Bitter Racism With A Spicy Pistachio Crust

After a reading of Laura Shamas’ Pistachio Stories at Playwrights’ Week, it’s hard to decide whether one has just had a life changing experience or been lectured to by an overly in-your-face social activist for an hour and a half. The play centers around a group of friends that gather once a week to watch Al Jazeera and discuss events in the Middle East. However, the appearance of a bag of red pistachios on a character’s car’s windshield unearths stories of racism and fear from the group’s Arab-American members, which eventually tears them apart.
The strength of Pistachio Stories comes from the fact that it not only puts a face on the struggles of Arab Americans in a post 9/11 world, but also that it emphasizes that they are three dimensional people, not just stereotypes. Extremely moving moments, as when a character is kicked off of an airplane due to his Arab last name, are juxtaposed with lighter ones. For example, laughs were heard when an Irish-American cast member taught an Arab-American to belly dance. The characters distinct voices shone through in an excellently acted reading.
However, the play is still in its rough draft stage, and this fact reared its ugly head in its sometimes preachy and heavy hitting dialogues. Though broken up by witty comments such as “Privacy is so 20th century,” most of the play consists either of the spirited recitation of horrifying statistics about the Bush administration or facts about Arab-American culture. The play frequently breaks the “show-don’t-tell” rule in these moments, turning what has the potential to be a great social commentary into a verbose, overly long sermon.
Also, Pistachio Stories tried to fit too many stories into one play—there were 11 scenes, into which the author crammed a love story, the tragic effects of a divorce, commentary about the state of America, a crash course in Middle Eastern Culture (complete with the origin of the word candy, the legend of the discovery of coffee and the story of Gilgamesh), and, of course, the development of the three Arab-American characters and their ties back to their homelands. The play violently veers from story to story in a disconcerting manner and could benefit from a more focused idea. The play has a false ending a few scenes before the real one in the form of a contrived scene at a pistachio farm where the mystery of the red pistachios is solved. The play actually ends in an over-the-top scene with the two male Arab Americans gone “missing” and the female lead succumbing to paranoia about being “taken” as well.
Author Laura Shamas is herself a Lebanese American who originally wrote Pistachio Stories as a 10-minute play for the ReOrient Play Festival. She passionately described her play as showing the effects of xenophobia. At the performance, Shamas poignantly asked, “How does being the recipient of prejudice harm us in the long run?” and in this light, her play takes on a new, powerful mission: showing those of us privileged enough not to be subjected to racism just how detrimental it can be. While the writing is not yet perfect, the play deals with an extremely important and sensitive issue and has the potential to make powerful social commentary.
Pistachio Stories was produced with Lark Play Development Center in partnership with the Indo-American Arts Council, Inc. for Playwrights’ Week 2007, “a festival of diverse voices and vital perspectives.” The nine pieces for Playwright’s Week 2007 were chosen from over 400 submissions and the performances ended on October 1.