Last season, the Play Company’s production of Invasion! at Soho Rep left made quite an impact, garnering an OBIE award for playwright Jonas Hassen Khemiri, in his debut as a playwright. This season, Invasion! returns to New York, this time enjoying a run at Tribeca’s Flea Theater.

Invasion! is a dark comedy, nimbly colliding characters and stories while subtly ratcheting up a sense of tension and paranoia. One word, “abulkasem,” takes on diverse interpretations, leading to various situations that escalate rapidly (Invasion! is directed by Erica Schmidt and was translated by Rachel Willson-Broyles). I spoke with Khemiri, a Stockholm, Sweden, native, as the play began its run at the Flea.

ScheckOnTheArts: Where did the idea for the show come from?

Jonas Hassen Khemiri: I wanted to write a play about a magical name. I was curious about all the things you could do with a name, a word. The way people look at a name, the way people dream about a name tells us a lot about them. It says nothing and it says it all.

SOA: Invasion! is a complex play. Did anyone ask you to try and summarize it? Is it even possible for you to do so?

JHK: The play is about the notion of outside fear. The idea of there being a menace outside, and how it’s used to create an idea of a collective “us.”

SOA: And how does “abulkasem” help create that?

JHK: The Play Company questions boundaries. “Abulkasem” shows the manipulative power of words. Words are riddles, and that can be difficult for a contemporary audience. We have a rather two-dimensional image of “the other.” This play tricks the audience. People we trust turn out to be untrustworthy. Fantasies, though, are trustworthy. They tell us about people in a truthful way.

SOA: It sounds like you like challenging your audience.

JHK: I respect the audience. I want them to be careful watchers. They’re smart enough to be bombarded with multiple messages. They can’t just lean back [in Invasion!]. My actors go in and out of their roles quickly (the four-person cast, comprised of Francis Benhamou, Nick Choksi, Andrew Ramcharan Guilarte and Bobby Moreno, play numerous characters), and I love the speed of that, I love that feeling of “I missed something.” Which is not necessarily bad.

SOA: How does the process of translating your writing work?

JHK: It works very well. I met Rachel when I was visiting University of Wisconsin at Madison. It was a stroke of genius. Other translators hadn’t captured my voice and rhythms. She hadn’t translated before, but she understood the way my language moves. At this point, I view it as the text being amputated from me and put other places.

More information about Invasion! can be found at http://www.theflea.org

----- Doug Strassler