Playwright’s Perspective: Sanaz Toossi
I was once asked why the women of Wish You Were Here sound so American. “Girls will be girls,” I responded, a smile pasted across my face. As the words came out of my mouth, I knew I hated them. I hate them now. Here is my chance to rectify that statement.
The women of this play speak in an American argot because that is how I have translated them. These characters are actually speaking Farsi, but you get it. It’s theater.
But I suspect the question was actually this: “Why are they talking about their bodies? Why are they talking about sex?” I believe the question behind the question was, “Why do these women sound so free?”
I want to tell you now that these girls do not sound like you. You sound like them.
The Iranian women who raised me could cut you like glass then sew you up in the same sentence. There was so much talk about bodies. Everyone’s bodies. No one’s body was their own. Nothing was just yours. Everything was everyone’s because those women belonged to each other.
When I think about the women who inspired this play, I hear obnoxious, cacophonous laughter. The decrescendo of that laughter is the central loss of this play. But it does not define the play. These women do not need your pity, nor do they want it.
But they demand to be seen in their full humanity, as do all refugees, immigrants, and almost-migrants, no matter what part of the world they’re from. People everywhere — beautifully, tragically, obviously — strive for normalcy.
I wonder what a humanity play is. What does it mean to show a people in their humanity? Is that setting the bar extremely low? Or extremely high? Is every good play a humanity play? Is every play about humanity? And what makes a play political? Doesn’t every play exist within a set of politics? Must a play be political if the events of the play are affected by the politics of the play’s setting? Isn’t every play political? I can't decide.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter to me. I wrote this play as a love letter to my mother. I wrote it as a daughter of an immigrant. I wrote it because I’m proud of her, because I wanted her to know that every contour of her story was real to me, that I know her. I know you. And I feel like I knew you then. I love you and everyone who loved you.
I don’t care about breaking form. Or structure. I don’t care about being provocative or adding to the canon. Not with this play. This play is for you and you only. I think we would have been friends then, the time at which I’ve set this story. I would have been lucky to be your friend.
Your laugh is so loud. I wanted to hear it onstage the way I’ve known it in life — its ring ricocheting throughout the room, warming everything it touches.
