Anon

by Naomi Iizuka

Separated from his mother, a young refugee called Anon journeys through the United States, encountering a wide variety of people -- some kind, some dangerous and cruel -- as he searches for his family. From a sinister one-eyed butcher to beguiling barflies to a sweatshop, Anon must navigate through a chaotic, ever-changing landscape in this entrancing adaptation of Homer's Odyssey.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Theatre

58 pages, Paperback

Published August 10, 2007

About the author

Naomi Iizuka's most recent play, 17 Reasons (Why), was produced at Campo Santo + Intersection for the Arts and published by Stage and Screen in the anthology Breaking Ground: Adventurous Plays By Adventurous Theatres, edited by Kent Nicholson. Her other plays include 36 Views; Polaroid Stories; Language of Angels; War of the Worlds (written in collaboration with Anne Bogart and SITI Company); Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls; Tattoo Girl; and Skin. Ms. Iizuka's plays have been produced by Actors Theatre of Louisville; Berkeley Repertory Theatre; Campo Santo + Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco; the Dallas Theatre Center and Undermain Theatre in Dallas; Frontera@Hyde Park in Austin; Printer's Devil and Annex in Seattle; NYSF/Joseph Papp Public Theatre, GeVa Theatre, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Soho Rep, and Tectonic Theatre in New York; San Diego's Sledgehammer Theatre; Northern Light Theatre in Edmonton, Alberta; Alternate Theatre in Montreal; and the Edinburgh Festival. Her plays have been workshopped by San Jose Rep, GeVa Theatre, Bread Loaf, Sundance Theatre Lab, A.S.K. Theatre Projects, the McCarter Theatre, Seattle's A Contemporary Theatre, the Bay Area Playwrights' Festival, Midwest PlayLabs, En Garde Arts/P.S. 122, and New York Theatre Workshop.
Language of Angels was published in TheatreForum; War of the Worlds and Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls were published by Smith and Kraus; Tattoo Girl is included in From The Other Side of the Century, published by Sun and Moon; and Skin is included in Out of the Fringe, published by TCG. Polaroid Stories is published by Dramatic Publishing, and Language of Angels, Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls, Anon(ymous), and Tattoo Girl are published by Playscripts, Inc. 36 Views was published in American Theatre and has since been published by Overlook Press.
Ms. Iizuka is currently working on commissions from the Guthrie Theater, Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Kennedy Center, the Children's Theatre of Minneapolis, and the Mark Taper Forum. She is a member of New Dramatists and the recipient of a Whiting Award, a Rockefeller Foundation MAP grant, a Gerbode Foundation Fellowship, an NEA/TCG Artist-in-Residence grant, a McKnight Fellowship, a PEN Center USA West Award for Drama, the Stavis Award from the National Theatre Conference, Princeton University's Hodder Fellowship, and a Jerome Playwriting Fellowship. Ms. Iizuka has taught playwriting at the University of Iowa and the University of Texas, Austin, and currently teaches at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Reviews

[Shawn Deal · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good emotional piece about war and surviving it and having to live with it.

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's adventurous, astounding and amazing.

The story is based on The Odyssey by Homer, which was a great story about a man's adventure to return back home to his wife. In Anon(ymous), it's a great story about a young man's adventure to return back home to his mother. It has the same adventurous and thrilling set of events that happened in The Odyssey, but with themes of immigration in it. Everyone can pick a part in this play that can relate to them and their background. There's a struggle that Anon goes through and that the other characters go through that is universal. Anon's journey shows that life is a journey that is filled with trials, but we can always find love and rewarding experiences that brings us back to who we really are.

[Ally Varitek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Soaked in the fragmented syncretism of refugees globally and intricately woven with sensory stimuli for our memories, Naomi Iizuka crafts an epic poem for today's world. In an act of recalling the Grecian tale of Odysseus of yesterday, Iizuka helps us to remember the refugees of the world today, who too often become faceless and nameless on their journey to seek home. Through gorgeous mythological-harkening images and symbols, Iizuka reminds us through Anon's voice that "facts are only part of the story" of immigration, and there is a much deeper human need underneath. It's everything I love about theatre, and the possibilities of this play are endless.

[Amber Hooper · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading it and can imagine that actually seeing it performed would be amazing. I saw the similarities to The Odyssey in a few elements, and I wonder how many other similarities there are that I'm missing.

I love that anonymity of the main character and how that allows people to project or infer things about him - like what race he is, where he is from, how old he is, etc. None of those things are explicitly stated, allowing the viewer/reader to decide those things for themselves.

[Mrs. Owens · Rating 4 out of 5]

An old story made new. Odysseus unwillingly went off to war while war uninvited came to Anon. Both found themselves struggling to survive and get "home." Iizuka shows many different possibilities for immigrants and refugees. Not many are positive but they are all realistic. This is a powerful tale that shows just how far we have not really come. (My rating may increase, if our production is as powerful as I hope it will be.)

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

An old story made new. Odysseus unwillingly went off to war while war uninvited came to Anon. Both found themselves struggling to survive and get "home." Iizuka shows many different possibilities for immigrants and refugees. Not many are positive but they are all realistic. This is a powerful tale that shows just how far we have not really come. (My rating may increase, if our production is as powerful as I hope it will be.)

[Haley Honeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Based on Homer’s The Odyssey, this play looks at Anon’s refugee journey through the United States. The play has many moments that would inspire directorial creativity in a piece that reflects the struggle of trying to find home in a new land.

[Sarkis Antonyan · Rating 2 out of 5]

the extremely fantastical, poetic, borderline-unattainable sensory experiences in these scenes’ sets almost made up for the half-baked allusion to the odyssey which as a whole was making things consistently predictable, unbalanced, drab, and achingly saccharine.

[Destine Harrison-Williams · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t think it was bad, I’m just not sure it was for me. I felt that the dialogue didn’t flow in a believable manner. Even for a play that’s heightened and magical, the dialogue felt very elementary. Admittedly, it could have simply gone over my head.

[Barty (Bartholomew) Wu · Rating 5 out of 5]

i can't really tell how much i actually like it but i remember thinking it was really good when i finished a script reading for the first time. doing this production so i've read this script like ten thousand times already

[kristen tan · Rating 4 out of 5]

gonna be in this next semester!!!

[miriam campbell · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is the only play that i have ever read that felt like i was watching a production of it, instead of simply reading it.

[Lucy Gallagher · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a brilliant retelling of a classic! Poetic, human, and spiritual all at once, like most of Iizuka’s work. Highly recommend!

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes quite poignant; largely scattered.

[Jessica López-Barkl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I originally read this when I was a literary assistant at New York Theatre Workshop. I loved it then and I really loved this play now. I just finished producing it with an at-risk high school in Walla Walla, WA. It was the school's first play, and I thought a play dealing with identity issues was perfect. I had chosen her other play POLAROID STORIES, but that one got nixed. Anyway, it's an hour and half, it is a great ensemble piece, and in true Naomi Iizuka form, it has great/fun/infectious dialogue. I find myself quoting many of the lines regularly and it doesn't annoy me. The play was very well received in a town that only does musicals and popular theater favorites. I think this play was especially refreshing.

I re-read this play yesterday (August 31, 2014) as an option for the 2014-2015 season at SUNY Sullivan, and I still really like the play. It is a great adaptation of THE ODYSSEY, very diverse, silly, and written in Iizuka's idiosyncratic ramblings (which, is very modern and fun to listen to/read). I did end up directing this for Lincoln Alternative High School's inaugural production in 2010, but I would really like to direct it again because the cast went through 10 changes and although I liked our product, I did feel that it was compromised because of all of the changes it went through.

[KJ Velz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am in this show at Georgetown -- still forming opinions, but they are mostly related to our interpretation of the work rather than the work itself. I think our director is doing a wonderful job imagining this world, but I can no longer tell how much of that is him and how much of that is Iizuka. When first reading the work, I was not that impressed, but throughout the rehearsal process, I began to feel more connected to the work and more appreciative of what it can accomplish.

[MaryAnn Kelling · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great script to use in a theater design class. Very relevant topics: immigration, refugees. Plus, it is connected to classic literature: Homer's The Odyssey

[Haley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I find this retelling of The Odyssey confusing in many ways, and very illuminating in others. Anon’s journey feels too short and too vast to take place on a stage. I’m curious as to why this play premiered at a Children’s Theatre; it’s quite bloody and often confusing.
However, the narrative of refugees and their anonymity is very powerful. I LOVE a good Greek chorus, this the refugee chorus was a spectacular way to deepen the meaning.
Overall, it’s not a bad piece of dramatic literature. I think it needs some polishing but it’s got real potential.