One of many improbable issues about residing in Philadelphia is that, with out being overwhelming, our metropolis stays large enough to carry many worlds – there are at all times new folks, new locations, new concepts to discover.
It’s town you already know, stuffed with complete classes of individuals you may not.
For Seth Rozin, inventive director of InterAct Theatre Firm, a type of classes was Black Muslims – not Muslims from the Center East, or from Africa or Asia, not immigrants or kids of immigrants, however Muslims born and bred on this metropolis.
“They’re home-grown,” he mentioned.
And, he observed, their tales hardly ever present up on stage.
For InterAct, that’s altering June 6, because it launches “On My Deen,” about Philly’s Muslim neighborhood. A world premiere, “On My Deen” is the primary of three performs in InterAct’s three-year Philly Cycle, marketed as “The Metropolis You Know, the Individuals You Don’t.”
“We realized that there have been a lot of sorts of individuals and tales that have been hardly ever instructed, if in any respect, and we thought it might be essential to search out methods to inform their tales,” Rozin mentioned.
The William Penn Basis agreed and underwrote the Philly Cycle with a $650,000 grant so InterAct might join with three underrepresented teams, seek for three playwrights to work with folks in these communities on plot themes and concepts, and eventually, produce the performs, one 12 months at a time, on stage.
Subsequent 12 months’s Philly Cycle play will give attention to Philly’s Cambodian, Vietnamese and Laotian communities. The collection will conclude in 2027 with a play about nurses.
Directed by Amina Robinson, “On My Deen” runs by June 28 and is co-produced by InterAct and Theatre within the X, a theater group drawing its title from West Philadelphia’s Malcolm X Park the place it performs. Malcolm X, a Black revolutionary, was an outspoken advocate for Islam throughout the Black neighborhood and a pacesetter in establishing Islam Temple 12 in Philadelphia.
Philly’s Muslims “are usually not invisible,” Rozin mentioned. “You stroll virtually anyplace within the metropolis, you will note folks – ladies in head scarves.
“No one appeared to know a lot about this neighborhood,” Rozin mentioned. “I wasn’t stunned. When most individuals consider immigrant Muslims, they consider folks from the Center East, they consider Arabs. If you’re on the appropriate, you could consider them as a menace or as terroristic. If you’re on the left, you could consider them as being anti-LGBTQ and misogynistic.
“They’re a giant neighborhood that works arduous and lives below the radar, however not as a menace,” he mentioned. “They simply go about their enterprise, residing and going about their religion and taking part in metropolis life as common folks.”
Estimates fluctuate extensively in regards to the variety of Muslims in Philadelphia and the area. Some say as many as 300,000. Primarily based on a nationwide survey, the Pew Analysis Heart estimates that Muslims comprise about 1% of the Philly Metro space, which equates to round 60,000 folks.
The Philadelphia space, Rozin got here to be taught, has been essential within the nationwide improvement of Islam within the U.S., and in Philadelphia.
Beginning in 1930 and significantly within the Nineteen Sixties, there was “a big share of African-Individuals who have been launched to Islam by the Nation of Islam – not Sunni Islam, which is practiced all through the vast majority of the world,” mentioned playwright Antu Yacob. “The Nation catered to empowering Black folks. It catered to creating them honor their our bodies and their minds and taking a look at themselves as lovely human beings at a time when nobody was saying that about them.”
Over time, she mentioned, there have been shifts throughout the African-American Muslim neighborhood towards Sunni and different Islamic sects.
A few of that historical past reveals up within the lifetime of the principle character, Faye Ann.
Michael, the opposite lead character, needs his friendship with Faye Ann would flip into one thing extra. He’s her finest pal, however the questions they ask one another about life, love, and even God, aren’t bringing them nearer collectively.
Will they or received’t they be a pair? That’s a well-recognized plot query.
Faye Ann, later Fatima, “is available in [to Islam] by the Nation of Islam as a teen and he or she follows every of its modifications. She lands on Sunni,” Yacob mentioned. “Along with all of that, it’s a love story. You’re monitoring her religion journey. But it surely’s not like you might be watching a historical past lesson.
“Her finest pal can also be the love of her life. He’s against the modifications she’s making,” Yacob mentioned. “They’re navigating what liberation might be as a Black particular person. She finds it by Islam, in all its kinds, and he doesn’t.”
Their relationship evolves over many years, from 1962 to 2013. The title of the six-character play, “On My Deen,” refers back to the non secular path laid out by Islam.
Yacob herself has an evolving non secular id. She was born in Ethiopia and went to an Islamic college as a baby. When her household moved to the U.S., it joined the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Later her mom reverted to Islam, giving her kids the liberty to decide on any religion so long as they developed a relationship with God.
Yacob, who teaches at Rutgers College, describes herself as Muslim, “and a piece in progress.”
Group outreach
To develop the play, Rozin and Yacob constructed relationships with the native department of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in addition to native imams. They visited a masjid in Chester and met the imam and his spouse. The story of their relationship grew to become a part of the idea for the play.
Rozin mentioned one imam instructed him that Muslims assist the humanities, however usually don’t attend performs as a result of they fear that they’ll embrace offensive language or intimacy. Yacob saved that in thoughts as she wrote the play.
To accommodate prayer schedules, Rozin adjusted the occasions for the Saturday reveals. Sometimes, there’s a matinee at 2 p.m. and a night efficiency at 7, however for the run of the play, Saturday reveals might be at 10 a.m. and three p.m.
“Our hope is that lots of people locally will come to these performances,” he mentioned. “We wished to point out that we’re severe about this, and we wish them to come back and interact with us.”
As is often the case with InterAct, talkbacks and viewers discussions observe many reveals. The Saturday discussions are extra centered on themes within the play. Company on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays embrace members and leaders of the Muslim neighborhood.
There’s a Black affinity evening on June 19 and a Muslim Affinity Day on June 22.
FYI
“On My Deen,” InterAct Theatre Co., June 6-28, Proscenium Theatre at The Drake, 302 S. Hicks St., Phila. 215-569-8079.