New Threads Staged Reading Series 2025
Featuring a workshop production of Artist-in-Residence Evren Odcikin’s timely comedy, Oriental, or 1001 Ways to Tie Yourself in Knots
New Threads is Golden Thread’s annual staged reading series that engages its audience in the process of playmaking and allows writers of Middle Eastern and non-Middle Eastern descent an authentic and supportive space to develop work about the Middle East. Since its launch in 2011, many New Threads plays and playwrights have continued on to receive mainstage productions.
Plays
Oriental, or 1001 Ways to Tie Yourself in Knots
by Evren Odcikin
dramaturgy by Torange Yeghiazarian
Kaan has been commissioned to make an adaptation of 1001 Nights from a Very Important Theater Company, and asked to bring his immigrant, Muslim, queer perspective to it. Unfortunately, he is not sure what all that means. As his characters revolt and refuse to tell the stories that he requires of them, can Kaan face his demons, change the minds and hearts of his audience, and save all the women of the kingdom in the process? Oriental is an absurdist look at the hilarious knots SWANA creatives must tie themselves in to tell their stories and make a career in the American theatre.