Disgraced

Intelligent, thought-provoking ... essential necessity, urgency and relevance

Intelligent, thought-provoking ... essential necessity, urgency and relevance

A continuously engaging, vitally engaged play about thorny questions of identity and religion in the contemporary world, with an accent on the incendiary topic of how radical Islam and the terrorism it inspires have affected the public discourse.

Blistering social drama about the racial prejudices that secretly persist in progressive cultural circles…Akhtar knows how to build a scene and maintain suspense, so there's a sense of inevitability about the damage that's done over the course of the evening.

Ayad Akhtar was born in New York City and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is the author of American Dervish , published in 25 languages worldwide and a 2012 Best Book of the Year at Kirkus Reviews , Toronto's Globe and Mail , Shelf-Awareness , and O (Oprah) Magazine. He is also a playwright and screenwriter. His stage play Disgraced played at the American Theater Company, Chicago, and New York's Lincoln Center Theater in 2012. It won the Jeff Equity Award for Best New Play in 2012, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, 2013. As a screenwriter, he was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay for The War Within . He has received commissions from Lincoln Center and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He is a graduate of Brown and Columbia Universities with degrees in Theater and Film Directing.