Stephen Karam

[reviews_and_ramblings]

Stephen Karam is the author of Sons of the Prophet (2012 Pulitzer Prize Finalist and winner of the Drama Critics Circle, Outer Critics Circle & Lucille Lortel Awards for Best Play). Other plays include Speech & Debate, the inaugural production of Roundabout Underground; columbinus (New York Theatre Workshop); Girl on Girl (Brown/Trinity Playwrights Rep); and Emma (a modern, musical version of Jane Austen's novel), performed by students of the Professional Performing Arts High School in NYC in association with Waterwell. He wrote the libretto for Dark Sisters, an original chamber opera with composer Nico Muhly (co-produced by Gotham Chamber Opera, MTG and Opera Company of Philadelphia).

His plays are published by Dramatists Play Service, American Theatre Magazine, Northwestern University Press and Dramatic Publishing Co.; he's also written for The New York Times, The Advocate and online for NY Magazine and McSweeney's.

Stephen has been a guest teacher at Brown University, NYU, University of Scranton, The New School and is a 2012 writer-in-residence at the Fieldston School in NYC.

A MacDowell Colony Fellow, Stephen grew up in Scranton, PA and is a graduate of Brown University. He is the recipient of the inaugural Sam Norkin Off-Broadway Drama Desk Award and the Dramatists Guild's Hull-Warriner Award for Sons of the Prophet.

In Sons of the Prophet, brothers Joseph Douaihy (29 years old) and Charles Douaihy (18 years old), who live in a run-down area of Nazareth, Pennsylvania, are left alone after their father dies of a heart attack two weeks after a car accident. That accident was caused by a prank by the local football star, Vin, who is sent to a juvenile detention center as punishment.

Their family has emigrated from Lebanon and is distantly related to Kahlil Gibran. The brothers are forced to not only take care of themselves but care for their aging uncle, Bill. Joseph, who has mysterious pains, goes to work for Gloria, a book-packager, to get health insurance. Gloria tries to convince Joseph to write a book about his family, thinking this will return her to success in the publishing world. Joseph, who is gay, starts a romance with a reporter.

The play uses the device of projections with "a title inspired by the chapter headings in Gibran’s The Prophet."

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sons_of_the_Prophet

Further Readings:

Sons of the Prophet, Acting Edition by Stephen Karam
Paperback: 72 pages
Publisher: Dramatist's Play Service; 1 edition (November 30, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0822225972
ISBN-13: 978-0822225973
Amazon: Sons of the Prophet, Acting Edition

Winner of the 2012 Drama Critics' Circle, Outer Critics Circle, Lucille Lortel Award for Best Play, and a 2012 Pulitzer Prize Finalist
A deeply humorous, unflinching portrait of grief and loss, Sons of the Prophet depicts a Lebanese-American family in rural Pennsylvania beset by an absurd string of tragedies. At the play's center is Joseph Douaihy, a once-promising world-class runner now sidelined by injury. 　
As Joseph confronts his deteriorating health, he is also forced to face the death of his father, an ailing Uncle, and a desperate boss beset by her own tragedies.　
Deftly keeping its various storylines in careful balance, Karam's play confronts, with abundant intelligence and great sympathy for human frailty, the inevitability of loss and the equally inevitable comedy resulting from our attempts to cope with is consequences.

More LGBT History at my website: www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Persistent Voices