Video: Meet the Broadway-Bound Cast of ENGLISH

You know, I saw a picture of myself for our passport when we left Iran at 7

And I was like, if you had told that little girl that her trajectory would be this

there was no one would have believed it. I was so shy and quiet and lived on the outside and sort of found myself in books

And I found myself in theater. And it's a real, the world is a wondrous place

Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World. Up next for Roundabout Theatre Company is English

the Pulitzer Prize winning play by Sanaz Tusi. It'll begin performances on January 3rd

here at the Todd Haymes Theatre, where we drop by to meet the company. The play is about a group of students learning English in Iran

and it centers around their teacher who has the toughest class she's ever had

and the toughest class one could have. And it's about, like, an identity that is questioned

and, you know, communication and language and just how hard it is to express yourself

I know what's happening is rare and singular to have our whole creative team come back with us

I know. I know that's wild. Like, everyone's like, do you know how straight? I'm like, yes, I do

And to get to do it this time without the terror of doing it the first time, which was scary

We just had no idea how it would be received. So now we know the play works

So now we get to just to remove the terror from the process and just like kind of cherish this really wild thing that happening In this one particular it Sonaz exquisite language sophisticated handling of character

really delicate hand with story. And in our first conversation about the play, we just discovered that we shared all these aesthetic values

and got to talk about beauty, an architecture, and a vision for the stage

And I think it was not only talking about her play, but everything around the play

and what we hope for the theater in general when we learn that we're kindred spirits

Oh, my God. The fact that I left my home country 28 years ago

and I'm making my Broadway debut this year, it's been quite a journey

and I'm very grateful that it gets to be in this play in this particular role

It has a lot of personal meaning for me. I've done this play

This is my fifth. time doing it. I've played multiple roles. And I feel, since this is the character that I had

originated, it's a love letter to the women who raised me, my mom and my grandmother, their wants

their desires, and the fact that they were always sidelined because somehow they didn't measure up

And I feel by doing this on Broadway, I'm making the world see them, even if they didn't get to be seen on

their own time. So I know it's the first week of rehearsal. You went back in on Tuesday

What it been like being back in the room together So good I almost don want to jinx it It really it really it almost feels like we never left And we definitely did because it been three years and a lot of things have happened But the depth that we been able to mine even in the few days that we been back in rehearsal has been really really special

On one hand, it felt like putting on a really comfortable rope. It was like, oh, I miss this

And also, instantly, the realization of how much more there is to discover and how new it is

Like some scenes, like someone said to me the other day, like, oh, I think in all the time we did it, I never heard that line

And I think because there's such a trust in the play and what it is and how it has the power to communicate

I think we are braver this time around to just jump in and go deeper

So I first read the play in 2019 when I was a senior in college

I got tingles all over my body and I felt like, oh, that's me

I'm golly. I resonate with this girl. And then COVID happened, and I followed Sonas on Instagram, and I was like, I'm going to

fall, I'm going to wait until she posts about it. And then in 2021, she said, I'm looking for Iranian actors for my play, and I auditioned

Well, Canute's direction is really masterful alongside Sonas' writing. And, you know, we did this play three years ago

It was really successful. I think there could be a trap and temptation to try to exactly recreate what we did three

years ago. But the beauty of Sonaz's writing is that it lives in a lot of

our body differently three years later. And so we've been in rehearsal for a few days and our goal

is the pursuit of truth authenticity and curiosity So we discovering new choices and it living in us differently and it really exciting For me this play is about

because it's about language, and because it's about what it means to be who you are

and what it means to be who you are when you speak a language that's not your mother tongue

as someone whose mother tongue is Arabic, and who is always in an in-between world

between the U.S. and the Middle East, it hits home. I think it hits home for all of us, and I think it does the same to a lot of audiences, no matter where they're from

So it feels great to be in a show that is incredibly funny and incredibly profound about what it means to be who we are when we have to learn the language of the world

And so it's really a true privilege. You know, I wrote this play in response to a travel band

We will probably open in the wake of another travel band. So the world has not changed

And that is tragic, and we are figuring that out with each other in real time

But I wrote it because I wanted audiences to have access to people who are soon to be immigrants

people who do not speak English as a first language, and to really kind of underline that these people are not less intelligent than you or less human

In fact, they are speaking a second language, which is a sign of intellectual prowess

So, and we, but we want to tell that story. And yes, this is a story born out of anger, but we wanted to do it our way

And our way is funny and goofy. We have a ball game. We have the word in our play

Like, we're fun. We're a fun time. Come see us. Yeah