Theatre Director & Playwright
FEB 27, 2020: A DISTINCT SOCIETY BY KAREEM FAHMY
NEW YORK STAGE & FILM WINTER SEASON AT THE LARK
Taylor Reynolds directs a staged reading of my latest play. A quiet library that straddles the border of the U.S. and Canada becomes an unlikely crucible for five people from around the world. When an Iranian family, separated from one another by the "Muslim ban," use the library as a meeting place, the head librarian, a U.S. border patrol officer, and a local teenager have to choose between breaking the law and saving themselves.
FEB 7–MAR 8, 2020: MOTHER ROAD BY OCTAVIO SOLIS
ARENA STAGE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Thrilled to be re-teaming with Bill Rauch as the Associate Director on Octavio Solis' stunning sequel to Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.
APR 22–28, 2020: FURTHER THAN THE FURTHEST THING BY ZINNIE HARRIS
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, NYC
I'll be directing the 2nd year Grad Acting students in this exciting play. Further Than The Furthest Thing is a beautifully drawn story evoking the sadness and beauty of a civilisation in crisis.On a remote island in the middle of the Atlantic secrets are buried. When the outside world comes calling, intent on manipulation for political and economic reasons, the islanders find their own world blown apart from the inside as well as beyond.
Kareem is an NYC-based theatre director and playwright who focuses on the development of new plays and adaptations of work for the stage. He is 2019 Sundance Theatre Lab Fellow, the 2019 Phil Killian Directing Fellow at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and was a 2017-2018 National Directors Fellow. He is a co-founder of Maia Directors, a consulting group for organizations and artists engaging with stories from the Middle Eastern and beyond, and the co-chair of the Middle Eastern American Writers Lab at The Lark. Member: SDC.
SEPT 5–22, 2019: YASMINA'S NECKLACE BY ROHINA MALIK
PREMIERE STAGES, UNION, NJ
NEW JERSEY PREMIERE
Meet Abdul Samee: his father is Iraqi, his mother is Puerto Rican - but if you ask him, he'll say he's Italian. Longing to shed his cultural identity, he changes his name to Sam, marries an American and does everything in his power to turn away from his heritage. But when Sam meets Yasmina, a beautiful woman from his father's homeland, he begins to learn that a tree without roots cannot stand for long.
VOTED ONE OF THE T0P 12 NEW JERSEY THEATER PRODUCTIONS OF 2019
OCT 30–NOV 18, 2018: REFUGE*MALJA*ملجأ BY BESS WELDEN
PORTLAND STAGE, PORTLAND, ME
WORLD PREMIERE
When a Jewish-American war photographer feels compelled to assist a young refugee who steps in front her camera, she calls an old friend to translate but hesitates to reveal why she is so drawn to the boy. This poetic, decade-spanning drama explores how we each define and find our own malja (refuge).
AUGUST 14, 2018: THE YACOUBIAN BUILDING
A PLAY BY KAREEM FAHMY, BASED ON THE NOVEL BY ALAA AL ASWANY
ATLANTIC THEATER COMPANY, NYC
Set in contemporary Cairo, the play chronicles the lives of Egyptian citizens of different religions, genders, sexual orientations, and class backgrounds. Al Aswany renders the novel’s namesake building, a historic apartment block in the heart of downtown Cairo, as a microcosm of an Egypt infested with corruption, discrimination, despair, and ugliness. The book created a sensation in the Middle East with its provocative portrayal of sociopolitical corruption eating away at the foundation of the country, as well as its unflinching look at homosexuality and sexual desire, long-held taboos to the conservative Egyptian society.
Leila Buck & Babak Tafti in The In-Between