‘Wife of Headless Man Investigates Her Own Disappearance’

Egyptian American playwright Yussef El Guindi’s work has been produced around the country, but the Stranger Genius Award winner has called Seattle his home since the 1990s. Just look at his critically acclaimed successes at ACT Theatre (now Union Arts Center), which include the likes of “Threesome,” “People of the Book” and “Hotter Than Egypt.” His latest is headed to Annex, Seattle’s anarcho-democratic theater collective that’s been an incubator for bold new work since 1986.

And this phantasmagoric play — a journalist loses time after a fraught interview with a tech billionaire and returns home to find her fully alive and functioning (but headless) husband — seems a normal fit for a company that isn’t afraid to reflect the real world in strange and unusual ways.

“There is a politic to his body of work that is responsive and feels like an ongoing conversation,” director Lucien Oberleitner told The Ticket. “Ultimately, it’s about the torture and humiliation of immigrants and the deliberate effort to ruin their lives for the expansion of empire. It’s also a comedy.”

Oberleitner, also Annex’s artistic director, is honored to work with El Guindi and present the play’s world premiere on Capitol Hill, the perfect neighborhood to represent our city’s constant fluctuations. “Seattle can be seen as a radical place full of people who are ready to throw down for their neighbors. It can also be seen as a tech and surveillance hellhole full of people who don’t care.”

The performing arts, more than anything, should be willing to experiment with genre and tone. “I really love that it’s campy,” Oberleitner continued. “The impossibility of it becomes approachable through that. Every laugh comes at a cost, as if the worst part about our darkest nightmares is that they are also deeply ridiculous.”

“We all care deeply about our real world,” Oberleitner concluded. “This work is speaking directly to our grief and to our love.”