Nikhil Palmar’s delightful and fantastic monologue worldcan not see‘ and the British way of thinking has changed a lot. One of the West’s favorite boogeymen, an Islamic fundamentalist, has vanished from the public’s imagination. Today, Chinese terrorists are designated as bad guys.
For brown British actors like Zayan Prakash (Palmer), this is both good news and bad news. On the one hand, strangers no longer see him and consider him a threat. On the one hand, this means that the role of Muslim terrorists, which once played such a large role, has disappeared. So what is left for him? Only “doctors, taxi drivers and street corner shopkeepers”. He’s lucky if those characters are named.
“Invisible” at 59E59 Theater blitz off broadway The festival is a dramatic satire that turns into a gruesome allegory of revenge before morphing into something closer to reality. Let’s start with this play, directed in London by Georgia Green. Bush Theateris a sharp, lively comedy about the charismatic Zaiyan walking into the front door only to find Ella, his ex-girlfriend and mother of a toddler daughter, standing there.
“Hello. Why are you dressed so strangely?” Ella asked, and Zaiyan–who looked strange because he had just heard on the news about the end of “brown terrorism”–turned to the audience and uttered a banal gesture. He grabbed my heart with his killer digression. She had a very high-pitched voice, but (a) she sounded pretty obnoxious, and (b) she actually has a really deep voice. “
Ella tells Zian that she has a live-in boyfriend, Terrence. Terrence was her classmate from her drama school days and her career is blossoming. He is Korean and plays a terrorist in high-end dramas at a time when “East Asian fundamentalism” is being threatened. Zayan can’t stand Terrence, but the ensuing confrontation between the two is hilarious, even as it brings home the crux of their battle for position within the white supremacist system.
A magnetized Palmer moves in and out of a crowd of Zayans and the characters around them, each with a distinct character. The play’s narrative becomes somewhat tangled and unwieldy, but there is a methodology in it.
What plagues Zayan is the creeping feeling that he’s lost sight of himself. Now he is not recognized as a terrorist and is not registered at all. But throughout the show’s 60-minute run, we see Zayan for who he is. An unemployed actor, a reluctant caterer waiter, an incompetent weed dealer, a doting father and a careless son. He is also a brother who is haunted and grieving by the ghost of his deceased sister. The ghost is also the person who saw him and saw the central figure in her story.
It’s disorienting and infuriating to be held back by a culture, and an industry’s vague perception of what an entire group of people can do. “Invisible” is a thoughtful, provocative, and witheringly knowing response to its destructiveness.
can not see
Through July 2nd at 59E59 Theaters in Manhattan. 59e59.org. Running time: 1 hour.
