←Recommendations of Off-White; Or the Arab House Party Play

I had the honor of experiencing a reading of this play, and it is perfection, a real treasure for actors and audiences alike. A lean, razor-sharp, hyper-focused tale that had the room filled with laughter, groans, moans, and more. Set within a single location, a single evening and a singular moment in American history, the setting of early 2000s/post-9/11 America is brilliantly conveyed to unearth the darkness of what lie under the nostalgia of a time we still have yet to reckon with as a country. Moving & vital.

Alyssa Haddad-Chin presents an entertaining, often humorous, and certainly thought-provoking look at post-9/11 America through the eyes of an Arab-American teen who just wants to fit in with her white friends. As she and her girlfriends host a sparsely attended house party, derogatory remarks from her peers come across as maybe just drunken nonsense or poor attempts at humor. But eventually true feelings of suspicion, however unwarranted, are revealed. We have a dark history of using a particular event to condemn entire nationalities and suddenly casting suspicion on neighbors and friends. This play shines an important light.

The community of national and local readers for the 44th annual Bay Area Playwrights Festival in 2021, enthusiastically recommends OFF-WHITE; OR THE ARAB HOUSE PARTY PLAY as a Semi-Finalist at Playwrights Foundation. We were deeply moved by the story of a teenager trying to fit in with white peers and the racism that occurred to the MENA community post-9/11. We were compelled by the play's promise with natural dialogue and wit, dramatizing a time where one's identity and self-worth widely vacillates. We hope this play is widely read, finds dedicated collaborators, and moves swiftly towards production. #BAPF2021

I don't know how to say this any other way, so please just know that I mean it as a huge compliment: the further you get into Alyssa Haddad-Chin's Off-White; Or the Arab House Party Play, the more your skin starts to crawl. The loving mockery of early 2000s teen culture paired with the uncomfortably familiar everyday prejudices of protagonist Leila's peers makes for a queasy, relevant dark comedy. It's boldly funny and quietly tragic. The final image will stay with me for a long time. Produce this play!

The Workshop Theater is pleased to recognize Alyssa Haddad as a playwright selected out of a competitive pool of applicants for our Winter 2020 Writer’s Intensive. The Writer’s Intensive is an eight-week long, playwright-driven process geared towards revising an existing play. Off-White; Or the Arab House Party Play explores a particularly difficult coming-of-age narrative, that of a Middle Eastern-American teenage girl in the aftermath of 9/11, with nuance and subtlety. The piece is crafted with painstaking attention to detail that makes even her least sympathetic characters utterly relatable. Our congratulations and thanks to Alyssa.

A brilliant job of capturing a specific place and time in suburban America while also being timeless. PRODUCE THIS PLAY!!!

"Off White; Or the Arab House Party Play" by Alyssa Haddad is funny and powerful. It's simultaneously a love letter to the early 2000s and a very honest look at the racism that existed during that time and continues to exist today. Leila's journey over the course of this play is hopeful and humorous and heartbreaking, which perfectly encapsulates the high stakes of being a teenager. Everyone should read this play and if you are a theatre, you should produce it ASAP.

In "Off White; Or the Arab House Party Play," Alyssa Haddad addresses post-9/11 Islamophobia with authentically teenage voices and doesn't feel the need to redeem any character who doesn't deserve to be redeemed. The humorous moments of the play made me laugh out loud while reading it, but they also draw vital attention to the moments when a joke stops being a joke.

An absolutely spectacular and appropriately disturbing capture of Islamophobia permeating our culture and infiltrating our lives post 9/11. Well done.

A truly hilarious, moving, and at times heartrending look at Islamophobia in the early 2000s specifically among teens, coming-of-age, gendered relationships and sexuality, and multi-racial identity. Haddad uses tropes of the suburban teen movie genre and an amazingly detailed (and funny) smattering of early 2000s teen culture to take a familiar narrative and turn it upside down by centering the narratives of folks who never would've had this story told about them at the time. Leila's journey, her conversation with Adam, and her difficult-to-watch interactions with her white peers are all illuminating, impeccably-observed, and potent.