Blackout Art Society’s English looks at language and belonging, January 23 to February 1 at the Firehall
Sanaz Toossi’s play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2023 for its look at four students preparing for the TOEFL
The cast of Blackout Art Society’s English. Photo by Sayna Ghaderi
The Firehall Arts Centre presents Blackout Art Society’s English from January 23 to February 1
FOR PEOPLE WHOSE FIRST language is English, it’s almost impossible to understand the pressure and struggles of passing the infamous TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language), an exam that allows immigrants to live abroad.
They’ll come closer to empathizing through English, Persian-American writer Sanaz Toossi’s play that won Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2023 and is being put on here by Blackout Art Society at the Firehall Arts Centre. The troupe’s artistic director, Amir Hosseini, directs.
The script focuses on four Iranian adults who are preparing for the TOEFL. As they learn about new vocabulary, grammar, and cultural norms, they are pushed to consider the culture they’re shedding to belong in a foreign land. And so what begins as a comedy about learning a new language develops into something much more resonant and complex—excavating the process by which immigrants assimilate and leave behind their lives.
As Hosseini puts it in his director’s notes for the show: “It’s a feeling I know in my bones, the hope that a new language might unlock a new world, and the quiet, persistent fear that a piece of your soul might slip away in the translation. The moment I read English, I felt seen. It gave a voice to that deeply personal terrain I’ve navigated for years.”
The piece hits Vancouver trailing critically acclaim: Variety has called it “hands down a masterpiece of theater. Undeniably one of the best plays of the decade.” 
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