“Mona Mansour tackles some of the toughest issues on the planet—not least the Palestine/Israel conflict—with tremendous empathy, gorgeous language, deep compassion, and nuanced insights. Her integrity is deeply impressive, and her achievements striking,” said Steinberg Trust advisory committee member and Public Theater artistic director, Oskar Eustis.

Martyna Majok and Mona Mansour have been named winners of the 2023 Steinberg Playwright Awards, also known as the ‘Mimi’ Awards. The honor, for early-to-mid-career playwrights, includes a $100,000 grant for each winner. The awards are a program of the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust.

“The Vagrant Trilogy” stars Bassam Abdelfattah, Tala Ashe, Caitlin Nasema Cassidy, Ramsey Faragallah, Osh Ghanimah (Hamzi and Others), Nadine Malouf , Rudy Roushdi and Hadi Tabbal and follows the story of a Palestinian scholar who goes to London with his wife to deliver a lecture. When conflict and war break out in Palestine, he must decide what his next move should be – a choice that affects the rest of his life. The play spans the course of several decades with cast members playing 19 various roles.

”We left the theater and our stuff, thinking, like so many others, that we’d be back soon. It was an odd thing to happen in the middle of a show about displaced people"

In a sense, the playwright Mona Mansour has been working on “The Vagrant Trilogy” for fifteen years; in another sense, she’s been working up to it her whole life.

The originally announced ensemble cast, each playing multiple roles from a total of 19 characters across three generations and multiple decades, have all returned for the post-pandemic premiere, including Tala Ashe as Abir, Ramsey Faragallah as Ghassan, Osh Ghanimah as Hamzi, Nadine Malouf as Jamile, Rudy Roushdi as Jul, and Hadi Tabbal as Adham. Bassam Abdelfattah and Caitlin Nasema Cassidy are understudies.

NEW YORK CITY: The 2020 Kesselring Prize for playwriting—a $25,000 award given annually to an outstanding playwright deserving of national recognition—will be presented to Mona Mansour by the National Arts Club during a virtual ceremony on Thurs., Feb. 25 at 6 p.m. This marks the 40th year of the Kesselring Prize, presented annually by the club, and the evening will include a special look back at the history of the award, in addition to the tribute to Mansour.

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) has announced its 2021 season, featuring an array of programming all year in digital and live production.

The combination of multi-format programming is a celebration of OSF’s continued commitment to presenting world-class theater on its stages and its recent foray into groundbreaking digital programming, introducing fans, supporters and new audiences worldwide to the company’s award-winning artistry.

The 2021 season features classics and new works streaming from the OSF archives, imaginative and illuminating new works presented on OSF’s digital platform, O!, and a fall 2021 live season on OSF’s campus in Ashland, Oregon, extending into January for the first time with OSF’s first winter special. All live performances will be subject to health department guidelines and government restrictions on large gatherings.

NEW YORK CITY: The National Arts Club has announced that playwright Mona Mansour will be awarded the 2020 Kesselring Prize for playwrighting. This $25,000 award, which includes a two-week residency and one-year membership at the Gramercy Park club, is given annually to “an outstanding playwright deserving of national recognition.” The award will be presented during a virtual ceremony later this year.

Kicking off the festival programming will be Beginning Days of True Jubilation. Written by Mona Mansour (The Vagrant Trilogy) and directed by Scott Illingworth, the new piece is conceived by Society, the newly launched ensemble-based company that uses a method of rigorous research, improvisation, and discussion to make theatre.

Adapted for Zoom, Beginning Days of True Jubilation is a satirical journey through the cult-like, group-think of winner-take-all capitalism, from the early euphoria of a new start-up through its epic crash and burn. Performances will be July 24–26.

Mansour’s The Vagrant Trilogy was set to make its New York debut in March at the Public Theater, where she is an EWG alum, but was halted due to theatre closures in the wake of the public health crisis. Her play We Swim, We Talk, We Go to War is scheduled to debut at Geva Theatre in April 2021.

The Public Theater has canceled all activities and live performances through May 17, with Joe’s Pub events canceled through May 31. This impacts the scheduled productions of The Vagrant Trilogy, a trio of plays by Mona Mansour, that had been set to run March 17–April 26, and The Visitor, a new Tom Kitt-Brian Yorkey musical that was scheduled to run March 24–May 10.

A new NYC-based theatre company, co-led by playwright Mona Mansour and director Scott Illingworth, will create new work using a method of rigorous research, improvisation, and discussion. Roughly modeled after London's Joint Stock Company, Society will see ensemble members act as active dramaturgs, generating material for a playwright via interviews, recordings, physical explorations, and open conversation.

The Public Theater's upcoming production of The Vagrant Trilogy by Mona Mansour will feature a cast made up of Tala Ashe, Ramsey Faragallah, Osh Ghanimah, Nadine Malouf, Rudy Roushdi, and Hadi Tabbal. The six actors will play 19 roles in Mansour's drama spanning four decades and three generations of a family uprooted by war and politics.

An epic story told in three parts, The Vagrant Trilogy delves into the Palestinian struggle for home and identity. Directed by Mark Wing-Davey, the production will begin March 17 ahead of an April 1 opening.

ALL(Director, please divvy up lines.)
We got through it!
We really did.
We did.
Damn.
Did we?
Yes, it’s done.
Are we sure?
Yes!

“Two of the plays that felt most miraculous in 2018 were Berkeley Rep’s 'Angels in America' and Golden Thread’s 'We Swim, We Talk, We Go to War.'“

“Mona Mansour is a playwright and one of the members of the Bridge Award judging panel. Her recent play, We Swim, We Talk, We Go to War, tackles issues dealing with military service and is currently receiving its world premiere production at the Golden Thread theater in San Francisco. The Bridge Award coordinator, Anna O'Donoghue, recently sat down with Mona to talk about her process of working on the play, and what it's like for a civilian writer to approach topics of military life.”

“‘You never know where something takes you as a writer… you think you want to write about one thing and it leads you to another path.’

These are the words of Mona Mansour, a Lebanese American playwright who set out to write a play about her father’s choice not to go back to Lebanon. Unexpectedly, she ended up following a character who is a refugee in a Palestinian camp.”

“Arab-American playwright Mona Mansour joined Worldview’s Jerome McDonnell Friday to discuss the play Unseen.”

“An interview with playwright Mona Mansour. Mona’s play The Way West is at Labyrinth Theater Company in New York City from February 25 to April 3, 2016.”