Description:

The MENA Program and the Center for the Writing Arts at Northwestern are proud to present this full staged reading of The Match, the new play by the celebrated Moroccan playwright Driss Ksikes, staged by the director Kathryn Walsh.

A contemporary re-writing of Oedipus Rex, The Match is about solitude, revolution and soccer. Moussa is a disillusioned ex-trade unionist about to get out of prison. His son Ali spends all of his time on the internet. A battle of words and silence takes place, while the national soccer team plays a historic match.

Driss Ksikes is an award-winning Moroccan playwright, novelist, magazine editor, and human rights advocate. He has been called “one of the most innovative writers in Morocco today” and was named “one of the six best African playwrights” by the National Studio Theatre in London.

He is the Director of the Centre d’Etudes Sociales, Economiques et Managériales in Rabat, the editor in chief of the journal Economia, and the author of numerous plays and novels. His 2014 book Le métier d’intellectuel: dialogues avec quinze penseurs du Maroc (The intellectual profession: interviews with 15 Moroccan thinkers) won the 2015 Prix Grand Atlas, Morocco’s most prestigious book prize.

He is a Visiting Writer-in-Residence with the Center for the Writing Arts at Northwestern for the spring 2017 quarter. In addition to teaching a class on North African Literature in the Age of Social Media, he led a two-day workshop on Writing for the Stage (with the director Kathryn Walsh) and gave a number of talks on campus.

Kathryn Walsh is the Directing Program Mentor at Northwestern University, where she teaches Text Analysis to the MFA Directors and Designers, as well as teaching and coaching elsewhere. She has verse coached multiple productions at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre.

This performance is free of charge. No tickets are required.