Pi Theatre: Auditing Terrorism

Join Pi Theatre for an exploration of the connections between the global financial system and terrorism. We’ll be looking at the belief in fundamental ideologies from capitalism to religion—what do they have in common and how far do people go to defend their convictions? Pi Theatre will be presenting The Invisible Hand by Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar at The Cultch in April. This high stakes thriller follows Nick Bright, an American capital funds manager for the Citi Bank Corporation in South Asia, into a terrifying world of kidnapping and unrest in a remote region of Pakistan. As Nick negotiates to save his own life he begins to see his captors in a new light. The Invisible Hand is a complex look at how far we’ll go to save ourselves and asks what is the ultimate cost of our actions?Samir Gandesha is an Associate Professor in the Department of the Humanities and the Director of the Institute for the Humanities at Simon Fraser University. He specializes in modern European thought and culture, with a particular emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries. He is co-editor with Lars Rensmann of "Arendt and Adorno: Political and Philosophical Investigations" (Stanford, 2012). His book (coedited with Johan Hartle) "Reification and Spectacle: The Timeliness of Western Marxism" (University of Amsterdam Press) is forthcoming later this year and he has also recently completed (also with Johan Hartle) "Poetry of the Future: Marx and the Aesthetic."Adel Iskandar is an Assistant Professor of Global Communication at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver/Burnaby, Canada. He is the author, co-author, and editor of several works including "Egypt In Flux: Essays on an Unfinished Revolution" (AUCP/OUP); "Al-Jazeera: The Story of the Network that is Rattling Governments and Redefining Modern Journalism" (Basic Books); "Edward Said: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation" (University of California Press); and "Mediating the Arab Uprisings" (Tadween Publishing). Iskandar's work deals with media, identity and politics; and he has lectured extensively on these topics at universities worldwide. His forthcoming publication is the co-edited volume "Media Evolution on the Eve of the Arab Spring" (Palgrave Macmillan). Prior to his arrival at SFU, Iskandar taught for several years at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and the Communication, Culture, and Technology Program at Georgetown University, in Washington, DC. He is a co-editor of Jadaliyya.