Guilford College

Arab-American playwright, author, actor and screenwriter Betty Shamieh will read excerpts from her off-Broadway plays The Black Eyed and Chocolate in Heat: Growing up Arab in America at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 20, in the Carnegie Room of Hege Library. The event is free and open to the public. She is the author of 15 plays, and two others for which she is well-known include The Machine and Roar.

The Black Eyed is about four Arab women from across the ages—the Biblical Delilah, a modern suicide bomber, a victim of medieval Crusaders and a contemporary, secular Arab American—who meet in the afterlife. As the women struggle to come to terms with their lives and their choices, this shockingly funny play skewers traditional views on sex, family and terrorism. Chocolate in Heat is about love, sex, privilege and the problems of growing up in between two cultures.

Shamieh is a recipient of playwriting grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Theatre Communications Group, the Ford Foundation and Arts International; fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and New Dramatists; and residencies with the Sundance Theatre Institute, Yaddo and the Rockefeller Foundation. For more information on Shamieh, visit her website.

This event is sponsored by English, Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, the Study Abroad Office, Peace and Conflict Studies, International Studies, Dean’s Office and The Greenleaf. For more information on this event please contact Diya Abdo at 336-316-2214, abdod@guilford.edu