forward to seeing the play in Boston next year.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

a punch to the gut to read-SO good! (June 2015)

A second reading of this devastatingly brilliant play-hits much differently now, ESPECIALLY with the current state of the world. I highly recommend an of Mr. Akhtar's work!

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m glad I decided to give this play a second chance. It portrays a very profound look of the experience in America from a person of color, namely a Muslim-American. This play contains some hard concepts to process at first, but I think I have a better understanding of some of them now.

[Rachel Bea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Need to think about what I read, but my gut reaction is that I really liked it. There's a lot to unpack here. I'll read through the play again and look up some thorough reviews. Would love to see this performed.