Ayad Akhtar

Early life and career

Akhtar was born in Staten Island, New York City and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Akhtar's interest in writing was initially sparked in high school, when a teacher introduced him to European Modernism. Akhtar graduated from Brookfield Central High School in 1988 and later attended Brown University where he majored in theater and began acting in student plays. After graduation he moved to Italy and studied acting with Jerzy Grotowski for a year, eventually becoming his assistant. Upon returning to the United States, Akhtar taught acting classes with Andre Gregory and earned his Master of Fine Arts degree in film directing from Columbia University School of the Arts.

While at Columbia he and classmates Tom Glynn and Joseph Castelo formed the idea for The War Within, a 2005 film about an ordinary man radicalized into becoming a terrorist. Akhtar starred in the film playing Hassan, the would-be terrorist. In 2011 he played Neel Kashkari in the HBO film Too Big to Fail.

Akhtar published his first novel, American Dervish in 2012, a coming-of-age story about a Pakistani-American boy, Hayat, growing up in Milwaukee. The book was met with critical acclaim, described by The New York Times as "self-assured and effortlessly told." American Dervish marks the first in a seven-work cycle on the Muslim-American experience that will include one film, three novels and three plays. Of which one novel (American Dervish) and all three plays (Disgraced, The Who & The What, The Invisible Hand) have been completed.

In 2012, Akhtar returned to the theatre to write his first play, Disgraced. The play premiered at The American Theater Company in Chicago before serving as the inaugural production of the new LCT3/Lincoln Center in New York. The play went on to win the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and received a London premiere at the Bush Theatre in London. A new production of the play opened on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre on October 23, 2014. The Broadway production was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play in 2015.

Akhtar had two subsequent plays produced, The Who & The What, which premiered at La Jolla Playhouse in February 2012 and The Invisible Hand at Repertory Theatre of St. Louis in March, 2012. The Who & The What received its New York premiere in May, 2014 at LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater followed by the New York premiere of The Invisible Hand at New York Theatre Workshop in December, 2014 These successes led American Theatre magazine to name Akhtar the most produced playwright of the 2015-16 Season, with 18 productions of Disgraced nationwide and 21 productions total.

Akhtar's new play is Junk: The Golden Age of Debt. Set in the eighties, it puts a corporate takeover onstage. The play received its world premiere at La Jolla Playhouse in August 2016. Junk will premiere on Broadway at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, produced by the Lincoln Center Theater, on September 14, 2017 in previews. Directed by Doug Hughes, the sets are by John Lee Beatty, costumes by Catherine Zuber, lighting by Ben Stanton, and original music and sound by Mark Bennett. The cast will be announced at a later date.

Theatre

Books

The Invisible Hand

Disgraced

American Dervish

The War Within