Sanaz Toossi’s Pulitzer-Winning Play 'English' Makes Its Broadway Debut

Set in an English-language class in Iran, the play explores identity, bilingualism, and cultural displacement with humor and poignancy.

The play, set in Karaj, Iran, in 2008, follows four adult students preparing for the TOEFL exam, each with personal stakes tied to their English fluency.
Characters include Elham, who dreams of attending medical school in Australia, and Roya, whose son in Canada insists on raising his child in English.
Marjan, their teacher who once lived in England, struggles with her own relationship to language and identity, revealing the sacrifices and alienation tied to assimilation.
The production uses a clever linguistic device where characters speak accented English to signify when they are speaking the language, and unaccented English to represent Farsi.
Praised for its emotional depth and intellectual rigor, the play examines themes of cultural displacement, the politics of language, and the inner conflicts of bilingualism.