What is a rising women’s basketball star to do when the tournament falls during Ramadan?

People just want to be themselves, says playwright Kareem Fahmy.

But it doesn’t always work out that way — not for most of us and not for protagonist Khady Salama in Fahmy’s American Fast. The play, on its last leg of a rolling world premiere, opened in Portland, moved to Pittsburgh, and is now in Philadelphia through June 25 with a local cast chosen by InterAct Theatre Co.

Salama (played by Amel Khalil) is a 21-year-old rising women’s basketball star on the verge of a championship, except that the tournament falls during Ramadan, when many Muslims fast for a month, from sunrise to sunset. Salama’s mother expects her to fast, and she agrees, or so it seems.

“She wants to be her authentic self,” Fahmy said.

Instead, she is trapped into being what people want her to be — “a Muslim superhero person.” “She is now being put up on all sorts of pedestals that she’s not comfortable being on. That was an interesting thing to explore in the play,” said Fahmy.

The playwright lives in New York, was born in Canada, and has Egyptian roots. Partly because of the 2001 terrorist attacks and partly because of the political climate, “when I would see Islam portrayed in entertainment, it was always seen through a lens of fear,” he said.

What he didn’t see was portrayals of “everyday Muslims doing the ordinary practices of a faith practiced by 2 billion people on the planet.”

Fahmy kept juggling the idea of “practice.” Muslims have faith practices — kneeling on a rug to pray five times a day, fasting during Ramadan. Where do those practices line up with the ideas of American-ness or outsider-ness?

“It’s very common to see a faithful Christian character or a faithful Jewish character on stage. There’s nothing controversial about it,” Fahmy said. “I started asking, ‘How do you put [Muslim] practice on stage in the way that is simply that?’

“I started thinking about athletes who practice their sports,” he said.

Fahmy turned to basketball — “which is a great in for people who don’t know anything about Islam.”

In American Fast, three of Salama’s team members are also Muslim, and each has their own way of practicing the religion — Fahmy wanted to show a range, just as there are variations in how other adherents of other religions practice their faiths.

He started by researching stories about athletes fasting during Ramadan. “I know for myself from practicing fasting during Ramadan that there’s a certain toll it takes on your body from day to day,” even beyond the extra physical demand that competitive sports require.

One thing he didn’t want to do was create some type of model Muslim on a noble quest. And neither did he want to turn one character into a hero and make another into a villain.

“I’m not interested in stories that demonize one character to add value to another,” he said. “Here I am doing this thing that isn’t done a lot — putting the practice of Islam on stage. How do I treat [characters] with humanity? No one is intrinsically bad, or intrinsically good, but somewhere in between.”

Fahmy brings that goodwill to another important theatrical project, the BIPOC Director Database that he created during the pandemic.

Why? Because despite a resume full of impressive credentials, he “was hitting up against barriers, as a person of color working in a field that is overwhelmingly dominated by white people. I was also finding systemic issues which keep [BIPOC directors] relegated to second and third tier productions or second and third tier theaters.

“The arts are a career, it is a business,” Fahmy said. “We want to make a living in this field. We want to have health insurance. We want to have retirement.”

Fahmy said he had heard producers and artistic directors at theaters complain that they wanted to hire BIPOC directors but didn’t know how to find them. So he turned on his computer and opened a spreadsheet.

“I can’t correct this systemic issue,” he said. “But the one thing I can do is make it easier to find them.”

His spreadsheet, compiled with categories for ethnicity and experience, now includes nearly 450 names.

“American Fast,” InterAct Theatre Co., through June 25 at the Drake, 302 S. Hicks St., Phila., 215-568-8075 or interacttheatre.org

Check with the theater for COVID-19 protocols and for postshow discussions.

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