Theater maker, director, and performer Adil Mansoor explores family tension, queerness, and faith in Amm(i)gone, presented by Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in association with Kelly Strayhorn Theater. Running April 20 to May 12, the one-person play is an interpretation of Sophocles’ Greek tragedy Antigone. As part of a newly launched national tour, Amm(i)gone will travel to Long Wharf Theatre after its run at Woolly Mammoth Theatre.
In Amm(i)gone (pronounced AHM-ee-gawn), creator and performer Adil Mansoor invites his Pakistani mother to translate Antigone into Urdu as a means of exploring the tensions between family and faith. Should he keep his queerness buried from his devout Muslim mother? Through Greek tragedy, teachings from the Quran, and audio conversations with his mother, Mansoor creates this theatrical personal story about locating love across faith.
“Amm(i)gone attempts to reconcile with my conflicting experience as a theater artist, queer educator, and momma’s boy,” Mansoor said. “It started with a desire to include my mom in my artistic practice and to encourage us to embrace our full selves with one another. I was drawn to Antigone’s relationship with her sister, Ismene. In the first scene of the play, the conflict erupts over how much these two sisters love each other. Their disagreement stems from a desire to care for one another. Their struggle against an impossible situation is a dynamic place for my mom and I to begin our conversation.”
“Adil has been part of the Woolly family as a member of our Artistic Caucus, and I’m now thrilled to showcase this beautiful, funny, and moving work at Woolly Mammoth,” says Maria Manuela Goyanes, artistic director. “So many of us have felt a desire to be accepted by our parents and form a new connection in adulthood. Adil gives us a peek behind the curtains to his real-life story in Amm(i)gone, as a queer artist coming from a Muslim family, with the backdrop of a Greek tragedy. I just adore this show, so much that we’re launching its national tour with this production at Woolly!”
ABOUT THE CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM
Adil Mansoor, Playwright, Co-Director, Actor; Lyam Gabel is Co-Director; Kelly Strayhorn Theater is Producing Partner; Xotchil Alyss Musser is Scenic & Lighting Designer; Aaron Landgraf is Sound Designer; Davine Byon is Co-Media Designer; Joseph Amodei is Co-Media Designer; Jazzy Davis is Stage Manager; Briana Padgett is Production Assistant; Reina Ramos is Light Board Operator; Colin K. Bills is Tour Production Manager; Susannah Cai is Lighting Programmer; Sasha Finley is Associate Lighting Designer; Cecelia Shin is Associate Scenic Designer; Preston Heard is AV Operator.
PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE
Amm(i)gone runs from April 20 to May 12, 2024. The typical performance week includes Wednesday – Sunday performances, with weeknights at 8:00 PM, Saturdays at 3:00 PM and 8:00 PM, and Sundays at 2:00 PM and 7:00 PM. View the full performance schedule at woollymammoth.net.
There are Pay-What-You-Will preview performances on April 20 at 8:00 PM and April 21 at 7:00 PM. Previews run through April 25.
A special Golden Ticket member matinee will be held on Sunday, April 28 at 2:00 PM with a pre-show mix-and-mingle and freebie for any of Woolly Mammoth’s Golden Ticket holders in attendance.
South Asian Affinity Night will be held on Thursday, May 2 at 8:00 PM and Pride Night (LGBTQ+ Affinity Night) will be on Friday, May 3 at 8:00 PM.
TALKBACKS (IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE PERFORMANCE)
- Golden Ticket Matinee – Sunday, April 28 at 2:00 PM
- South Asian Affinity Night – Thursday, May 2 at 8:00 PM
- Pride Night – Friday, May 3 at 8:00 PM
ACCESS PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE
- ASL Interpreted performances on Sunday, May 5 at 2:00 PM and Saturday, May 11 at 8:00 PM, which feature interpreters placed inside the theater who translate what the actors are saying and expressing to the audience.
- Audio Described performances on Saturday, May 4 at 3:00 PM and Saturday, May 11 at 3:00 PM. which feature live narration interspersed with the actors’ dialogue used to provide information surrounding key visual elements.
- Open Captioned performances on Wednesday, May 1 at 8:00 PM and Friday, May 3 at 8:00 PM, which feature permanently visible, on-screen text description that displays dialogue, identifies speakers, and describes other relevant sounds.
- Mask-required performances on Wednesday, May 1 at 8:00 PM and Sunday, May 12 at 2:00 PM. which require all audience members and on-site staff to wear a face mask covering the nose and mouth.
Assistive listening devices are available for all performances. Transmitters and accompanying headsets and ear speakers are available at the Box Office. For more information on Access Performances please visit the play’s website page.
TICKET INFORMATION
Tickets start at $34 and are available at woollymammoth.net, by phone at (202) 393-3939, and via email at [email protected].
Preview Pay-What-You-Will performances on April 20 and 21 through Woolly Mammoth and TodayTix. There are also Pay-What-You-Will tickets available for every remaining performance by selecting the PWYW seats and adjusting the ticket price at woollymammoth.net. Tickets for PWYW previews and the full production run are open for sale two weeks prior to the first preview.
Patrons who are 30 years old and younger may purchase tickets starting at $25 for any performance. There are also discounts available for educators, first responders, and active U.S. military personnel, spouses, and veterans. Stampede tickets (rush tickets) for $25 are also available for every performance, subject to availability. More information is available at woollymammoth.net.
ABOUT ADIL MANSOOR
Adil Mansoor is a theater director centering the stories of queer folks and people of color. His performance Amm(i)gone adapts Sophocles’s Antigone as an apology to and from his mother. Amm(i)gone is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creative and Development Fund Project co-commissioned by Kelly Strayhorn Theater, The Theater Offensive, and NPN. Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company is producing a national tour of Amm(i)gone, which begins performances in Washington, DC, in April of 2024.
Mansoor has developed work with Manhattan Theatre Club, New York Theatre Workshop, The New Dramatists, The Poetry Project, Mercury Store, Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, NYU Tisch, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Pittsburgh Public Theatre, PearlArts Studios, and others. Recent directing projects include Daddies by Paul Kruse (Audible), Gloria by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Hatch Arts Collective), Kentucky by Lean Nanako Winkler (Pittsburgh Playhouse), and Once Removed by Paul Kruse (Tribeca).
Mansoor is a founding member of Pittsburgh’s Hatch Arts Collective and the former Artistic Director of Dreams of Hope, an LGBTQA+ youth arts organization. He has been an NYTW 2050 Directing Fellow, a Gerri Kay New Voices Fellow with Quantum Theater, and an Art of Practice Fellow and Community Leader with Sundance. He was part of the inaugural Artist Caucus gathered by Baltimore Center Stage, Long Wharf, The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, and Woolly Mammoth. Mansoor received his MFA in Directing from Carnegie Mellon.
ABOUT WOOLLY MAMMOTH THEATRE COMPANY
The Tony Award-winning Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company creates badass theater that highlights the stunning, challenging, and tremendous complexity of our world. For over 40 years, Woolly has maintained a high standard of artistic rigor while simultaneously daring to take risks, innovate, and push beyond perceived boundaries. One of the few remaining theaters in the country to maintain a company of artists, Woolly serves an essential research and development role within the American theater. Plays premiered here have gone on to productions at hundreds of theaters all over the world and have had lasting impacts on the field. Currently co-led by Artistic Director Maria Manuela Goyanes and Managing Director Kimberly E. Douglas, Woolly is located in Washington, DC, equidistant from the Capitol and the White House. This unique location influences Woolly’s investment in actively working toward an equitable, participatory, and creative democracy.
Woolly Mammoth stands upon occupied, unceded territory: the ancestral homeland of the Nacotchtank whose descendants belong to the Piscataway peoples. Furthermore, the foundation of this city, and most of the original buildings in Washington, DC, were funded by the sale of enslaved people of African descent and built by their hands.
ABOUT KELLY STRAYHORN THEATER
Named after 20th-century entertainment legends Gene Kelly and Billy Strayhorn, both natives of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Kelly Strayhorn Theater (KST) is a home for creative experimentation, community dialogue, and collective action rooted in the liberation of Black and queer people. We welcome our home to all who uplift Black, Indigenous, people of color, and queer voices.
KST is an institutional arts anchor in Pittsburgh’s East End that has served the community for more than two decades. Since launching KST Presents programming in 2008, KST has been Black-led, fostering radical imagination for Black and queer arts, culture, and community in Pittsburgh by cultivating BIPOC and/or queer artists, entrepreneurs, and arts administrators, developing their careers, and shifting narratives around Black possibility.
Amm(i)gone is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creative and Development Fund Project co-commissioned by Kelly Strayhorn Theater, The Theater Offensive, and NPN. It was developed as a Hatch Arts Collective project. The production is additionally supported by the Frank-Ratchye Fund for Art @ the Frontier; the Point Foundation’s Andrew A. Isen Internship; The Heinz Endowments; Opportunity Fund; PNC Charitable Trust; A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust Fund of The Pittsburgh Foundation; Arts, Equity, Reimagined Fund; Workhorse Collaborative; and Dreams of Hope.
