Sylvia Khoury is a New York-born writer of French and Lebanese descent. Her plays include Selling Kabul (Playwrights Horizons, Williamstown Theater Festival), Power Strip (LCT3), Against the Hillside (Ensemble Studio Theater), and The Place Women Go. She is currently under commission from Lincoln Center, Williamstown Theater Festival, and Seattle Repertory Theater. Awards include the L. Arnold Weissberger Award and Jay Harris Commission and a Citation of Excellence from the Laurents/Hatcher Awards. She is a member of EST/Youngblood and a previous member of the 2018-2019 Rita Goldberg Playwrights’ Workshop at The Lark and the 2016-2018 WP Lab. Her plays have been developed at Playwrights Horizons, Williamstown Theater Festival, Eugene O’Neill Playwrights’ Conference, Roundabout Theater Underground, Lark Playwrights’ Week, EST/Youngblood, and WP Theater. She holds a BA from Columbia University and an MFA from the New School for Drama. She will obtain her MD from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in May 2021.
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Against the Hillside
ANTHONY
I’m sorry, sir.
I don’t think I understand.
MATT
She took her kid and left in the middle of the night.
To go where?
She’s in the middle of the desert.
ANTHONY
Sir, if I may.
MATT
You may.
ANTHONY
Her leaving
What does any of that have to do with us?
MATT
What does that have to do with us?
We did that, Anthony.
We broke that family up.
A moment.
MATT
Do you not understand that?
ANTHONY
It doesn’t matter what I understand, sir.
Against the HillsidePremiered in2018 -
Selling Kabul
AFIYA
Can I get you tea?JAWID
Coffee.
But I will get it myself.
Stay with your friend.LEYLA
He’s wonderful, Afiya.JAWID
That’s what I tell her.LEYLA
I don’t let Amir in the kitchen.
Always breaking something.JAWID
Amir knows how to break things
To ensure he has to do nothing
Selling KabulPremiered in2019 -
Against the Hillside
REEM
I just found it in the room.
I’m telling you, after everyone was here for the funeral it was a mess.AHMED
No, it wasn’t.REEM
Ahmed, you don’t pay attention to these things.
Men don’t have to pay attention to these things.
She starts pulling things out of the bag and replacing them around the room.
REEM
But women.
Women, we know when things are out of order.
And let me tell you, they were out of order.AHMED
Stop.REEM
Stop what?
Restoring order to my house?
Against the HillsidePremiered in2018
“[Sylvia] Khoury’s delicately crafted play . . . etches the cost of tyranny, corruption and terror in intensely human terms.” ―Jeffrey Borak, The Berkshire Eagle [on Selling Kabul]
“This serious drama crackles with tension, addresses the personal and political consequences of American intervention abroad, and . . . poses many questions from the point of view of people seldom represented on the American stage: what are the consequences of taking sides in wartime? What are the costs of trying to get by living in a repressive regime?" ―Helen Epstein, The Arts Fuse [on Selling Kabul]
“Sylvia Khoury pulls nifty narrative and stylistic jumps out of her hat, and it works.” ―Elisabeth Vincentelli, The New York Times [on Against the Hillside]
Selected Works
Sylvia Khoury’s plays focus on the U.S. presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan, evoking grand geopolitical drama through simple human gesture. In effect, she is showing us the reverse of the tapestry. Compelling revelations drive the narrative tension as she explores, among other complexities, the relationship between those who practice surveillance in our military and those they surveil, as the watcher begins to identify with the watched. Khoury breaks down barriers between human beings, revealing the powerful lines of connection that exist and persist.