Silk Road Theatre Project Breaks In New 99-Seat Home

April 7, 2006
BY HEDY WEISS

It is not often that a theater company with just three productions to its credit (Precious Stones, Tea, and Ten Acrobats in an Amazing Leap of Faith), manages to set up shop in a newly rehabbed space in a historic building in the heart of the Loop.

But that is precisely what the Silk Road Theatre Project and its founders -- Malik Gillani, 35, and Jamil Khoury, 40 -- are now doing. This weekend, they not only will bring up the lights on their fourth production, Back of the Throat. They also will inaugurate their new home, a 99-seat theater on the "concourse" level of the First United Methodist Church of the Chicago Temple Building -- the 1924 architectural gem by Holabird & Root that stands at Washington and Clark, and is instantly recognizable by its cathedral-like spire.

And consider this neat trick: The church has footed the bill of $1.4 million for the major construction, with Silk Road itself contributing just $100,000 (coming in the form of an interest-free loan from Gillani's brother) to pay for such things as lighting and sound equipment, risers for the theater's flexible seating and box office software.

The Silk Road Theatre Project was established as a direct response to the Sept. 11 attacks and what Gillani and Khoury sensed to be a period of chaos for Americans like them. Gillani, who describes himself as "a gay Muslim," arrived in the United States at age 7 -- the Pakistan-born child of Indian parents. Khoury, his life partner, is an Orthodox Christian with Syrian and Polish-Slovak roots, and has a master's degree in divinity sciences.

"We really believed in the American dream, and the power of the immigrant, and the idea that individuals could make a difference," said Gillani, a former software specialist who tends to be the loquacious spokesman for the company. "At first we did a lot of public speaking and videotapes, but we realized we weren't changing too many hearts and minds that way. Eventually we decided that the best way to get information out was through theater. The resistance threshold is just lower when people go to be entertained. And we thought we could bring greater understanding of the Eastern world by means of storytelling, which is really what all the great books behind the world's religions do."

To date, the company has presented plays about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, about Japanese war brides and about an Egyptian patriarch's response to a homosexual son. Back of the Throat, by the Seattle-based playwright Yussef El Guindi (who also penned the latter play), is a black comedy about an Arab-American man investigated for presumed terrorist ties. Coming up in the fall at Silk Road will be Caravaggio, Richard Vetero's drama about the bad-boy Italian Renaissance painter.

A literary manager will soon be brought on board to develop more connections to playwrights, but productions of works with Chinese, Korean and Indian roots already are in the planning stages.

Silk Road's greatest challenge to date? Finding actors who fit the roles, as well as nurturing directors who can help them through the process during unusually long rehearsal periods.

"We are committed to casting ethnically appropriate actors," said Gillani. "It's not always easy; this is the first time that many of these actors are playing leading roles. But in creating opportunities we are developing talent. And it has now gotten to the point where casting directors and talent agents are coming to our shows in search of actors."

Silk Road Geography

Just what was the ancient Silk Road? Think of it as the Route 66 of the ancient world -- the vast network of trade routes that began in China, stretched across Central and South Asia, spread into the Middle East and then went on to Mediterranean Europe, culminating in Italy. Thriving from the 2nd century B.C. to the 16th century as a major artery for the silk trade and the exchange of other goods, the Silk Road also served as an intellectual and cultural marketplace.

Trace the many paths of the ancient Silk Road on a modern map and you will discover that it traverses more than two dozen entities including: Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, China, Egypt, Georgia, Greece, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, North Korea, South Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Mongolia, Pakistan, Palestinian territories, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

ROAD TRIP - Multiethnic Silk Road Gets Permanent Digs Downtown

March 30 - April 6, 2006
BY NOVID PARSI

Last fall, when Silk Road Theatre Project produced Ten Acrobats in an Amazing Leap of Faith-about a Muslim family in which one son questions his sexuality-a leader in the local Muslim community told company founders Malik Gillani and Jamil Khoury, "I'd rather be represented as a terrorist than the father of a gay son."

"We were constantly being told [by the Muslim leadership], There are no gay Muslims," Khoury says. To which Gillani responded, "You don't speak for me. I'm a gay Muslim."

The same leaders who objected to Acrobats raised no concerns about the company's new play, Back of the Throat (penned by Acrobats' Yussef El Guindi). No gays here-just an Arab-American interrogated and beaten by government officials.

Life partners Gillani, 35, and Khoury, 40, started their company as a response to the aftermath of September 11, 2001. An employee of Gillani's software firm quit because he couldn't work for "someone like you," Gillani says; meanwhile, Khoury chaperoned female friends harassed for wearing the hijab. In 2002, the couple formed Silk Road, named for the historic trade route stretching from China to Italy, to represent areas of the world that were "totally underserved" by Chicago theater, Gillani says.

"Two thirds of the world, essentially, their stories were not being told," Khoury says.

Helping Silk Road tell those stories is an unlikely partner: the First United Methodist Church of the Chicago Temple Building, the chapel-topped skyscraper at Clark and Washington. From their first meeting in 2003, Pastor Philip Blackwell says he saw an affinity between the company and the church: "Their vision of telling stories to create a better understanding is what we want to do, too," Blackwell says.

For Gillani and Khoury, the story got better. The church spent $1.4 million (and Silk Road contributed $100,000-an interest-free loan from Gillani's brother) to transform the church's basement into a flexible 99-seat theater for Silk Road. Inaugurated by Back of the Throat, the small theater is no small milestone: Other than its august neighbor, the Goodman, Silk Road is the only company with a permanent residence inside the Loop.

Clearly, a congregation (the city's oldest) that partners with a company that produced a "Jewish-Palestinian lesbian love story," as Khoury quips about his own play Precious Stones, isn't exactly conservative, and both Blackwell and Gillani make it clear that the church won't influence Silk Road's programming. Even so, a Methodist church and a nonreligious multicultural troupe isn't the most expected of unions.

But Gillani and Khoury know about unexpected unions. The son of an immigrant Syrian father and a Polish-Slovak mother, Khoury was raised in the Syrian Orthodox Christian church. Gillani was born in Pakistan of Muslim Indian parents, who moved to the U.S. when he was seven. When the two met ten years ago, "he didn't believe I was Jamil Khoury," the fair-skinned Khoury laughs. "He heard it as Jimmy O'Corey."

With their mix of religions and ethnicities, Gillani and Khoury embody the diversity they want to stage, a diversity they find sorely lacking in Chicago theater. "Chicago stages are among the most segregated spaces in the city," Khoury says. "There are so many opportunities to cast non-Caucasian actors, and those opportunities are just being squelched. There's a race problem in Chicago theater, and I don't think it's being addressed sincerely.

"This is a city that does not have a racial majority," Khoury adds, "and you would not know that going to the theater in this city." Getting nonwhite people not just on the stage but in the audience is crucial to Silk Road's mission. About a quarter of its audience is represented by Silk Road ethnicities, and about the same percentage are first-time theatergoers; almost half its audience is under 35.

For Gillani and Khoury, such artistic diversity translates directly into social change. According to Gillani, after a performance of Acrobats, a white audience member said to him, "I didn't realize Muslim families actually have husbands that love their wives."