Mosaic's Third Season Concludes With Epic World Premiere Starring Hadi Tabbal

The final production of Mosaic Theater Company of DC's third season will be the world premiere staging of The Vagrant Trilogy, written by Mona Mansour and directed by Mark Wing-Davey. The Vagrant Trilogy is comprised of three different one-act plays: The Hour of Feeling, The Vagrant, and Urge for Going. These three plays, combined for the first time in one epic performance, follows Palestinian scholar Adham and his family over multiple generations and in multiple continents.

"We are so honored to be bringing Mona's beautiful and powerful trilogy to Mosaic," said Artistic Director Ari Roth. "While these three plays focus on a family of Palestinian refugees, Mona's incredible writing also speaks to the emotional and psychic effects of displacement on anyone who has felt like a stranger or exile for one reason or another. I am thrilled to have the support of The Public Theater in producing this extraordinary world premiere at Mosaic, and to have such a top-notch team working on bringing this story to life."

Adham, the lead character of The Vagrant Trilogy, will be played by Hadi Tabbal, who recently starred as Amir Al-Raisani in The Brave on NBC. Tabbal will be joined by local actors Shpend Xani (The Crucible, Olney Theater Center), Nora Achrati (Intelligence, Arena Stage), Michael Kramer (Equus, Constellation Theater Company), Elan Zafir (most recently seen in Mosaic's Paper Dolls) and Dina Soltan (Neverwhere, Rorschach Theatre).

The Hour of Feeling had its world premiere in 2012 in the Humana Festival of New American Plays at The Actors Theatre of Louisville. In the play, young hot-shot Adham and his wife, Abir, are visiting England in 1967-Adham has been asked to present a paper on William Wordsworth's Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey-when war breaks out between Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Adham is confronted with the choice to either go home to his family on the West Bank and risk losing his career, or to stay in England and risk losing his family. The choices he makes play out in The Vagrant and Urge for Going.

Urge for Going was developed at the Ojai Playwright's Conference with the assistance of The Public Theater and had its world premiere at The Public Theater LAB in 2011. The Vagrant was originally commissioned and developed by The Public Theater as part of the Gail Merrifield Papp Fellowship, and while it has been workshopped both at New Dramatists and at The Public Theater, the play has never been produced before. This is the first time all three plays in the trilogy will receive a full production, under the direction of Mark Wing-Davey, a highly respected British-born director and chair of the MFA Acting program at NYU, whose credits include the 1991 & 1992 productions of Caryl Churchill's Mad Forest at the New York Theatre Workshop and Manhattan Theatre Club (Wing-Davey also directed the world premiere of The Hour of Feeling.)

The design team for The Vagrant Trilogy includes: set design by Luciana Stecconi (The Winter's Tale, Folger Theatre), costume design by Ivania Stack (Aubergine, Olney Theater Center), lighting design by Reza Behjat (Guards at the Taj, Central Square Theater), sound design by David Lamont Wilson (Hooded, Or Being Black for Dummies), and projections design by Paul Deziel (Sotto Voice, Theater J).

"Seen together, these plays speak to the deep psychic costs of displacement," said Mansour. "This is what has obsessed me through writing all of these plays about the imagined life of a Palestinian scholar: The place you escape to, if you're 'lucky' enough to escape, will never be home; you will never fully be of that place. Nor will you ever be 'of' your homeland again. I am thinking about this more and more as the issue of migrants and migrations continues to set off elections and galvanize xenophobic beliefs. My hope is that together, these plays will speak to all of us, and highlight that at the beginning of every single refugee story is an unspeakable loss."

Ticket Prices: $20-$65

Special Performances and Post Show Discussions: PWYC preview on Wed June 6 at 7 PM; Weekday Matinee at 11 AM on Wednesday, June 20. Peace café on Saturday, June 23. Open Captioned performances June 23-26. Themes discussed in post-show programming will include: Discussions with the Playwright and artistic team

the arc and history of Palestinian displacement;

the '67 War in the Middle East through a Palestinian lens;

inter-generational choices in the drama of Palestinian displacement;

the dispossession of refugees; "tokenism" of people of color in academia;

and the enduring legacy of William Wordsworth

A full list of discussion dates and discussant bios will be available on http://www.mosaictheater.org/discussions

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION VISIT: http://www.mosaictheater.org/the-vagrant-trilogy

About Mona Mansour

Mona Mansour was a member of The Public Theater's Emerging Writers Group and a Core Writer at Minneapolis' Playwrights' Center. Other plays include Across the Water and Broadcast Yourself (part of Headlong Theater's Decade). With Tala Manassah she has written The House and the Letter (Golden Thread's ReOrient Festival) and Falling Down the Stairs (an Ensemble Studio Theatre/Sloan commission). Their short play Dressing is part of Facing Our Truths: Short Plays about Trayvon, Race, and Privilege, a collection of plays commissioned by the New Black Festival and was presented at various theaters around the U.S., including the Public, the Goodman, Center Theater Group, and Baltimore Center Stage. Commissions include La Jolla Playhouse and Oregon Shakespeare Festival's "American Revolutions." She received the Whiting Award in 2012 and the Middle East America Playwright Award in 2014.

About Mark-Wing Davey

Mark Wing-Davey first came to prominence in the United States with his highly acclaimed 1992 production of Caryl Churchill's Mad Forest at New York Theatre Workshop. Since then he has worked extensively in New York City, for NYTW, Manhattan Theatre Club, Lincoln Center, Playwright's Horizons, LAByrinth, and The Public Theater - directing Troilus and Cressida and Henry V in Central Park. He directed Sarah Ruhl's Passion Play at the Goodman in Chicago, Yale Rep, and for Epic Theater in a site-specific production at the Irondale Center in Brooklyn.

Recent productions include Molière's School for Wives at Two River Theater New Jersey and Pericles, his fifth production for Berkeley Rep: 36 Views, The Life of Galileo, The Beaux' Stratagem, and Mad Forest preceding it. He also directed an acclaimed Angels in America for ACT. Additional US and international credits include productions of new and classic plays at ART, Cincinnati, La Jolla, Mark Taper, McCarter, Milwaukee Rep, Pittsburgh Public, Playmaker's Rep, Seattle Rep, Yale Rep; London's Royal Court Theatre, National Theatre, the Edinburgh Festival, and musicals in the West End, and Australia. Mr. Wing-Davey is an Arts Professor and the Chair of Graduate Acting at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts where in September 2010 he premièred Tony Kushner's music theater work: The Henry Box Brown Play. He directed the premiere of a new work by Adam Rapp, The Eggs: A Fantasy of Love and Death in the Age of Amelioration and in 2012 directed Restoration there, a rarely seen music theater piece of Edward Bond's, with new music by Pete Atkin. He recently completed a double production of Tracy Lett's translation of Chekhov's Three Sisters, one set in 1901, one in 1988

About Hadi Tabbal

Acting credits include Mona Mansour's The Hour of Feeling (The Humana Festival, directed by Mark Wing-Davey), Circumstance (Winner of Sundance Film Audience Award), Madam Secretary (CBS), Elementary (CBS), The Blacklist (NBC), and Person of Interest (CBS). He currently stars as Amir on NBC's The Brave. Hadi has been involved in play development with The Sundance Theatre Institute, The Lark, Noor Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, The Atlantic Theater, and The Public Theater, among others. Hadi was playwright in residence at Berkeley Rep's Ground Floor program where he developed his first full-length play, The Remnants. He was adjunct assistant professor of theatre at CUNY York College and is currently artistic associate for The Sundance Theater Institute. MFA in acting from The New School for Drama. He is a proud past recipient of the Fulbright Grant.

About Mosaic Theater Company of DC
Independent, intercultural, entertaining, and uncensored, Mosaic Theater Company of DC is committed to making transformational, socially-relevant art, producing plays by authors on the front lines of conflict zones, and building a fusion community to address some of the most pressing issues of our times. Dedicated to making our theater a model of diversity and inclusion at every strata, on stage and off, Mosaic invests in the new as we keep abreast of our changing and challenging times to ensure that our theater is a responsive gathering space, all the while nurturing and producing art of the highest order. Visit us at mosaictheater.org.

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