Earlier this year, audiences at the Woolly Mammoth experienced a vision of Islam seen through the lens of queerness in Adil Mansoor’s touching “Amm(i)gone,” a solo performance about how he’s been translating Sophocle’s “Antigone” into Urdu with his Pakistani mother. (“Ammi” refers to “mother” in Urdu.)
Mansoor, a theater director who centers the stories of queer folks and people of color, offered his through vulnerability, depth and even humor. Pakistan-born and Chicago-raised, Mansoor presented the complex mother-son relationship by weaving together vignettes with relatable themes for anyone–not just Muslims–longing to explore the spiritual core of human relationships. How mother and son “translate” each other is just as fascinating, if not more so, than the pair’s linguistic juggling between English, Greek and Urdu.
I spoke with Mansoor on the phone after his last performance in D.C. to glean more about the inspiration and process behind this memorable work.
Note: this interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Although the play isn’t specifically political, what was it like to perform it in the nation’s capital?
Adil Mansoor: I didn’t understand how international DC was until I got here. I was sitting in a cafe and heard four different languages all at once. Then I started to notice that all over the place–how many languages I was hearing all the time. And then I started to realize, of course, it’s the nation’s capital! There are international communities embedded here in a way that’s deeply meaningful to the city itself. And I noticed that in the audience. It was such an international audience! I am sure this was intentional on Woolly’s part, even though I couldn’t imagine it at first. So many people in that room could speak Urdu, Hindi, Arabic or were coming from other language experiences. That became essential to my experience in DC and I’m grateful for it.
While you were in DC, did you also get a sense of the district’s spiritual and interfaith culture?
Mansoor: Yes, absolutely. One way into that was a Queer Muslims in DC Instagram group–a whole group of folks who identify with the intersections of Islam and queerness. They all came on Pride Night. That was really exciting and special.
As well, we were able to work with Woolly to make sure that there was room and time for Muslims to pray Maghrib at sunset. Muslims pray five times a day and can take anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes to pray. And often, pretty consistently, Maghrib happens during theater performances, which makes it difficult for Muslims to attend theater at night. It’s such a block.
So we asked ourselves what it means to think about different communities. If we’re making shows that are aimed at Muslim audiences, how do we invite them? We worked with Woolly to have a couple of nights where we started at 8 PM because sunset was at 8:03 PM and we made sure there was physical space for people to pray. People did!
Did you get any feedback from folks who may not have been familiar with Islam? Were they enlightened about anything specific?
Mansoor: It’s been true in every city where I’ve performed “Amm(i)gone” that so many people from different faiths will talk about how they see versions of themselves in the story, even though the show is so specific to my experience.
For example, one wonderful older woman who very much identified as a mom came up to me after the show and said, “You know, I grew up Catholic and I’m seeing myself in your shoes and your mom’s shoes.”
And so I think people are able to enter the work. The more specific and authentic the work is tied to someone’s honest reality the more it can open people up. Seeing the ways in which we connect through art is something I sense in the audience.
Sometimes we think that art that’s accessible to all means something mainstream. When talking about majority audiences there can be this assumption that for something to be widely understood it needs to center on the western white experience. But I don’t think that’s true. The more details about my life that I share, the more and more people say things like “oh, I know someone that went through that.”
A great deal of the play deals with the idea of translating “Antigone” but also how people “translate” each other. What effect did that have on the audience?
Mansoor: On that note, there were many people in the audience that came back a second or a third time with loved ones like boyfriends, partners or sweeties. There were people that came back with their parents, which I think is wild, but also so exciting! And so that to me is totally surprising. I wasn’t expecting it.
For someone to sit in it again and make it relational is so what the work’s about. It’s so about my relationship with my mom, my partner and my siblings. And so I love that people came back to bring someone they thought needed to see this play. And I imagine the two of them going out for coffee after so they can talk about it. Then their relationship deepens. I feel so lucky to be part of that.
Can you tell us about the set itself? Some Arabic lettering was carved into the set’s woodwork.
Mansoor: The letters that are carved into the wood are called the AL-HUROOF AL-MUQATTA’AT. They’re mysterious combinations of the Arabic letters Alif Laam Meem, which don’t make new words. These are beautiful parts of the Quran I learned from my mom. At the end of the show, I talk about these letters, which inspire the last piece of music we hear. At the very end, we light them up so the audience can see what they’ve been listening to.
There was another version of the show which ended with the azan, the Islamic call to prayer. But a call to prayer shouldn’t be ending a play and I wanted to show respect for the faith, that I understood the basic tenets of Islam, that the show was rigorous.
There’s something almost magically secular about Alif Laam Meem. They were a way for me to nerd out about the language yet approach Arabic with deep respect.
It was also personal for me. If you go into a Muslim home–especially my mom’s home–often the decor on the walls is Arabic calligraphy. It’s beautiful. Sometimes the AL-HUROOF AL-MUQATTA’AT will hang above a door or in the center of a living room. It’s some of the most beautiful visual art to see. And so this was a nod to that tradition.
Tell us about the music influenced by the Alif Laam Meem.
Mansoor: It was an original composition by Shahzad Ismaily and Aya Abdelaziz who are both wonderful musicians. They got together and jammed on the letters after I asked them to create something with these letters. But I also wanted it to be separate from any recognizable sura, or a chapter in the Quran. I didn’t want to include a section of the Quran within the play as I didn’t want it to be disrespectful.
Shahzad and Aya got together and they improvised for hours and they made a ton of snippets of this work. Then our sound designer Aaron Landgraf took all of those pieces and arranged them to create a two minute piece with a beginning, middle and end. This was deeply collaborative–the four of us worked on it together while Aya and Shahzad were in New York and Aaron and I were in Pittsburgh.
Tell us about your relationship to languages other than English.
Mansoor: I grew up speaking Urdu and Urdu is this amalgamation. It has relationships to Persian, Hindi and Sanskrit, and that’s across so many faiths, countries and cultures, from South Asia to India and Pakistan.
We had a really wonderful Talkback for a South Asian Affinity Night, and they talked about how Pakistani culture is so woven between Islam and the Indians of the continent. Sometimes the South Asian cultural realities are different from Islamic traditions. How do diasporic Muslims in America kind of navigate religion versus culture, and what are the things that we’re pulled towards? What does all that mean?
Toward the end of the play you focused on a key moment about translating “Antigone” with your mother. You repeated the phrase “beyond love.” How is that central to the work?
Mansoor: Anne Carson’s [feminist] translation reads “although you go without your mind, you go as one beloved.” And my mom’s interpretation of that is that it’s transcendent. Antigone’s love for her brother is beyond understanding.
And the way I contextualize it in the play is in this idea that this kind of love can be untranslatable and that’s something I hold onto in queerness, or the ways in which people might understand the love I share with my mother. People might watch this play and think “oh, this poor kid, he doesn’t have a mom that can understand him, blah, blah blah” but that’s so not what’s happening. Really the play is about how much my mom and I adore each other–that’s what is at the heart of the play–and that our love is perhaps untranslatable into western English. It just lives “beyond” in a different place.
You also refer to the phrase “spiritual core.”
Mansoor: That’s in reference to how my mom first responds to “Antigone.” At first, she was so into it. And she said that it sounded like such a spiritual play, full of faith. She usually thinks of Western plays or the plays that I’m interested in as deeply secular or even in opposition to some of the things she believes in.
And here’s this canonical text that every high schooler has read. And she sees its spirituality. It’s like she’s saying: “I understand Antigone. I agree with Antigone.” She feels seen by how the play is talking about faith.
Do you have any message for the audiences who already experienced this play or will enjoy a future production?
Mansoor: I’d love for people, when they watch it, to think of their loved ones and if after the show there’s an opportunity to call someone or hug someone, then I’d be thrilled if they took it. I get excited when I find out that my work makes someone call their mom or squeeze their sweety. I think that’s really great.
To learn more about the artist and the work, visit Adil Mansoor and Amm(i)gone.
Future Performances
- New York City in the spring of 2025, details TBD.
- Minneapolis in July 2025 at Theater Mu.
Resources
Featured Image: Adil Mansoor performs in “Amm(i)gone” at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. Washington, D.C. (Photo/Teresa Castracane)
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