Photo Credit: Sara Risley
A family comedy driven by complex characters and big subjects, The Who and the What is the third of Brookfield native Ayad Akhtar’s plays to be celebrated internationally in the last five years. It’s also his third play to be staged by the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, where in 2015 he was made an associate artist with the promise of a production annually for four years and a commissioned world premiere.
His career has skyrocketed since he won the Pulitzer Prize in 2013 for his play Disgraced, which the Rep staged last winter. Two seasons back, he was, after Shakespeare, the most produced playwright in America. He was nearly as popular last season. His newest play Junk—the title refers to Wall Street bond sales in the 1980s—begins a Broadway run at Lincoln Center just one week after The Who and the What opens at the Rep, and he’s writing a television series set in 1980s Hollywood for the FX channel.
The Who and the What, like Disgraced to which it’s almost a companion piece, examines the experience of particular Muslim Americans. Akhtar’s inspiration was Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew in so far as the premise of that problematic comedy—namely, that a younger daughter is forbidden to marry until her older sister weds—is sorely outdated for most Americans. Many also find the play’s sexist gender politics offensive. Akhtar, who was born on Staten Island 46 years ago just after his young Pakistani parents arrived in the U.S. (courtesy of a federal program designed to draw international scientific talent to this country), realized that those Elizabethan matrimonial customs and gender roles remain alive in Islam. Although Akhtar’s Muslim parents were not strict, Akhter determined at a young age to learn all he could about the Prophet and the Quran. He came to respect the religion and has drawn from it in his own spiritual quest to live a worthy life. Yet, as anyone who has seen or read Disgraced is well aware, he’s not afraid to criticize the practices he sees as inhumane. Disgraced provoked some negative responses from the Muslim community. Nevertheless, he followed it with play in which a Pakistani American family is torn over matters of love, marriage and the place of women in Islam.
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The plot: Afzal is a widower responsible for his American-born daughters. The younger, lovely Mahwish, has a Muslim boyfriend of whom Afzal approves. The older, Zarina, is too busy thinking and writing to care about boyfriends. It is Afzal’s belief that Zarina must marry before Mahwish, so he secretly enrolls as Zarina on a dating website called muslimlove.com. When a fellow named Eli makes an online date, it’s Afzal who meets him to learn if he’s acceptable marriage material. Zarina and Eli, Afzal discovers, have already met in a university course on comparative religions. Eli’s a convert to Islam—his parents are WASP and Southern Evangelical. His conversion is the result of a sincere search for spiritual direction but Afzal dismisses it. Against Afzal’s wishes, Eli and Zarina come to love each other. Mahwish, meanwhile, practices anal sex to satisfy the demanding boyfriend Afzal considers a model Muslim, so as not to lose the virginity the religion demands of her until a marriage only possible if her independent-minded sister weds. This near-sitcom plot supports dialogue of the quality that makes Akhtar one of the finest playwrights working today.
Zarina is writing a book about the Prophet’s life—a dangerous undertaking, especially since she argues that an episode in the Prophet’s love life led to the lines in the Quran used to require that Muslim women be veiled. Her father can’t forgive her for writing it.
Akhtar has said in interviews that he hopes his works inspire healthy conversations among young Muslims. I asked him once if his plays could be performed in Pakistan. He answered, “Oh God, no! There would be rioting in the streets. Disgraced and The Who and the What are basically attacks on the tradition. You can’t say those things, even in an ironic context. The Who and the What pushes that even further than Disgraced because it’s about a woman writing a humanizing portrait of the Prophet in ways that are completely blasphemous from a traditional point of view. There are blasphemy laws in Pakistan, so if I were to set foot there at this point, I would be very joyously treated as a blasphemer. It would be very difficult for me.”
He also said: “I think the secret trajectory of all my work is how to maintain a rigorous commitment to seeking the truth in the work and yet giving pleasure.” The play ends with an excellent joke. Don’t miss it.
The Milwaukee Repertory Theatre presents The Who and the What, Sept. 27-Nov. 5 at Stiemke Studio, 108 E. Wells St. For tickets, call 414-224-9490 or visit milwaukeerep.com.