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SILK ROAD THEATRE PROJECT

Closer Encounters
by Kerry Reid

Their name comes from the ancient trade route that threaded through Asia and the Middle East to Mediterranean ports, but Chicago's Silk Road Theatre Project's primary focus has been on how these cultures mesh—or clash—with the matrix of American life.

Founded by life partners Jamil Khoury and Malik Gillani, Silk Road made its debut in winter 2003 with Khoury's play Precious Stones, about the thorny romantic relationship between two women—a Jewish-American activist whose parents were Holocaust survivors and a wealthy married Palestinian expelled from Beirut—who meet while organizing an Arab-Jewish discussion group in Chicago. That show is currently on a national college tour. Silk Road followed up with Tea, Velina Hasu Houston's drama about Japanese war brides in America, which received uniformly glowing reviews in the Chicago press.

"How do the people of the Silk Road deal with America?" asks Gillani. "How do they interact with this society? What are the challenges they face?"

Comfort with cross-cultural issues comes naturally: Gillani was born to Indian parents in Pakistan, and moved to Chicago as a child, while Khoury is a native Chicagoan of Syrian Christian, Polish and Slovak descent. The pair decided to take the plunge into forming a theatre company after the 9/11 attacks and the consequent threats of violence and discrimination faced by many Americans of Middle Eastern descent. Says Khoury, "We really wanted to respond to a lack of complex, three-dimensional representation of these cultures in America."

Their interest in exploring cultural contradictions has led Silk Road to become the resident company of the Chicago Temple, a First United Methodist Church in the heart of the downtown theatre district. In addition to one full production a year, the company presents staged readings in the church's basement theatre, which is now being renovated to suit their production needs. Last year, those readings included scripts by Asian-American writers Chay Yew and Naomi Iizuka.

This year's season focuses primarily on Muslim voices, and will include a reading of Mohsen Yalfani's portrait of post-revolutionary Iran, Guest of a Few Days, and a full production of Seattle-based Egyptian-American playwright Yussef El Guindi's Ten Acrobats in an Amazing Leap of Faith, about an Egyptian-American family in California. Notes Khoury, "Assimilation and cultural preservation cut across all ethnicities. It's so fascinating for us that people with deep roots in this country—fifth-generation German-Americans, for example—can come to one of our shows and say, 'This is my story.'"

Kerry Reid is a freelance writer and playwright based in Chicago.

Next: Son of Semele Ensemble, Los Angeles, California

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