Cast Announced for Wish You Were Here, New Drama About Iranian Revolution

Full casting has been announced for Sanaz Toossi's Wish You Were Here, which is set to begin performances in the Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Playwrights Horizons on April 13, ahead of an official opening night on May 2. Performances a scheduled through May 22.

According to an official description, "Wish You Were Here begins in 1978, as protests are breaking out all across Iran, encroaching on a suburb where girlfriends in a tight-knit circle plan weddings, trade dirty jokes, and try to hold onto a sense of normalcy. But as the revolution escalates, each woman is forced to join the wave of emigration or face an equally uncertain future at home. Written by Toossi as a tribute to her mother's group of friends in Iran, Wish You Were Here is a warm, intricate character study that locates beauty, love, laughter, longing, pain, and loss within the minutiae of friends' hangouts — moments separated from a context of political and cultural upheaval by the porous divide of their homes' walls."

The cast of Iranian and Iranian-American actors includes Nikki Massoud, Nazanin Nour, Artemis Pebdani, Roxanna Hope Radja, and Marjan Neshat. Neshat recently appeared at Playwrights Horizons in Selling Kabul.

Gaye Taylor Upchurch directs a creative team that includes Arnulfo Maldonado (Scenic Design), Sarah Laux (Costume Design), Reza Behjat (Lighting Design), Sinan Refik Zafar and Brian Hickey (Sound Design), Vanessa Coakley (Production Stage Manager), and Jenn Jacobs (Assistant Stage Manager).

Toossi is presently making her off-Broadway playwriting debut with English at Atlantic Theater Company.