Tala Ashe, Hadi Tabbal, Ava Lalezarzadeh, Marjan Neshat, Pooya Mohseni in English (Photo: Joan Marcus)
The process of learning a new language can be an act of invasion. Shaping your mouth, tongue, and brain for this new form of expression starts to change who you are behind the voice speaking. And learning English in this global economy is becoming less of a choice and sometimes it is a political necessity.
In Sanaz Toossi’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, English, about students in an English class in Iran, it is hard not feel a profound loss at the end of the play knowing how language creates gaps between people. Her characters frequently find themselves fracturing in ways they did not expect. Knud Adams’s keen direction leads the exceptional company through this subtle minefield of personal and political issues. And like experiencing jetlag you may not quite know the impact of all this carefully executed but strong work until after the play ends.
The students in Marjan’s TOEFL class are contemplating leaving Iran and, for some, speaking English is a requirement for that journey. Roya (a stoic but biting Pooya Mohseni) says her son wants her to come to Canada and live with his family but they are raising their daughter in English, so she must learn English before she comes to live with her granddaughter. Goli (a luminous but vulnerable Ava Lalezarzadeh) is only 18 and she thinks leaning English will help her make university choices. Omid (Hadi Tabbal), who does not seem like he needs much tutoring, is trying to get a green card for Dubai and he needs a good TOEFL score. Elham (a caustic and fierce Tala Ashe) must pass the TOEFL to get admitted into her graduate school in Australia or else she cannot go.
Their teacher, Marjan (Marjan Neshat), spent years living in Manchester and loves English. She liked who she was in English, known to those around her then as Mary. But she also avoids talking about why she came back to Iran and why no one in her family speaks English. She finds a kindred spirit in Omid but there’s a deeper connection with him that she cannot put her finger on and it’s unsettling.
In the play, the actors almost always speak English on stage. When they are meant to be speaking Farsi, this is indicated by an English that is colloquial, fast, and full of varied inflection. When they are meant to be speaking English, it is often accented, halting, and full of pauses. As with many language learners, there is a starkness to their limited English-language vocabulary. Marjan insists on spoken English in class so when they break into Farsi it is usually because they cannot express what they need to say in English.
Set inside a rotating cube, we see the brightly lit, pleasant classroom with its goldenrod curtains (Marjan’s favorite color) lining one wall. When the cube turns, there is a patio outside the classroom where cigarettes are smoked and tossed into planters. It is familiar and inviting and there is a hint of the specific world outside its walls.
For Toosi’s characters, they perform show-and-tell for the class and play games but the play is operating on two levels. The English students have petty classroom squabbles and alliances and conflicts form over their lessons and studies. Elham is angry that she sounds like an idiot in English when she knows she is not an idiot. Goli enthusiastically shares Ricky Martin music which Elham criticizes because he has an accent in English and they are trying to lose theirs. Marjan’s favoritism for Omid starts to rankle the others. But these funny, mean, and mysterious interactions lead to a harder underside to the story.
While opportunities may be gained by speaking English, it has consequences for their Persian identity. By building a bridge to somewhere else, you are leaving a piece of yourself behind you are not sure you can go back to. The “choice” to learn English in a world colonized by the English language is a colonization wolf in sheep’s clothing. It is does not operate with the same obviousness of the forced assimilation of the British banning the Irish from speaking Gaelic in public or Japan banning occupied Koreans from using Korean names and speaking their own language. But that does not mean it is not there.
These characters logically know they are giving themselves options to live a different life if they leave Iran, but whatever they will experience outside of Iran may not be liberation. Who will they become “in English” in a linguistic exile and outside their native Farsi? How will they be perceived? Will they be heard or understood? Toosi’s play is very specific to her Iranian characters but the ripples of the points she is making go broader to immigrants all over the world.
My Italian grandmother, like Roya, was puzzled at her grandchildren’s names with no hint of Italian to them. I was not named Samantha because my grandmother could not pronounce it. But here Roya’s son has chosen a name for his daughter that she cannot pronounce. And those are the crushing bits of this linguistic colonization. You become, in unexpected ways, fractured and separated from your own family. Mothers and sons begin to exist as wholly different people in different languages. Grandmothers and granddaughters can have a sea of language between them such that they are ultimately strangers.
Toossi’s play reveals these heartbreaking moments in what is already a formidable path to forge for immigrants today.