Tag: OH

Gearing Up For Another Journey With The International Voices Project

The plays may be from far away, but the stories feel closer to home

It’s that time again. A time to journey into parts unknown with writers new to me. That means it’s time for The International Voices Project festival.

This promotional banner for the International Voices Project Spring 2026 Festival (Season 16) is set against a black background with white, yellow, and tan accents. At the top, the text invites viewers to the "16th Annual Festival of Contemporary Plays in Translation," running from May 12 – 21, 2026, in collaboration with Instituto Cervantes Chicago. A tan box in the upper right encourages donations to keep the festival free. The center of the banner features four square portraits representing scheduled readings, each with a date tag in the corner: • May 12: "Flood Zone | Spain" – A black and white portrait of a woman in a dark sleeveless top. • May 14: "Golem | Ukraine" – A woman with long hair and bangs leaning against a stone wall. • May 19: "Motheranimal | Germany" – A person wearing a tan baseball cap and a denim jacket, looking off to the side. • May 21: "OH | Indonesia" – A man wearing a white flat cap and glasses around his neck.

This is a gig I participate in once or twice a year. IVP gives me a chance to explore writers, different cultures, and a larger world. The mission of IVP is to bring international works translated into English to Chicago audiences. They are presented in a staged reading format. That simply means actors are carrying scripts and the production isn’t fully realized. The emphasis is on the text and the story.

This year I’m headed to Indonesia and the play, OH, by Puta Wijaya. The story features a young attorney who arrives at his father’s hospital bedside to fulfill his father’s request, but he comes not as a son, but as an ambitious lawyer seeking his mentor’s opinion on a case: defending a drug dealer facing two death sentences. Wijaya himself adapted the piece into a play from an original short story of his, called The People’s Justice.

The one thing I always learn from these plays from other countries is not how different we are, but just how much we are the same. That’s more than true with this piece, as much of what the main character thinks could be ripped out of today’s US headlines or from social media.

Looking forward to spending the next week rehearsing and hearing the staged reading of OH, next week.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links.