Rehan Ansari
REHAN ANSARI is a Brooklyn-based writer. A Karachi native and a graduate of Vassar College, Rehan was a working journalist in New York during 9/11 and in Mumbai during the attacks in 2008. He travelled to Pakistan in the aftermath of both, and Unburdened is based on his experiences. The play has been presented at CEPA gallery's Art of War festival in Buffalo and has had readings in Toronto including at the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education. http://asiasociety.org/events-calendar/unburdened-new-play-rehan-ansari
Unburdened is set in the time just before and after President Obama’s inauguration when Robin, a journalist from Toronto, goes on a newspaper assignment to Karachi. Robin is in a decade-long relationship with Katherine, and most of the play is seen through Katherine’s eyes
After an October of attacks in Pakistan, at a UN office in Islamabad, Army Headquarters in Rawalpindi, and police academies in Lahore and with the Pakistan Army backed by the US attacking the tribal areas of Pakistan—I decided to have a conversation on Skype with a Pakistani writer I spent some time with in Lahore last winter.
If the war on terror can be likened to a storm at sea most visible in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in Mumbai last winter, its undercurrents rage in Pakistani society.
When Al Jazeera’s Senior Producer Samir Khader was recently in town for the theatrical release of Control Room, we met him at the Roosevelt Hotel. Born and raised in Baghdad but now living in Jordan, Khader seems right out of the world of American film noir— he’s like a Bogart character who has recognized a moral imperative and struggles with his fear of self and the world.
