“How long can you live in isolation from yourself?”
This question, voiced by Marjan in Sanaz Toossi’s ENGLISH, resonates so deeply. As an immigrant, I have lived most of my life in the liminal space between two languages, two cultures, and two homes. And I think often about the ways I divide myself in parts each time I enter a room — for my own ease, others’ comfort, and, yes, sometimes, for personal safety.
In a lot of ways, everything I make circles back to that central question: where, and with whom, do I belong? I have always been drawn to stories about home and family, especially those that live in the spaces between “here” and “there,” “then” and “now,” and the presumed line between “us” and “them.” Those thresholds are where I feel most artistically alive.
This is why I’ve been waiting for years to direct ENGLISH. Toossi’s moving and hilarious script might be the most accurate theatrical depiction I’ve seen of what it feels like to bridge two languages and cultures.
What Toossi does in this play is a bit of a magic trick. It places an American audience in a TOEFL classroom in Iran and simply makes us live within the difficult limitations and the heartful expansions that co-exist as one learns a new language. It never overexplains or apologizes. It brilliantly rejects the flattening of Iranian culture — putting many voices and perspectives on one stage. It quietly challenges the power dynamic that always places English above other languages. And it does all this by asking us to pay attention to five people, not defined by their exceptionalism (a common trope for stories set “over there”), but by their complex and deeply human relationships to their homeland and with each other.
It’s been a gift to build this production alongside many other immigrant artists, as well as children of immigrants. I am thankful for the artistic and cultural care that the Alley has provided, and I cannot wait to share the work of our brilliant cast and creative team with the Houston community.
PS: It’s been an honor to direct this story alongside many Iranian artists while the people of Iran fight for democracy and freedom. I have been enraged and heartbroken by the brutality of the Iranian government’s response with tens of thousands of protesters murdered by their forces, and many more injured, missing, or imprisoned. English takes place in 2008 in the lead up to the Green Revolution, so we are putting the Iranian people’s wish for freedom within the heartbeat of our process. I hope our production can be a balm for the Iranian diaspora in Houston during this impossibly difficult time.
