Sanaz Toossi

Were you raised speaking Farsi?

We were not the Iranians who were like, “We’re in America now.” I grew up naturally bilingual. I’m a writer now. I make my living in the English language. And my Farsi gets worse every year. It’s painful for me. I wonder if my kids will know Farsi. I did work with a Farsi tutor. I went in thinking, “I’ve got this. You’re going to love me.” She goes, “Your grammar is very bad.” I was like, “OK, that’s great. Tear me a new one, girl.”

This play is about Middle Eastern characters. Is that typical of your work?

The family drama I’ve just finished, it’s about Southern Californian Iranians. Everything else has been set in Iran. What happens if I show up with a play about three white girls? Will anyone want to do it? Even if it’s really good? Sometimes I worry that I am the right kind of Middle Eastern. When the Muslim ban [Donald J. Trump’s 2017 executive order that at first barred nationals from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering America] was enacted, I felt a shift. Middle Eastern artists have been knocking at the door for a really long time. People finally started listening.

So you worry about being pigeonholed?

If all that ever gets produced of my work is just my stories about Middle Eastern people, I don’t think I would ever be upset. But there’s always the worry that I am in the person-of-color slot in a season. It starts to feel a little icky. I don’t know that I’ll ever stop writing about Middle Eastern people until it doesn’t feel special. It feels special right now to have these Iranian people onstage.

Who did you write English for?

English is for me. I had to write it. I wrote it as my thesis. 

I was really angry that year. After the travel ban, I white-knuckled it for two years, and I wrote English because I was furious with the anti-immigrant rhetoric. I just wanted to scream into the void a little bit. It’s a huge thing to learn a different language, a huge thing to give up that ability to fully express yourself, even if you have a full command over language.

I was about to graduate. I wanted to be a writer, and it also probably came out of my own insecurities that I would never actually have the words to say what I wanted.

What does it mean to present this play to mostly white, mostly American audiences? 

The most meaningful responses for me have been the first-generation Middle Eastern kids who come to see English. I feel like they’re totally in it with me. Our white audiences, it’s tricky. There is laughter sometimes where I do not think there should be laughter. The accents get laughs. And it’s really uncomfortable some nights. I think the play takes care of it in a way. The pain is so real at the end of the play that I don’t think anybody’s laughing. But it is not easy.

Why have you written this play as a comedy?

I’m not a political writer. I’m not a public intellectual. I am, at my core, someone who loves a cheap laugh. I would fling myself off this booth to make you laugh. 

English is sad. But writing a trauma play makes me want to dry heave. I just think it’s so flattening. It doesn’t help people see us as three-dimensional. I just can’t do it. And I don’t think it’s truthful. I don’t think that’s how life works. 

Politics come into the room, and you’re still trying to make your best friend laugh, or you’re still annoyed—it’s all happening at once. Do people think that Middle Eastern women are huddled under a chador, like, bemoaning our oppressions? Pain looks different than how we think it looks and also joy is always there. Kindness is always there. There’s so much laughter through it.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times on February 17, 2022. Reprinted with permission.