'Disgraced' Explores Muslim Life in America in Surprising Ways

The play Disgraced explores what it means to be Muslim in America today. The playwright, Ayad Akhtar, won the Pulitzer Prize for drama for it in 2013, and yet the themes are still incredibly relevant in 2016. Over ninety minutes, four main characters at a dinner party grapple with identity, politics and racism in unpredictable ways. The main character, Amir, is a secular lawyer of Pakistani-Muslim descent. His wife is an artist who happens to be white. They host a dinner party for her Jewish art dealer and his African American wife, who’s a lawyer in Amir’s law firm. The characters both adhere to and undermine stereotypes. And the play raises more questions than it answers.