Scheherazade

The Laboratory Theater presents Scheherazade, a gilded “narrathon” based on tales from The Arabian Nights. The dancing girl, Scheherazade, is married to the wife-murdering King Shahriyar, and must save her life by telling a thousand and one interwoven stories, each unfinished at dawn, to defer her execution daily.

The Laboratory Theater focuses on Sir Richard F. Burton’s definitive 1885 translation, in which he tried to invent an English version of medieval Arabic. Over the years, these stories have become synonymous with children’s animated movies. Scheherazade simultaneously lifts off the veil of Disney while refracting these stories through the lens of contemporary Middle Eastern affairs.