A Review of Sanaz Toossi’s play English
English, the 2023 winner of Pulitzer Prize for Drama, is written by a contemporary Iranian-American playwright, Sanaz Toossi. Despite what its very title might suggest, and although it is written/performed almost entirely in English, the play is set in Karaj, Iran, 2008. Not only does English address the challenges of mastering a foreign language, but it also hints at the opportunities and risks that are inextricably intertwined with the process of language acquisition.
Set in an English classroom where a group of Iranian students are preparing for the test of English as a foreign language (TOEFL), the play opens with an emphasis on this mandatory principle written on the board: “English only”. Indispensable to every immersion language course, such a rule is set by Marjan the anglophile English teacher. Having spent nine years in Manchester, she puts her soul and heart into using a teaching method through which students can do away with the obstacle of their mother tongue so that they can reach a reasonable level of competence in English. As she puts it:
You are here to Learn English, I am going to ask you to agree that here in this room We are not Iranian. We are not even in this continent. Today I will ask you to feel any pull you have to your Iranian-ness and let it go. In this room, we are native speakers. We think in English, we laugh in English, our inhales, our exhales – we fill our lungs in English.
However, her attempts do not seem to be fruitful. There is a considerable gap between native speakers and English learners. Toossi highlights this substantial gap by distinguishing between accented and unaccented English. Therefore, the characters’ English is totally unaccented when they actually speak “Farsi” (Persian). However, whenever they practice English, they speak with accents. Yet, characters with different levels of proficiency speak English with different degrees of accent spanning from the teacher’s light accent to Elham’s very thick Farsi-like accent.
Through this ironic use of accented language, we are reminded of a language that is missing even when it is present. To put it another way, by omitting Farsi and replacing it with unaccented English, Toossi’s comedy subtly turns to a requiem for “Farsi”—A language already overshadowed by the global lingua franca. On the other hand, unaccented English seems to be unattainable. Even Omid, who speaks with barley any accents and eventually turns out to be an American citizen by birth, has not fully mastered the other culture. Although Omid’s reasons for his reverse immigration are not convincing enough, three other students in the class really need to boost their English skills. After all, the pervasiveness of English is contingent upon many socioeconomical factors. As it is asserted in the play:
Marjan: […] why do we learn language?
Goli: um. to say we are hungry.
Marjan: yes! To speak our needs.
Omid: To bring the inside to the outside.
Marjan: Yes. To speak not only our needs but our wants. To speak our souls. To speak. And to (motions at her ear) …listen. To the inside of others
The play seeks to justify the characters’ motivations for learning English. Roya learns English because she needs to communicate with her granddaughter in Canada. Meanwhile, Elham is taking the TOEFL test since she intends to study medicine in Australia. But such reasons are way too general. Therefore, the playwright does not seem to be willing to elaborate on sociopolitical circumstances of living in Iran although there are fleeting references to them. Besides, when it comes to Omid and Marjan, both of whom are return migrants, Toossi does not clearly explain why they returned. Overall, the issue that the characters are to some extent unconvincing can bear upon the aesthetics of the play, which depends on the experience of language acquisition. In other words, since the play revolves around the estrangement from a mother tongue as well as being alienated in the context of a foreign language, the characters are not competent enough to fully express themselves.
Such an aesthetic form, however, intensifies the comic spirit of the play, which gets gradually shaped within the texture of the character’s personal challenges with the language. To leave a language and its cultural paraphernalia behind, and immerse yourself in an alien one is a demanding task. Marjan uses various techniques like role-playing, songs, interviews and the like to make her class more communicative. However, the gap between ideal unaccented English (Farsi) and the learner’s actual output makes the play absolutely hilarious.
Even Marjan is capable of blundering. She slips and forgets to pronounce “W” correctly. This susceptibility to error frustrates her. It contradicts all the faith she puts in mastering English. She keeps lecturing about the necessity of displaying a kind of cultural and psychological affinity with English even though she is not an impeccable English speaker. Marjan is perhaps the most paradoxical character, entrapped in a liminal linguistic realm that defies any categorizations — neither entirely here nor fully there. Having willingly devoted her office hours to watching English movies with her students, she rejoices in conversing with Omid in English. When it comes to class hours, as one of the students puts it, she “talks about Farsi as if it is a stench after a long day’s work”. However, her personal decisions such as moving back to Iran mad marrying someone who cannot speak English, contradict her anglophile spirit.
In an interview, Toossi asserts that she got motivated to write English subsequent to the enforcement of travel ban (Muslim ban) during the presidency of Donald Trump (NYUAD). So as a second-generation Iranian-American immigrant, she strived to translate this overwhelming anger into a play in which themes of language and identity are highlighted. It does not seem a wrong conclusion to state that Toossi has created characters that despite being outwardly funny and comedic, are deep down enraged and frustrated. Not only Omid and Marjan — those return migrants, but also the ones who intend to leave their hometown behind. As previously stated, the playwright does not elaborate on her characters’ motives clearly but we can merely speculate about the sociopolitical reasons behind their frustration.
At the end of the play when Elham, the least proficient student, announces in her broken English that she has passed the TOEFL test with “flying colors,” the audience probably laughs at the irony. However, as another student has said earlier, “English does not want to be poetry like Farsi. English is rice …” Additionally, there is a scene where Omid and Marjan speak in Farsi for the first time, when Omid admits that he holds Farsi in high regard:
Omid: You know speaking to you. In Farsi. It is different. Like it is actually the first real conversation we’ve had. And I finally feel peace Marjan …
While the idealization of mother tongue as a poetic language related to a nostalgically utopian hometown could touch a cord with the audience, it is necessary to recognize its limits as well, especially given the current sociopolitical circumstances. The play occasionally shows a certain blindness to social realities of Iran. For example, Marjan can have private office hours with her male student, chatting and watching TV.
All in all, the widespread alienation from one’s mother tongue coupled with incompetence in the second language represents an era when languages no longer function as poetic/expressive means of communication. Individuals are not capable of expressing themselves. Nor can they fully articulate their feelings. While the global economy imposes its dominant language on people from diverse cultural backgrounds, the hometown also becomes a place where a host of ideological or repressive apparatuses hinder the expressive and communicative function of languages by any means possible. As Ahmad Shamloo articulates it, “They smell your breath /Lest you have said: I love you/They smell your heart”.
“English is rice; it is not poetry”. The same can be said for Farsi though.
Image: Old Globe’s production of English, dir. Aria Shahi; source: Los Angeles Times
References
- Toossi, Sanaz. English. Samuel French, Incorporated, 28 July 2023
- NYUAD. Staging the Dialectics of Identity, Culture and Survival. 14 Nov. 2022
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