The Height of Summer: New Plays from Williamstown Theatre Festival 2015-2021

Paradise Blue; Cost of Living; Actually; Where Storms Are Born; Selling Kabul; Grand Horizons

Martyna Majok, Anna Ziegler, Sylvia Khoury, Bess Wohl, Dominique Morisseau, Harrison David Rivers, Mandy Greenfield

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781350289307
• eBook ISBN: 9781350289321
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Theatre
• Index: Literature

Few institutions have as profound an impact on the American theatrical landscape as the Tony Award-winning Williamstown Theatre Festival, located in Williamstown, Massachusetts. New Plays from Williamstown Theatre Festival 2015-2021 provides a sample of the dozens of plays that have been created and/or premiered at the Festival during the Artistic Directorship of Mandy Greenfield. In addition to stories that shine a light into new or underexplored corners of the human condition, these plays frequently feature complex and boundary-pushing central roles for women actors. These six plays are manifestations of living, American playwrights grappling with and breathing dramatic life into the conflicts and questions at the heart of who we were, who we are, and who we will become. These plays imagine and interrogate pieces of the human experience we are still in the midst of unpacking and understanding. Complete with introductions by each of the authors reflecting on their work, these historic, award-winning, and groundbreaking plays now live in conversation with one another in this unique collection.

Selling Kabul

Sylvia Khoury

Introduction

This play was informed by encounters with Afghan Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) applicants in 2015. Each of these men was navigating the difficult process of applying for this visa—one that had been guaranteed to individuals who had collaborated with American forces at tremendous personal risk. All were hiding from possible retribution at the hands of the Taliban as they waited for this promised paperwork—for visas that were seldom granted.

I wrote Selling Kabul out of two conflicting responses that these encounters generated in me. The first was empathy—their longing for safety, for improved circumstances was a deeply American one, one that has fueled immigration to this country since its inception. My own family would not be in this country were it not for the promised security and opportunity of the American dream. The second response to these encounters was guilt—my understanding that it was the long arm of American imperialism that had reached into their homes in Afghanistan and thrust their lives into chaos.

I hoped that audiences would ask themselves, as I had asked myself—are we so readily separated from the actions of our government? Once the American dream is attained, and generations have lived here in relative security, are we fated to become myopic? It is fitting that the first production of Selling Kabul occurred at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2019 under the tremendous leadership of Mandy Greenfield, who has never shirked from asking audiences difficult questions.

After an almost two-year delay due to the pandemic, the Playwrights Horizons co-production with WTF took place in late 2021. It was a mere three months after America’s precipitous exit from Afghanistan, and the devastation left in our wake. As I w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Williamstown Theatre Festival
• Paradise Blue
• Cost of Living
• Actually
• Where Storms Are Born
• Selling Kabul
• Grand Horizons
• Performance Rights
• Copyright