San Diego Reader November 3, 2016 63
Amir’s profile
He realizes that any association with terrorists could endanger his career.
D
onald Trump has no problem with racial profiling. He’d love to stop every Muslim at the border. And, hey, if the police “see
somebody that’s suspicious,” he said in a speech, “they will profile. Look what’s going on. Do we really have a choice?” The poster child for xeno-
phobia, Trump wouldn’t under- stand the expression “driving while black” or the daily threats and humiliations people must face who look slightly suspicious. Ayad Akhtar’s on a roll. San Diego has seen his
cializing in mergers and acquisitions, Amir’s a cinch to become the firm’s next full partner, and first non-Jew. That’s Amir’s “profile.” When we first see him,
THEATER JEFF SMITH
The Who and the What (a father will not let his daughter marry a plumber) and Junk: The Golden Age of Debt (an epic about corporate greed), both world premieres at the La Jolla Playhouse. In 2013, Akhtar won the Pulitzer Prize for Disgraced. The 90-minute drama, currently in a pyrotechnic pro- duction at the San Diego Rep, exposes the cor- rosive effects of racial profiling. From the looks of things, Amir Kapoor
must have it all. He wears blindingly white dress shirts: $600 Charvets, of course, with a five-figure thread count. Blond, attractive wife Emily is an up-and-coming artist specializing in early Islamic aesthetics. Their Upper East Side apartment’s a study in palatial posh. A corporate lawyer spe-
he’s posing for Emily. She’s painting a variation on Velazquez’s famous Portrait of Juan de Pareja (his slave, made immortal on canvas). From the waist up, Amir’s dressed to the nines. From the waist down, just sleek black boxers. At the time
we note the incongruity and move on. As the play progresses, he’ll expose the rest of himself with an intricate series of conflicting impulses. Disgraced starts with a formula: two married
couples come together — to solve a small griev- ance in Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage; for a night- cap after a faculty nosh in Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Another formula, the couples are a tidy cross-section of races and cultures: Amir (from India?); Caucasian wife Emily; Jory, African-American lawyer on the rise; her Jewish husband Isaac, curator of the Whitney Museum. In the two couples’ formula, small talk and safe
topics give way to confessions, revelations, and breakdowns. The “real,” often monstrous, people come out. What sets Disgraced apart is it’s less easy to watch from afar, to stand outside the cage, than the others. Your first impressions — your
As Disgraced progresses, Amir Kapoor (né Abdullah) exposes himself with an intricate series of conflicting impulses.
Disgraced, by Ayad Akhtar San Diego Repertory Theatre, 769 Horton Plaza, downtown Directed by Michael Arabian; cast: Ronobir Lahiri, Allison Spratt Pearce, M. Keala Miles, Jr., Richard Baird, Monique Gaffney; scenic design, John Iacovelli; costumes, Anastasia Pauktova; lighting, Brian Gale; sound, Kevin Anthenill
Playing through November 13; Sunday and Wednesday at 7 p.m., Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. Matinee Sunday at 2 p.m.
pre-judgments — will pull you in, and may have been dead wrong. To fit the profile of the American Dream, Amir
renounced Islam. He changed his last name from Abdullah — a Muslim red flag — to Kapoor, a
common name in India, and even his Social Secu- rity number. He eats pork and drinks 16-year-old Macallan scotch without fear of divine reprisal. His custom-fit duds, however, didn’t keep a waiter from waving a jihad-fearing finger at him the
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