AMM(I)GONE New York Premiere Extended at The Flea Through Mid April

PlayCo, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, The Flea, and Kelly Strayhorn Theater will present a one-week extension of their New York premiere of AMMIGONE, stylized as Amm(i)gone, created, co-directed, and performed by Adil Mansoor and co-directed by Lyam B. Gabel. Performances now run through Monday, April 14 at The Flea.
 
In Amm(i)gone, Mansoor shares the ongoing story of how he and his mother are working to restore their bond. He is a Virgo Pakistani-American theater queerdo; she is an Aquarian hijabi Quranic scholar. Since she discovered Adil’s queerness online, their once-close bond now needs rescue. In Amm(i)gone, a portmanteau of “ammi” (“mother” in Urdu) and the Greek heroine Antigone, Mansoor invites us on a journey of heartbreak and repair between mother and son as they embark on an examination and translation of Sophocles’ Antigone into Urdu. Passionately mining Greek tragedy, Islam, and their own memories, they seek to recover their love across faith.
 
Amm(i)gone has garnered critical praise since its opening on March 23. Zachary Stewart of TheaterMania describes it as "brainy, yet surprisingly moving," and notes that it "cleverly weaves the personal into the cerebral.” He writes, "Mansoor is attempting something difficult: an interfaith dialogue between the Islam of his mother and the queerness that defines a big part of his adult life, which is itself a kind of secular religion. [...] On the neutral territory of pagan Athens and with great empathy, he inches toward a greater understanding of her immigrant’s story which, with its willful defiance of fate and aching regret about the consequences, has all the hallmarks of Greek tragedy." In a review for Lighting & Sound America, David Barbour writes that "the conjunction of mother and son's clashing sensibilities…gives Amm(i)gone its heartbreaking reality." Tony Marinelli, in TheaterScene, calls Amm(i)gone “a fresh and insightful spin on this ancient tale” and a “poignant exploration of familial love and tension.”
 
PlayCo first encountered Amm(i)gone after Associate Director for Artistic Programming Annie Jin Wang and Executive Producer Robert G. Bradshaw saw an early version in Pittsburgh in 2022. Maria Goyanes, Artistic Director of Woolly Mammoth Theatre, invited PlayCo Founding Producer Kate Loewald to see their production in April 2024. Amm(i)gone brings friends Loewald and Goyanes back into partnership (following their co-commission and presentation of Amir Nizar Zuabi’s This Is Who I Am in 2020/21) to give the play a New York premiere. PlayCo has also joined Woolly to co-produce the production’s tour to other cities, such as New Haven, where the show ran at Long Wharf Theatre immediately following its Woolly run. Loewald likewise reached out to The Flea's Artistic Director Niegel Smith to invite a partnership for the New York production. Smith and The Flea were already excited about Amm(i)gone, and stepped in to co-produce the work in their space. 
 
Amm(i)gone began germinating one day when Mansoor was speaking on the phone with his mother—about one of many topics he usually avoided with her: theater. He mentioned he was reading Antigone; the play struck a chord and she expressed a rare interest, asking question after question. Says Mansoor, “I've committed my life to making and teaching art with my community — but I've never brought my mom into that process, and realized that perhaps she felt excluded,” he explains. “And here was a play she was excited about.” 
 
The classic resonated with aspects of Mansoor’s own perception of his mother as self-sacrificing and devoted to what she believes to be right — as a social worker, a Sunday school teacher, a single mother, and a hijabi. Soon, he asked his mother to adapt Sophocles’ tragedy with him. That act would be, as Mansoor describes, an “apology to and from” her after she discovered his queerness via Google and began “praying sunset to sunrise to save [him] in the afterlife.” 
 
Says Mansoor, “In an attempt to connect with my mom and do the thing that makes me feel the most alive, I asked her to make a play with me. I asked her to adapt Antigone, this play about the afterlife and God and loving your family so hard that it could break you, and have her filter it through her lens as a hijabi Muslim woman. I had imagined we’d end up with a script for actors and set design—that was my thesis pitch in graduate school. But it was never interesting to see it on other bodies. What was always the most powerful was my mom's voice. How she talks about Ismene, how she understands the world, the dramaturgy of this. Quickly, it became very clear the play was for me and my mom.”
 
As the production unfolds, it reveals photos and artifacts from Mansoor’s childhood, videos of productions of Antigone from across the globe, and audio recordings of his mother. Director Lyam B. Gabel says, “Through this rigorously intimate conversation between Adil and his mother, we’re also creating a rigorously intimate conversation between Adil and the audience.” 
 

Photo credit: Julieta Cervantes