A Searing U.S. Premiere: ExPats Theatre Brings Pressure! to Atlas Performing Arts Center
It would be difficult to find a more urgent or timely piece of theatre in the Washington, DC area right now than Pressure!, the U.S. premiere from Austrian-Iranian playwright Arad Dabiri, presented by ExPats Theatre at the Atlas Performing Arts Center. Running through April 5, this 90-minute, no-intermission production is a raw, electrifying examination of identity, belonging, racial injustice, and the volatile pressure that builds when a community is pushed to its limits.
Set in Vienna, Austria, the play centers on a group of young people anxiously waiting to learn the fate of an older brother who has been arrested following an altercation with police and now faces sentencing. We never meet this brother, and we never learn his name, but his presence looms over every scene, acting as a catalyst for the grief, guilt, anger, and desperate need for action felt by those who love him. His siblings, Hassan and Shirin — both born and raised in Austria to Iranian immigrant parents — find themselves on opposite ends of a deeply personal divide. Hassan, played with open-hearted intensity by Alie Karambash, clings fiercely to his Iranian heritage and believes in standing up publicly against the racial profiling and systemic oppression that has shadowed his community in Vienna. Shirin, brought to life with grounded conviction by Ege Yalcinbas, has chosen a path of integration, believing that assimilation and personal achievement offer the surest protection for herself and her family.
Orbiting Hassan are three friends, each carrying their own complicated burden. Freddie (Max Jackson) is a White European wrestling with his family's Nazi past and a simmering fury at the systems he feels are squeezing him out. Omar (Elijah Williams) is consumed by inherited guilt and a conscience demanding atonement for history he did not make. Murat (Sacha Marvin), drawing on a background in spoken word, channels a persistent grief shot through with flashes of barely contained rage against the hatred directed at his Islamic heritage. Together, the five characters form something close to a Greek chorus at times — overlapping, interrupting, harmonizing, and clashing in language that is by turns poetic, incendiary, and deeply human.
What makes Pressure! so theatrically alive is the way it delivers its story. Dabiri's text, translated and directed with relentless, frenetic energy by Karin Rosnizeck, blends dramatic monologue, spoken word poetry, choral commentary, and projected close-ups of the characters' faces on the back wall — a guerrilla-documentary technique that pulls the audience uncomfortably close to each unfiltered voice. Tennessee Dixon's spare but evocative set and projection design give the production a stark visual language, while Laura Aresi's movement and fight direction maps the rising tension through the actors' bodies with precision and power. Ian Claar's lighting design keeps the focus tight and unsparing, and Nardia Strowbridge's sound design brings a European punk-rock urgency that feels entirely at home on a DC stage in 2026.
Though set in Austria, the resonances are unmistakable and immediate. The play explores the rise of far-right political movements, anti-immigrant sentiment, racial profiling, and the question of whether to seek justice through integration or confrontation — themes that feel as relevant here as they do in Vienna. As Hassan and his friends channel their frustration into organizing a protest, the production builds into something genuinely combustible, forcing the audience to sit with the complexity of it all: the good intentions and the poor decisions, the love and the fury, the impossible choices that face people when the system seems designed to ignore them.
Pressure! is the kind of theatre that leaves a mark. It is a harrowing, thought-provoking, and ultimately essential work for our moment, performed by a cast that gives everything on stage. ExPats Theatre has delivered a production that is as politically vital as it is artistically accomplished.
Pressure! plays through April 5, 2026, at the Atlas Performing Arts Center, Lab II, 1333 H St NE, Washington, DC. Performances are Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 PM, with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2:30 PM.