←Recommendations of American Fast

American Fast by Kareem Fahmy was a finalist for NNPN's 2022 National Showcase of New Plays, and we are pleased to recommend it.

American Fast is a deeply impactful play. Kareem has created a fantastic mix of college sports, a coming of age story, and intergenerational relationships that propel the script forward at an exhilarating pace. Khady's story is a compelling exploration of a young woman finding her voice and wrestling with the powerful forces of fame, assimilation, and identity. It balances humor and deep emotional connections that I know will resonate with audiences and ensure a bright future for the script!

Khady is one of the most exciting female characters I've read In some time: A star athlete who is brash, ambitious, smart, and fiercely capable, AND the daughter of a devout Muslim mother, Khady struggles to balance her cultural identity as a Muslim American with potential fame and glory on the basketball court. American Fast is a smart, propulsive, and darkly funny play that ventures into thorny questions about identity, belief, and expectations of women in sports. Rich characters in a deeply complicated situation, the play goes to places in the human heart we can all identify with. Beautiful work!

A moving and beautiful play that helps us to see Khady and her journey. This goes right to your heart.

I see a great future for this piece of theatre. It is a story that teaches, it teaches the reader or the viewer about different cultures, about the pressures put on young people, and the quest for religious answers. In closing it is sticky, it stays with you and continues to invoke questions and ideas long after the play has ended.

This play is a beautiful rendering of the pressures internal and external placed on Khady -- all with a tremendous heart. Kareem's voice shines through. It is finding productions next season which will surely be only the beginning of a long life for this play.

This play is incredibly rendered with bouts of sadness, beauty, and family bonds. A tight cast and a wonderful story. You think you know where it's going, but instead, it takes you to a holy place. It's freaking lovely. I can't wait to see it get all the glory it deserves.

I was so taken with this play that I moved pretty quickly to secure the rights to produce it as part of a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere. It is at once wonderfully theatrical and deeply human, juxtaposing the highly secular world of American academia and college sports with the incredibly private and personal life of a Muslim mother and daughter. Rich with characters and conflicts that we rarely, if ever, see on stage.

From the first moment of this play I was hooked! It takes you on a ride and never lets up on the gas. I love the wall as a 5th character.

A wonderful, compelling work with a strong central character who simply leaps off the page with her strength, ambition, and complications. Fahmy succeeds in pacing the play like a sporting event, with the focus briskly bouncing off one character to another. The stagecraft is impressive overall, and the final game is a masterful example of pure theatre using words and motion. Fahmy writes about the contradictions inherent in bifurcated cultural identity with both sensitivity and honesty. The writer's command of the material is so assured that even someone like me who knows nothing about the sport is never lost.