HuffPost’s Islamophobia Reporting Adapted Into Play In Kansas City
Source: Huffington Post
KANSAS CITY, Mo. ― It was just after 8 p.m. last Friday at the Living Room Theatre, a repurposed auto showroom in downtown Kansas City, when the lights went down.
One by one, the cast of area locals took the stage and addressed the audience. “I’m the playwright,” one said. “No, I’m the playwright!” said another. “No, I’m the playwright!”
So begins ”Tomorrow Inshallah,” a play that wants its audience to know right away: These are the voices of real people in the Kansas City area, all of whom have urgent stories to tell about being Muslim in America in 2018.
“Tomorrow Inshallah,” nearing the end of its three-week premiere at the Living Room, is based on the reporting of two HuffPost journalists, Rowaida Abdelaziz and Christopher Mathias, who earlier this year went from masjid to masjid and house to house in Kansas City, interviewing Muslims about living with Islamophobia.
HuffPost partnered with StoryWorks ― a project of Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting that produces documentary theater ― to adapt this reporting for the stage.
Since launching an Islamophobia tracker at HuffPost in 2016 to document the rising anti-Muslim sentiment across the country, Abdelaziz and Mathias noticed a slew of hate incidents — murders, vandalism and harassment — targeting Kansas City’s 30,000 Muslims over the past few years.
Categories: Americas, Islamophobia, The Muslim Times, USA