A Broken Hallelujah
Mostly unedited comments from the play Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar, typed out during the post-play discussion: A turning in on yourself. Of realising that you are not who you are and yet you are who you are trying to hide yourself from. A part of yourself that you are secretly proud of if you dare to throw away the social norms and morality holding you back. The caricatures are so relevant because they connect to people in a not always explainable way. In some way we can see ourselves in these characters but yet there is a simultaneous rejection. The whole awakening to white privilege, to orientalism, to racial/religious profiling also seems to turn in on itself because it endorses a kind of stereotype also. So I guess at the same time the play is brilliant because it shoves the stereotypes up your face and declares SO WHAT F**K YOU (and I realise, maybe this curse word is a played out stereotype in itself). Because at the same time it is easy to draw causality rather than just obs...