Mona Mansour Selected Works

While trying to navigate the currents of the Pacific, an Arab-American woman and her nephew, who has enlisted in the military, dive into the murky waters of family, identity, and politics. Adventurous and playful, We Swim takes the form of a literal conversation on stage, and expands into a nuanced dialogue about what it means to be American, Arab, and Arab-American at our current moment in time.

Mona Mansour delves into the Palestinian struggle for home and identity in The Vagrant Trilogy, a single epic story told in three parts. In 1967, Adham, a Palestinian Wordsworth scholar, goes to London with his new wife to deliver a lecture. When war breaks out at home, he must decide in an instant what to do—a choice that will affect the rest of his life. The two parts that follow explore alternate realities based on that decision. Each part in the trilogy speaks to the others, together painting a rare and moving picture of Palestinian displacement and a refugee’s life of permanent impermanence. Featuring six actors in 19 different roles, Mansour’s drama spans four decades and three generations of a family uprooted by war and politics. 

Conflict photographer Mia wakes up in the Istanbul apartment of her on-again, off-again girlfriend after being found unconscious at the scene of a massacre she was photographing. Mia can’t even remember being there, but she wired photos of the site hours before being found. The two women resume their volatile push-pull when Mia’s well-meaning Californian mother arrives from the United States, trying to help unravel the mystery of what happened to her daughter.

It'’s 1967 and the map of the Middle East is about to change drastically. Fueled by a love of English Romantic poetry, Adham journeys from Palestine to London with his new wife, Abir, to deliver a career-defining lecture. As the young couple'’s marriage is tested, Adham struggles to reconcile his ambitions with the pull of family and home. But what if seizing the moment means letting go of everything he knows?

A ferry ride away from the turmoil of Manhattan is Staten Island, an island of cultural conflict unto itself. The "fifth borough" reveals its forgotten and marginalized history from the discoveries of Verrazano to the hardships of Willowbrook to the uncertainties of today.

What do you do when the only way to live is to leave? Jamila, a studious 17-year-old Palestinian girl growing up in a Lebanese refugee camp, feverishly prepares for the university exam that is her only way out of the impoverished world she calls home.

In a modern-day California town that’'s seen better days, Mom shares death-defying tales of pioneer crossings with her two squabbling adult daughters as she waits for her bankruptcy to come through. This hilarious and heartbreaking play about today'’s American family explores the mixed blessing of our great frontier spirit, which has fueled both self-delusion and survival.