Mona Mansour

The Vagrant Trilogy: Three Plays By Mona Mansour

The Vagrant Trilogy is a night of revelation, a glimpse of the Middle East we rarely see (Washington Post)

The Vagrant Trilogy: Three Plays by Mona Mansour is a set of three plays by award-winning Arab American playwright Mona Mansour which follow one character's journey and explores the Palestinian condition prior and during the infamous Six-Day War and the devastating effect this war had on the Palestinian diaspora left to suffer in Lebanese refugee camps.

Set to open at The Public Theatre in New York days before the Covid-19 pandemic shuttered theatres, the trilogy has previously been seen across America as well as the Arab-speaking world. The included plays-The Hour of Feeling, The Vagrant, and Urge for Going-are a deep exploration of the Palestinian struggle for home and identity.

Together they follow the life of a Palestinian scholar named Adham who, at the end of the first play (The Hour of Feeling), must decide whether to go back to his homeland torn apart by the Six-Day/1967 War to an uncertain future with his family, or to stay in London to advance his nascent career. The two plays that follow explore two different paths Adham could have taken: one (The Vagrant) where he leaves and finds success as a prominent scholar in the West; and the other (Urge for Going), where he returns to have a family, while living the life of a refugee with no prospects. The last play of the trilogy dramatizes the plight of Palestinian refugees trapped in Lebanese refugee camps with no ability for advancement and no hope for citizenship. Adham's son, Jul, is permanently damaged by Lebanese soldiers for daring to take a piece of trash to repair his broken home, while his talented daughter Jamila realizes that her only hope is to escape and live out her dreams abroad. The three plays create a triptych of Palestinian displacement, separation, and the state of "permanent impermanence" refugees the world over experience daily.

The volume includes a foreword by director Mark Wing-Davey, an introduction by Arab American theatre scholar Michael Malek Najjar, the three plays in their final performance versions, an afterword by playwright Mona Mansour, a scholarly essay by Stanford professor Samer Al-Saber, and six production stills from the performance that was to open at The Public Theatre in 2020. This collection of Mansour's outstanding plays will be another important contribution to the Arab American theatrical canon, and the larger American theatre canon as well.