Teaching Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced: Navigating Islamophobia and Orientalism in the Drama Classroom

Abstract

Following its 2013 Pulitzer Prize win and various productions across the country and abroad, Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced has become a popular play to include in Theatre History syllabi. It is also one of very few plays written by a MENASA playwright to secure a place in the canon of contemporary American drama. Yet the content of Disgraced has been widely misunderstood and misinterpreted. A meeting point for contrasting ideas, the play has continuously excited and engaged but also confused and provoked students. This article proposes a re-framing of the play as a pedagogical tool to introduce and expand on Edward Said’s Orientalism and its implications and manifestations in contemporary culture and media. By chronicling experiences teaching the play to undergraduate students of theatre, this article investigates the ways in which the play’s main concerns, and tension points, can be explored and conscientiously addressed in the drama classroom.