So I Married a Muslim – Toronto Fringe 2011 Press Release

From press release:

So I Married a Muslim

A cross-cultural comedy of reconciliation and love

Ask an Italian, Roman‐Catholic, Australian woman about her ideal mate and she probably won’t say a South Asian, Muslim, Canadian guy. Well, she might, but what will the families think? So I Married a Muslim is a story that balances the struggles of tradition, religion, and love.

Australian-Canadian writer/performer Sandra Pascuzzi developed the show through improvisation and material from her own experience. Pascuzzi’s background in theatre, clown, and bouffon, helped spawn some of the scenes and characters the audience meets throughout the show.

Pascuzzi wrote the story in part to combat the Islamophobia that has emerged in public discourse and the media. Rather than taking a political approach, she chose to tell a love story, her love story, with Islam being an incidental detail. In this way, the play normalizes Islam and Muslims, who live, work, play, love, and worship in ways that are very similar to any second-generation experience.

Growing up Italian in Australia, Pascuzzi’s own second-generation experience infuses the show with strong characters and provides the ultimate crisis point of the story when her father refuses to come to her wedding. So I Married a Muslim is funny, poignant, and important. It tells the story of two worlds coming together, not because they reconcile, but because they finally see there is little between them that needs reconciliation.