Omer Abbas Salem

Ibrahim is the average 30something Arab American Muslim who is constantly being reminded how unmarried he is by his relentlessly caring immigrant mother, Sara. Having helped raise his smart, popular, hijabi cheerleading younger sister Lena, Ibrahim has always been comfortable sinking into the background. Normal job, quiet life, easy men. But on the precipice of finding what could be his first real relationship, Sara feels compelled to take Ibrahim's future into her own hands by attempting to arrange her son's Big Gay Muslim Wedding all on her own.

Mosque4Mosque is a dramedy about a normal Muslim American family attempting to live in America immediately prior to and immediately after Trump's inauguration.

Immigrants in Skokie, Chicago find each other in a local Indian eyebrow threading salon. This is an ensemble play about found family, assimilation, and loving across cultures.

This play covers the lives of seven students at St. Boniface High School, in 1979 Chicago. It delves into how systems of support can be manipulated to abuse the less powerful. As the students try and find ways to help each other and themselves, we see how those in power have tactics and playbooks prepared to maintain dominance. This is a play about how permanently abuse can damage and how hard it can be to see.

The Kazem family immigrated to the Chicago from Iraq and are attempting to assimilate and live and then 9/11 happens. This romantic comedy uses classic film tropes to examine identity and which knots we choose to untie to become our ideal American. This is a play about self discovery.

Hannah recounts her life as one of Hitler's secretaries taken with him into the bunker at the end of WWII. Her sons are dead and she's sad. She uses her sadness as an excuse to search for greater importance and find it in her capacity for evil. This absurd comedy looks at complicity and the lies we tell ourselves to act in self-interest and create self-importance.

Fola, a MFA Directing candidate goes into their mid-year review with their Dean. It does not go well. Fola recorded their mid-year review and starts circulating it. That creates a hostile work environment for Dean Healy and she reports Fola to HR. Fol, Healy, and HR now have to walk through the complications of communication.

A TYA play about a small winter island town that is visited by two green summer creatures. The people of the town have no idea who they are or where they came from. It's a play about the process of learning, finding your place within an unjust system, and pushing back against answers that don't make sense.

A queerer reimagining of the origins of Jonestown and the People's Temple. This play is told in three episodes and follows Rassoul, a Turkish American swept up by the church and Jim Jones' seduction. As we descend into the jungle, things get more absurd until everything stops.

An Utah Senator is pregnant and visits a reproductive specialist for an exam and so begins a tumultuous relationship. He is the worlds' first pregnant man and she hates having to help him. This is a play about appropriation and when we're forced to tolerate it. This is a play about privilege and when we tolerate it. It's a Science Fiction fifteen minute play.

Elagabalus is a FABULOUS gender fluid, queer, and Syrian Roman Emperor. Watch him struggle to explain his way into heaven. The more he speaks, the deeper the hole he digs. Based on history, Elagab is an absurdist reaction piece to Trump's election and was created at the Actors Theatre of Louisville.

A group of scientists have formed a new community without gender or social hierarchy for the greatest experiment: to see how much humans can learn and discover when unencumbered by inequity. Their great experiment is threatened when two green children who speak a fairy language appear. Who are they and where did they come from and will they mean the sisterhood's end?