←Recommendations of Pareidolia

A rom-com and a thriller that makes us ask our own questions about how we connect with the people around us. I admire this play for its craft, and I enjoy it for its emotional core.

This play is a FINALIST for the 2020-2021 In-Progress New Play Reading Series at Unicorn Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri. It is our pleasure to support PAREIDOLIA.

A superbly written and nuanced play about connection, relationships, alienation, and dating. Hilarious, unsettling, and heartbreaking, "Pareidolia" straddles a number of genres and moods quite well. I also love the unique theatrical world Fahmy builds by splicing the online world, naturalistic scenes, and some magical sounding montage/collage towards the end and in the wedding scene. I would love to see this staged, as it seems like an exciting adventure for directors and designers as well as actors. At the heart of this play are well developed characters--both the sympathetic Mal, and the other eclectic individuals.

Online dating remains one of the most dangerous landscapes for good reason, yet it has taken over. Kareem brilliantly uses this to launch into a romantic comedy thriller that completely captures us. Grips us until the end!

A haunting play about alienation and unknowability in the modern dating world. How well do we know the people on the other side of our dating apps? Can we ever know them? It's a thriller, it's a romantic comedy, and it dramatizes our cyber "reality" in ways that brought to my mind sci fi writers like Philip K Dick. I was on the edge of my seat by the end.

I had the pleasure of reading this play a year or two ago, and still can't get it out of my head. It's strange, dark, and disturbing, combining all the high-wire tension of the best thrillers with the depth of emotion one wants from a romance. Is there such a thing as a romantic thriller? There is now.