Iranian-American writer Sanaz Toossi lives in California and says that she wrote her play English as “a scream into the void” after the 2017 travel ban that restricted people from specified countries from entering the USA. It became known as the “Muslim ban”.
This was also her first play, and it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2023. The Melbourne Theatre Company’s production is the Australian premiere. For a work that came from a place of anger and frustration, it’s gentle and almost delicate as it explores the deceptively small-stakes stories of an English language class in Karaj in Iran in 2008.
Teacher Marjan (Salme Geransar) is preparing four adult students – Elham (Maia Abbas), Goli (Delaram Ahmadi), Roya (Marjan Mesbahi) and Omid (Osamah Sami) – for an English as a foreign language test that they must pass if they want to emigrate to an English-speaking country.
It’s a fee-charging course that’s taught in a classroom that feels like it’s designed to make any student feel like they are in primary school and being forced to learn their times tables. There are countless courses like this all over the world.
The students are not allowed to speak Farsi in class, but when they need to communicate more than listing things found in a kitchen, they have to. When they speak English in class, it’s slow and with an accent. When they speak Farsi, it’s also in English but their Australian accents.
We know how to communicate in our first language. It’s easy. How we communicate with language is one of the first and ongoing ways in which we know other people.
I can make myself clear in English and don’t want to imagine not being able to land a joke using my words. Despite my 1289-day streak on Duolingo, all I can say in Japanese and Indonesian is “thank you”, “sorry” and “I like vegetables”; I can’t make myself understood, no matter how much the Duolingo owl encourages me. I went to learn some Farsi on the app. It doesn’t have Farsi, but it does have Klingon…
The students need to learn English because they want to live in another country, which, mostly, isn’t the same as wanting to leave Iran. There’s an expectation that political drama is going to explode in the classroom, but their stories are delicate and personal.
The strength in this script is that the consequences of learning English happen outside of the classroom. They happen in the private lives of the students and much of their stories are left for us to imagine.
For all of English’s 90-minute conversations about English – I teach writers; English is a ridiculous language and I’ve heard myself say “just because” too many times when I’m explaining English grammar – it’s not about language.
Director Tasnim Hossain creates a sense of empathy and understanding that shapes stories about hope and the projection of what their lives might be if they crack the dominant language code.
It’s about the anger and frustration of not being about to express your personality, intelligence or sense of self. It’s about knowing that you are being mocked because you can’t pronounce “w” or make your grandchild laugh. It’s about losing your identity to better your life and wondering if that life is really going to be any better.
English
Southbank Theatre – The Sumner, Southbank Boulevard, Southbank
Performance: Friday 2 August 2024
Season continues to 29 August 2024
Information and Bookings: www.mtc.com.au
Image: The Cast of English – photo by Pia Johnson
Review: Anne-Marie Peard