Robert Myers and Nada Saab’s thoughtful selection builds a picture of a complex artist and thinker who used theater to grapple with the great political questions of his time: questions of the possibility of social justice, the effectiveness of revolutionary action, the power of words and art, and the possibility of personal freedom within repressive societies.

By Rami Khouri, The Daily Star

“Written by a Syrian author in the 1990s, it captures human emotions and hypocrisy, social constraints, and political power relations that are reflected in perhaps every country in the world. But this cultural and creative power that affirms universal human attributes is virtually unknown outside the Arab world.”

By Thanassis Cambanis, The Boston Globe

“Despite it being in English translation, every performance of the play Rituals this month played to a full house of people eager to see Wannous’s ribald skewering of official sanctimony and social rigidity.”
Watch scene from Rituals of Signs and Transformations

In Sentence to Hope, translated by Nada Saab and Robert Myers, Sa’dallah Wannous, the towering Syrian playwright finally gets the wide-ranging collection he deserves. The book includes several of Wannous’s translated plays, essays and interviews that broaden our sense of the late writer’s relationship to his writing and his country.

By Willborn Hampton, New York Times

“The play, which is performed in Arabic with an English translation by Robert Myers and Nada Saab flashed above the set, opens with two brothers — Majid and Hamid — in the bathhouse, scrubbing each other and bantering over family matters.” Watch scene from Baghdadi Bath

By James Hebert, The San Diego Union-Tribune

“In writing Fixin’ to Die, Myers found Atwater’s confessions and regrets as compelling as the perplexing life that led to them. ‘His act of contrition at the end, however you want to interpret it, was sort of a cry of humanity,’ the playwright says. “That on some very basic level, we’re human beings.’”

By David Shumway

“Myers’s plays might be described as archival, in that they incorporate not just the facts of historical events, but the very language of historical documents. Like many of Sayles’s films, these plays address themselves explicitly to political questions.”

By Jane Gross, New York Times

“The Theater in the Square, a former cotton warehouse 300 yards from Mary Phagan’s grave, chose the play The Lynching of Leo Frank, by Robert Myers, to open its 19th season, in keeping with a philosophy to showcase local themes.”

By Dan Hulbert, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“In Myer’s intelligent, rigorously unsentimental approach, we never see these twists coming. He sees the world of 1913 as a kind of nightmarish Escher drawing, a closed system where bigotry seals off all exits.”

By Richard Christiansen, Chicago Tribune

“Robert Myers’ riveting new drama, The Lynching of Leo Frank, takes off from a case history that, even in bare factual outline, is compelling enough.”

By Sid Smith, Chicago Tribune

“Myers, who is author of several other works inspired by history, including “Lee Atwater: Fixin’ To Die” and “Dead of Night: The Execution of Fred Hampton” (premiered by Pegasus in February), wrote his version of the Leo Frank story in 1984, his first effort at playwrighting.”

By Andrew Patner, Chicago Sun-Times

“Myers focuses on William O’Neal, the FBI informer who infiltrated the Panthers and whose reports to his white supervising agent enabled Hanrahan’s men to enact their deadly plan. Myers paints O’Neal as a complex figure who seeks the respect of both Hampton and the FBI.”

By Teresa Wiltz, Chicago Tribune

“We’re talking about a political figure who was cut down,” says Robert Myers, the playwright who has written “Dead of Night.” “Hampton was an absolutely courageous figure. I don’t think he had one iota of doubt about what potentially was in store for him…”

By Alan Bisbort, Sun Sentinel

“When Robert Myers refers to Mesopotamia — the title of his new play, a staged reading of which will be held Oct. 21-22 at the Whitney Humanities Center — he’s not joking around.”

By Stephen Nunns, American Theatre

“I’m sorry about many things I did,” says the character from his hospital bed. “You reach a point where you don’t hate anyone. You love everyone. Honestly.”

By Mark Singer, New Yorker

“At one point in Fixin’ to Die, Atwater says, “Lemme tell you something about my attitude towards lying,” then launches into a hilariously bombastic non sequitur that winds up with the declamation “Because if you ever corrupt yourself on lying or stealing, then Katie bar the door!”