(Washington, DC) – Theater J, with American University's School of International Service and the College of Arts and Sciences, is producing a staged reading of Akbar Ahmed’s new play NOOR.   The reading, directed by Shirley Serotsky, will be presented at the Katzen Center for the Arts at American University Monday,  November 19 and Tuesday, November 20 at 8:00 pm in conjunction with the Brookings Institution and Pew Trust project on Islam and Globalization.  Tickets are available for $15 at 202-885-3634 or www.american.edu/katzen ($10 for the American University community/seniors and $5 for students). 

First presented this past July as part of Theater J’s “Voices from a Changing Middle East” festival, NOOR explores with the crisis of modern Islam. In this kidnapping drama set in an unspecified modern Islamic capital, three brothers furiously debate how to respond to a band of militia who've abducted their youngest sister, Noor. Playwright Akbar Ahmed, “the world’s leading authority on contemporary Islam” according to the BBC, looks at how fundamentalist, mystical and modernist Islam hold sway as a family struggles to restore its lost honor.  The cast for this reading will feature Nefees Ahmed, Frank Britton, Doug Brown, Cesar Guadamuz, Craig Klein, Stephen Patrick Martin, Cedric Mays, Phillip Reid, Jewell Robinson, and Theodore Snead.

Ambassador Akbar Ahmed, Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington DC, has been Visiting Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Harvard and Cambridge Universities, was the High Commissioner of Pakistan to Great Britain, and has advised Prince Charles and President George W. Bush. His award-winning books have been translated into multiple languages including Chinese and Indonesian. Ahmed is regularly interviewed on CNN, CBC, the BBC, ARY TV and has appeared several times on the Oprah Winfrey Show and Night Line. He presented and narrated “The Glories of Islamic Art”, the three-part television series for Channel 5 UK, broadcast in 2006.

This presentation of NOOR is part of the Arlene & Robert Kogod New Play Development Program, which also includes the Incubator Series, Friday afternoon Tea @ 2 monthly readings and Theater J’s commissioning initiatives.  As one of the nation’s premiere playwrights’ theaters, Theater J is dedicated to providing a nurturing home for the development and production of new work. 

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