Support Pretty Shahid's Incubator: A Tale of Resilience

Hello! My name is Omer Abbas Salem and I am a Chicago playwright who loves writing plays about Chicago. I'm fundraising for an elevated reading of my play Pretty Shahid- a commission from Jackalope Theatre as part of their 2021 New Frontier Series. It will get a development and live reading through Red Orchid's incubator series. Readings will be on June 29th and June 30th.

This is a play about being joyfully queer and brown in the face of racism and Islamophobia. The play follows the Kazem family, a quartet of siblings who immigrated to Chicago together from Iraq in 1996. They have since opened a business (pita place), pay taxes, maintain their immigration status, and been model immigrants. Shahid is a dreamer, enrolled in a Library Sciences degree and watching Julia Roberts movies to practice English and imagine a lighter, fancier life. His twin sister Nahid is hardened by expectation or the lack thereof. The elder sister, Elif, yearns for normalcy, westernizing herself in the hope of acceptance. Nabiin, the eldest and patriarch sacrificed all of his youth to keep them afloat. Set in the days right after 9/11, Shahid is hit in the head by a bottle thrown from a car while working on the restaurant’s patio. When he wakes up, he no longer sounds or speaks like himself, unburdened of his immigrant memories or traditions. He sounds and moves through the world as easily as Julia Roberts, America’s pretty woman. Or pretty Shahid. As the family comes under scrutiny, Shahid uses his new (and unaccented) voice to his advantage. This is a play about assimilation and what we intentionally and unintentionally sacrifice for acceptance.

Fundraising will go entirely towards paying the working artists, and providing props and costume pieces. This will be a beautifully brown and Arab play and if that's work you're looking to support right now, I welcome you to join us on the ride.

Thank you so much!

xoxo,

Abbas

Poster illustration by John DiBiase