English / Wish You Were Here: Two Plays

Winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Drama: English

Obie Award for Best New American Play: English

Two breakout plays by an Iranian-American playwright that examine the human costs of migration, both for those who leave their home country and for those who stay.

Sanaz Toossi's English is a comic and empathetic play about a group of Iranian students taking an English language class in the hopes of passing the challenging TOEFL exam. Navigating word games and listening exercises, the students make every effort to become fluent enough to migrate abroad in order to pursue their disparate goals--one hopes to reunite with her Canadian son, another wishes to pursue medical school in Australia. All feel a tension between their Iranian homeland and their hoped-for future. In Wish You Were Here, the focus shifts to a close-knit group of women who initially decide to remain in Iran following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. However, priorities shift as their fluctuating friendships begin to mirror the quickly changing political realities of the country. Taken together, these two plays provide a deeply humanizing portrait of the complex effects of diaspora both within and outside of Iran.

Author: Sanaz Toossi
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
Published: 12/12/2023
Pages: 240
Binding Type: Paperback
ISBN: 9781636701905

About the Author
Sanaz Toossi is an Iranian-American playwright from Orange County, California. Her plays include Wish You Were Here (Williamstown Audible 2020; Playwrights Horizons 2022; Stavis Award) and English (Atlantic/Roundabout 2022; Weissberger New Play Award; Kilroys' List 2019). She has had work commissioned by the Atlantic Theater, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Manhattan Theatre Club, South Coast Repertory, IAMA Theatre, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival (American Revolutions Cycle). Toossi is a member of Youngblood and the Middle Eastern American Writers Lab and was the 2019 P73 Playwriting Fellow. She was a recipient of the 2020 Steinberg Playwright Award and the Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award. MFA: NYU Tisch. TV: 5 Women, A League of Their Own, Invitation to a Bonfire. Toossi is a proud child of immigrants.