THE VAGRANT TRILOGY

by Mona Mansour

Mona Mansour, award-winning playwright and alumna of The Public’s Emerging Writers Group, delves into the Palestinian struggle for home and identity in THE VAGRANT TRILOGY, a single epic story told in three parts. In 1967, Adham, a Palestinian Wordsworth scholar, goes to London with his new wife to deliver a lecture. When war breaks out at home, he must decide in an instant what to do—a choice that will affect the rest of his life. The two parts that follow explore alternate realities based on that decision. Each part in the trilogy speaks to the others, together painting a rare and moving picture of Palestinian displacement and a refugee’s life of permanent impermanence. Featuring six actors in 19 different roles, Mansour’s drama spans four decades and three generations of a family uprooted by war and politics.

Production Notes

“Politics is the family at breakfast. Who is there, and who isabsent and why. Who misses whom when the coffee is poured intothe waiting cups. Where are your children who have goneforever from these, their usual chairs?”-- Mourid Barghouti, I Saw Ramallah

Casting: The trilogy can be done with four men (late 20s to 50s)and two women (same), preferably all Middle Eastern.

"One of thegreat joys of seeing this work develop is realizing that somethingexciting happens when you have actors of color play the whitepeople in England. This also means the casting can be flexible --everyone can play older and younger than they actually are." -From the author

Author

Mona Mansour

MONA MANSOUR grew up in a Southern California suburb, the daughter of a Lebanese immigrant father and American mother from Seattle. Her earliest obsessions included the kidnapping of heiress Patricia Hearst and the various battles of World War II. Global politics were brought inside when various cousins, uncles and aunties came to live with the family during the Lebanese Civil War. She studied acting as an undergrad, but in her senior year a class in improvisation led her down that path; she then studied at Second City Chicago and was a member of the Groundlings Sunday Company, which gave her a visceral first taste of writing. Her first play was Me and the S.L.A, where she turned a childhood obsession into a solo play about a kidnapped heiress, urban terrorists, and the nature of brainwashing.

Her commitment to theater deepened after a move to New York City in the wake of the...[FULL BIO]