Ali & Ali: The Deportation Hearings

In this sequel to the hilarious and hard-hitting The Adventures of Ali & Ali and the aXes of Evil, the agitprop collaborative team of Camyar Chai, Guillermo Verdecchia, and Marcus Youssef turns its idiosyncratic brand of political satire to new global realities.

Following the election of U.S. president Barack Obama in 2008, collective optimism for a more tolerant, peaceful, and co-operative post-Bush world spreads to Canada - and to the backroom of Salim’s Falafel Shoppe in Toronto. There, Ali Hakim and Ali Ababwa, refugee entertainers from the fictitious, war-torn country of Agraba, are inspired to write a stage play in celebration of the new president’s message of ＂hope and change.＂ The premiere of their Yo Mama, Osbama! (or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Half-Black President) halts abruptly when an RCMP constable arrives at the theatre and arrests the pair for its financial ties to the Agrabanian People’s Front, an alleged ＂terrorist organization＂ on the Canadian government’s watch list.

Continuity becomes more apparent than change when Ali and Ali are swiftly put on trial. As the hapless playwrights try to defend themselves in the farcical deportation hearing that unfolds, racial and cultural stereotypes are invoked - and lampooned - as quickly as dubious evidence is presented. But, in the midst of the biting comedy, more serious questions are raised about the cost for some when we endeavour to protect the ＂freedoms＂ of others.

Cast of 1 woman and 3 men.

Writer and performer Marcus Youssef is the associate artistic producer at Vancouver’s NeWorld Theatre, though he is currently teaching in the theater department at Concordia University in Montreal. A graduate of both the National Theatre School (Acting, 1992) and the University of British Columbia (M.F.A., 2002), Youssef is a regular contributor of drama, commentary, and documentary to numerous programs on the CBC network. He also writes regularly for publications such as Vancouver Magazine, Georgia Straight, Ricepaper, and This Magazine. For many years, Youssef has also dedicated himself to numerous community-based advocacy programs that aim at using writing and/or theater as a tool for procuring political and social change. He co-founded CRANK Magazine with Matt Hern and Rich Lawley as well as the Reclaiming Project--a nationally recognized, immigrant-centered oral history program--with Mercedes Baines.

Guillermo Verdecchia is a writer of drama, fiction, and film; a director, dramaturge, actor, and translator whose work has been seen and heard on stages, screens, and radios across the country and around the globe. He is the author, or co-author, of, among other works, The Noam Chomsky Lectures and Insomnia (with Daniel Brooks); Fronteras Americanas, The Terrible but Incomplete Journals of John D., bloom, A Line in the Sand (with Marcus Youssef), and the controversial The Adventures of Ali and Ali and the aXes of Evil (with Camyar Chai and Marcus Youssef). He is a recipient of the Governor General’s Award for Drama, a four-time winner of the Chalmers Canadian Play Award, a recipient of Dora and Jessie Awards, and sundry film festival awards for his film Crucero/Crossroads, based on Fronteras Americanas and made with Ramiro Puerta.

Camyar Chai has worked in theater and film for more than twenty years, and is the founder of Vancouver’s acclaimed NeWorld Theatre. He has worked as a freelance actor, director, and writer as well as an arts educator. In addition to writing plays, Chai has also written librettos for opera. An award-winning theater maker, he received his Master of Fine Arts in Directing from the University of British Columbia.