Sanaz Toossi (USA)
Authors / Theater
is an Iranian-American playwright from Orange County, California. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from New York University and already had great success with her first two plays ENGLISH and WISH YOU WERE HERE [both produced in NYC in 2022]. She currently writes for the Atlantic Theater Company, the Roundabout Theater Company, the Williamstown Theater Festival, the Manhattan Theater Club, the South Coast Repertory theater company, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
PRIZES/AWARDS:
2023 – Pulitzer Prize for Drama for ENGLISH
2022 – Horton Foote Award
2020 – Steinberg Playwright Award
2019 – P73 Playwriting Fellow
Works
WISH YOU WERE HERE
2022
Playwrights Horizons, NYC
It’s 1978 and protests are breaking out all across Iran, encroaching on this suburb where a tight-knit circle of girlfriends plans weddings, trades dirty jokes, and tries to hang onto a sense of normalcy. But as the revolution escalates, each woman is forced to join the wave of emigration or face an equally uncertain future at home. With breathtaking humanity and cutting wit, Wish You Were Here chronicles a decade of life during war, as best friends forever become friends long lost, scattered and searching for home.
ENGLISH
2022
Atlantic Theater Company/Roundabout Theatre Company, NYC
“English only” is the mantra of Marjan, an English teacher in Karaj, Iran, who is struggling to prepare her four students for the TOEFL English as a Foreign Language test. The exam result will be life-changing for each of the classmates, but in between the word games and honest conversations, one student seems to be upsetting the lesson plan.
With wit, cleverness and compassion, award-winning playwright Sanaz Toossi’s comedy uses language to explore identity, origin and community.