On the Issues: Ayad Akhtar

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Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright

Born in New York and raised in Milwaukee, Ayad Akhtar is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and actor. He won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Disgraced, a searing look at contemporary attitudes toward religion. Akhtar has a longstanding relationship with the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, which will be presenting his most recent play—Junk—beginning January 18. Junk—as in junk bonds—is set in the financial world of the 1980s, a time when Akhtar says money entered our culture in a big way. As Akhtar put it in a 2017 interview with Bill Moyers, “to understand how the world is put together today… you need a deep understanding of finance.”