- A Writer Director Lab Presentation
99 Plays of Allah
Zahra Budhwani & Salwa Meghjee
Writer Director Lab 2024-2025
September 24 - September 25
A presentation of Zahra Budhwani & Salwa Meghjee‘s 99 Plays of Allah, the piece they’ve developed over the last year as a part of the 2024-2025 Writer Director Lab.
An Allahbot gives you the black and white correct answer to all of your moral, ethical, and personal dilemmas. This project explores what the world would look like if all of us had one.
Creators
Zahra Budhwani
Zahra Budhwani (she/he/they) is a director based in Brooklyn, NY. Select directing credits include Ender’s Gay (Sanguine Theatre Company), Wasted (The Tank), Diwali Play (Prime Produce) and untitled sex show (Fresh Lime Soda Productions). Assistant directing credits at Rising Sun Performance Company, SheNYC Theatre Festival, Roundabout Theatre Company, Permafrost Theatre Collective, and Dixon Place. Zahra was a member of the inaugural Mercury Store Directing Lab and a director for the 24 Hour Plays: Nationals 2023, and is a current Associate Artist at Sanguine Theatre Company. They teach and make theatre with students all over NYC with the New Victory Theatre, Opening Act, CO/LAB Theatre Group, The Moth, and Broadway Bound Kids. BFA, NYU/Playwrights Horizons.
Salwa Meghjee
Salwa Meghjee is a Muslim-Indian-Floridian writer. She is currently in the playwriting program at Juilliard, and holds a BA from UC Berkeley and an MFA from Northwestern. She has developed work with her producing org Pizza Party Press co-founded with Sarah Marlin, as well as Soho Rep, Playwrights’ Center, The New Victory Theater, National Queer Theater, Trove, Mudlark Theater, 24 Hour Plays: Nationals, Sanguine Theatre Company, The Tank, UC Berkeley, and The Golden Theatre Company. Her plays are surreal, darkly comic, lean into the serendipity of live theater, and illuminate the big unnameable feelings we all have that we can’t explain. They have fun titles such as Love Jihad <3, Obligate Carnivores, Make Happy, U-Haul Mesbians, Ender’s Gay, Never Forget That Jasper Cullen Was a Confederate Soldier, and, written with her twin sister Samah, The Mysterious Mystery of the Lost Letters (Brooklyn Publishers). salwameghjee.com
Sponsors + Partners
Thanks to the following friends for supporting the Writer Director Lab: Lawrence Sutton & Rick Titone and The Jerome Foundation.