Language Rooms

Most recent productions include Jihad Jones and the Kalashnikov Babes, produced by Golden Thread Productions in San Francisco, InterAct Theatre, and Kitchen Dog Theater; Enemies: Lively Scenes of Love and Combat, produced by Silk Road Theatre Project in Chicago (nominated for a 2007-2008 Jeff Award for New Work); and Back of the Throat by Yaller Skunk in London. Back of the Throat was winner of the 2004 Northwest Playwrights’ Competition held by Theater Schmeater. It won L.A. Weekly’s Excellence in Playwriting Award for 2006. It was also nominated for the 2006 American Theater Critics Associations Steinberg/ New Play Award, and was voted Best New Play of 2005 by the Seattle Times.  It was first staged by San Francisco’s Thick Description and Golden Thread Productions; then later presented in various theaters around the country including The Flea Theater in New York. Another play of his, Ten Acrobats in an Amazing Leap of Faith, staged by Silk Road Theatre Project, won the After Dark Award for Best New Play in Chicago in 2006.  His two-related one-acts, Acts of Desire, were staged by the Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles. Back of the Throat, and the two related one-acts, now titled, Such a Beautiful Voice is Sayeda’s and Karima’s City, have been published by Dramatists Play Service. The latter one-acts have also been included in The Best American Short Plays: 2004-2005 to be published by Applause Books in 2008.  His play, Ten Acrobats in an Amazing Leap of Faith, is to be included in Salaam/Peace: An Anthology of Middle-Eastern-American Playwrights, to be published by TCG in 2009. Yussef holds an MFA from Carnegie-Mellon University and was playwright-in-residence at Duke University.