"English" by Sanaz Toossi
Details
We will discuss the play
"English"
by
Sanaz Toossi
Synopsis:
A quietly powerful play about four Iranian adults preparing for an English language exam in a storefront school near Tehran, where family separations and travel restrictions drive them to learn a new language that may alter their identities and also represent a new life.
Two words set in motion award-winning playwright Sanaz Toossi’s intricate and profound New York debut: “English Only.” This is the mantra that rules one classroom in Iran, where four adult students are preparing for the TOEFL — the Test of English as a Foreign Language. Chasing fluency through a maze of word games, listening exercises, and show-and-tell sessions, they hope that one day, English will make them whole. But it might be splitting them each in half.
Sanaz Toossi is an Iranian-American playwright from California. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 2024 for this play. In her own words, "I wrote English in response to the first Trump administration's travel ban, also colloquially known as the Muslim ban. Just out of fury of the anti-immigrant sentiment."