Golden Thread Productions

REORIENT FESTIVAL AND FORUM (ReOrient) The ReOrient Festival of Short Plays was inaugurated in 1999 to present alternative perspectives of the Middle East and to showcase the multiplicity of stories, voices and styles from the region and has since becomes Golden Threads most recognized and celebrated program. This ambitious festival, now presented biennially, turns San Francisco into a Mecca for innovative, spirited, and thought-provoking theatre from and about the Middle East. It has served as a springboard for the careers of top Middle Eastern-American playwrights such as Yussef El Guindi, Torange Yeghiazarian, and Betty Shamieh, and has introduced Bay Area audiences to significant and rarely-produced dramatic works from the Middle East by authors such as Sadegh Hedayat, Fatma Gallaire, and Tawfiq AlHakim. Alongside Middle Eastern voices, ReOrient also features the work of nonMiddle Eastern playwrights, and has included premieres by distinguished American playwrights such as Naomi Wallace, Eric Ehn and Israel Horovitz. Since 2009, in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the festival, Golden Thread has organized the ReOrient Forum, a weekend-long convening in San Francisco aimed at expanding the dialogue on theatre, the Middle East, and current hot topics that illuminate the regions relationship with the US.

FULL-LENGTH PLAYS AND NEW PLAY DEVELOPMENT (Mainstage and New Threads) In addition to the production of full length plays, Golden Thread ensures the discovery and development of new playwrights and plays through three distinct programs. Middle East America (MEA): a National New Plays Initiative, created in partnership with the Lark Play Development Center (New York City) and Silk Road Rising (Chicago) is designed to help create a pipeline of high quality plays by Middle Eastern American playwrights. MEA winners receive a $10,000 commission and two years of development with possibility of productions in Chicago and San Francisco. Award winners include Adriana Sevahn Nichols (2008), Yussef El Guindi (2011), and Mona Mansour (2014). New Threads: an annual staged reading and workshop series that engages its audience in the process of playmaking and allows writers of Middle Eastern and non-Middle Eastern descent an authentic and supportive space to develop work about the Middle East. Many of the New Threads plays continue on to receive main stage productions. Kimia/Alchemy: programs that facilitate multiyear collaborations that explore rare themes and/or bring together unlikely creative partners. For example, BENEDICTUS (2007) was an international collaboration among Iranian, Israeli and American artists to create a play exploring the political stalemate among the three nations. ECSTASY | A WATERFABLE (2008) was a commission to Egyptian-American writer Denmo Ibrahim to create an ensemble generated performance inspired by a Sufi fable.