Jamil Khoury

Jamil Khoury is a playwright, essayist, theatre producer and filmmaker. He is the Founding Artistic Director of Chicago's Silk Road Rising. Silk Road Rising produces plays and films that tell stories through primarily Asian American and Middle Eastern American lenses. The company is a pioneer in creating video art that captures theatrical language and a theatrical aesthetic through a filmic lens and with a cinematic sensibility. Khoury is currently (9/25/12) writing a new feature film/docudrama called Mosque Alert which he is developing as part of a first-of-its-kind, eight step, interactive, online, new play development and civic engagement process. He conceived of and devised two critically acclaimed cabarets Re-Spiced: A Silk Road Cabaret (2012) and Silk Road Cabaret: Broadway Sings the Silk Road (2009). He also conceived of and was a featured playwright in Silk Road's production of The DNA Trail: A Genealogy of Short Plays about Ancestry, Identity, and Utter Confusion (2010). Khoury's short play WASP: White Arab Slovak Pole inspired the short video play both/and (2011) and the documentary film Not Quite White: Arabs, Slavs, and the Contours of Contested Whiteness (2012). His weight loss of over a hundred pounds, and conversations with his personal fitness trainer, inspired the short video play The Balancing Arab (2012). Khoury's play Precious Stones won Gay Chicago Magazine's 2003 After Dark Award for Outstanding New Work and has been performed in ten cities across the U.S. His play Fitna was performed at University Theatre of The University of Chicago and his play Azizati was performed at Café Voltaire. Khoury holds a M.A. degree in Religious Studies from The University of Chicago Divinity School and a B.S. degree in International Relations from Georgetown University 's School of Foreign Service. He is a Kellogg Executive Scholar (Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University) and has been awarded a Certificate of Professional Achievement in Nonprofit Management. Khoury is the 2010 recipient of the 3Arts Artist Award for Playwriting.