A spring semester two-act play at Pitt has drawn criticism from Muslim students and theater students alike after a hijabi student actress felt she was pushed out of the production for not wanting to misrepresent her faith.
Tamanna Khan, a Muslim senior political science major and aspiring theater director, auditioned for the coming-of-age play “Morning Reckoning” in December and, after reading the play and being cast, hoped one line could be changed to prevent her character from handling and drinking alcohol. Since alcohol consumption is widely prohibited in Islam under most interpretations of the Qur’an, Khan felt doing so would make the scene less culturally competent.
But when “Morning Reckoning” playwright and Pitt theater arts professor Kelly Trumbull insisted on not altering the scene and cited her legal rights as a playwright to keep the script as is, Khan felt her only options were to wear the hijab and misrepresent her faith on stage, cover her hijab with a wig and look less Muslim or leave the play.
Khan has donned the hijab, a head covering she sees as an empowering and beautiful symbol of sisterhood among Muslim women, since May of 2024. But without a solution she felt comfortable moving forward with, she left the play. Khan said she felt “forced” to do so.
“I can’t do a show that requires me to sacrifice my dignity,” Khan said. “They’ve pushed the only hijabi that has ever been cast in a main stage production in the past four or five years at Pitt off of their production.”
Trumbull said the options Khan was given were “reasonable alternatives.” Both Trumbull and theater arts department chair Annmarie Duggan denied that Khan was forced out of the production and have defended Trumbull’s decision to maintain her play’s artistic vision.
“As a playwright, my responsibility is to protect the artistic integrity of my work while collaborating with a production team to bring it to life,” Trumbull said in an emailed statement supported by the Dramatists Guild and the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund.
Khan ultimately filed a Title IX complaint through the Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion on Jan. 30. As of Feb. 20, Khan is in the informal resolution process, proposing changes to add clarity to the audition process and prevent similar situations from happening again.
‘A hijabi drinking would never happen’
Rehearsals for “Morning Reckoning” began on Jan. 8, and Khan, who read through the entire play before auditioning in December, pulled members of the rehearsal team aside to express concerns about a scene. She said she had not raised the issue during the audition process.
Khan has served as director, assistant director and acted in at least six productions at Pitt through Pitt Stages and Performance Collaborative and has represented Pitt in a regional competition.
Partway through the second act, Khan’s character, Emily, brings a bottle of wine and — along with another minor character named April — goes to the home of Kandace, the main character in the play. After learning their old friend Kandace is a recovering alcoholic, Emily pours herself and April glasses of wine while Kandace drinks a soda.
Khan told members of the rehearsal team that appearing to drink on stage as a hijabi would make the play feel poorly researched and be an “untruthful” and “bad representation” of her culture.
To modify the scene, Khan suggested to producers that Trumbull alter a line so April brings the wine instead of Emily, and Kandace brings Emily a soda. Throughout her discussions with theater department leaders, Khan said she told Trumbull, Duggan and Ashley Martin, the arts administrative officer for the Dietrich School and director of “Morning Reckoning,” that these changes were the only alterations she was requesting to make her feel comfortable performing in the play.
Khan said she and the play’s production team all believed making these changes to accommodate her as an actress would be an easy fix. However, nearly one week into production, Martin informed Khan that Trumbull said she would not change that section of the script.
“Maybe I was naive going into this process thinking that it was an easy change only to find out that it wasn’t,” Khan said, “but I wish I was told that it wasn’t an easy change the first day.”
Trumbull said the decision to not alter her script, which is partly inspired by her middle school experiences, was based on theatrical legal precedent.
“As the Dramatists Guild has long asserted, playwrights hold the right to determine how their work is presented, ensuring that productions remain true to the artistic intent of the script,” Trumbull said in her statement. “Theatrical productions involve collaboration, but they also require respect for the script and the role of the playwright in shaping a story’s world.”
Duggan stood by Trumbull and her right to protect her script.
“We ask playwrights often if changes can be made — 8 out of 10 times, they do not,” Duggan said. “Any published piece of literature cannot be changed without the express permission of the writer.”
After learning the section of the play would not be altered, Khan said Martin began suggesting ways to costume her with a wig or a hat to make her hijab less visible. But Martin said she was not involved in finding ways to accommodate Khan and could not recall calling Khan’s proposed changes an easy fix.
Khan disagreed with this solution, saying making her less Muslim would take away from the representation she was hoping to bring to the stage.
“I was very proud to be able to have my hijab on in a production when it was something I had never seen before in theater,” Khan said. “I definitely built up that vision of representation at this university and what that would look like and how beautiful that would be.”
Khan added that she’ll look like she’s wearing a hijab no matter how she’s costumed, and given the characters’ history as longtime friends, she believes having Emily not drink would still make sense for the story.
“I assumed that [their] choice to cast me as an experienced actor and performer in this department would outweigh that one scene or that one line,” Khan said.
While Khan found some other aspects of the play to be objectionable to her faith, such as scenes where Emily swears when she’s around her friends, she said she could justify it as a “truthful experience.”
“Would I [swear] at the mosque? No. Would I do it in front of my parents? No. Would I do it in front of my elders? No,” Khan said. “However, a hijabi drinking would never happen. She would have left alcohol a long time ago before she put the hijab on.”
Khan said Martin and assistant director Howard Patterson offered her an assistant directing role if she chose to leave the cast, but Khan said she believes the offer was made to “save face.”
Martin said “there was nothing to save face from.”
“I am sure that she is upset about this entire process, and I am sure that this has been a challenge,” Martin said. “The department has followed the exact protocols that they would have done for any other production with any other script.”
With less than a month before the play’s premiere at the time the position was offered, Khan said there would be little impact a new assistant director could make on the play.
On Jan. 23’s rehearsal, Khan informed her fellow cast members she would be leaving the play. People who attended that night said some cast members cried over Khan’s departure.
While Khan took up an assistant directing role in the play after leaving the cast, she left her new position less than a week later.
‘Educating educators’
Between Jan. 8 and Jan. 23, Khan had multiple meetings with theater department leaders where she felt a burden to explain basic tenets of her culture to the department’s faculty and staff members.
Khan said she believes the production members who cast her made “harmful” assumptions about what a hijabi can do on stage and lacked the cultural competency necessary to “put together that [this scene] wouldn’t work.”
Duggan said she believes it’s “unfair” for casting teams to make any assumptions about an actor’s boundaries since it could limit opportunities for minority students in the future.
“In this production, I don’t see where we weren’t inclusive,” Duggan said. “I don’t think anybody had any ill intentions.”
Khan said Martin brought up how she didn’t wear a hijab in past productions. Khan explained how she began consistently wearing the covering in May 2024 to feel more connected with her faith. Khan said Martin also pointed to the Pitt Stages Theater Arts Audition Form as a contract Khan agreed to. The form asks actors if they are “willing to color, style, cut, shave or bleach” their hair for a role.
“I did not interpret that to mean removing my religious garment,” Khan said. “I just kind of assumed if I get a haircut, the bun on the back of my head would disappear, and who cares if my hair is dyed, no one will see.”
Duggan said she believes the section of the form regarding actor’s hair is sufficient since it allows actors to freely type in any hair-related concerns, although the form does not explicitly ask for actors to share those concerns.
“The form had not worked for her in some way,” Duggan said. “In anything, we can always do better.”
Duggan also invited Khan to help reword the audition form to “give her a voice” in improving it for future actors. Khan declined to work with Duggan individually but proposed changes through her Title IX process to make the form explicitly ask about religious accommodations.
Although the current audition form does not require actors to confirm they have read the entire script, Trumbull said students can read scripts for upcoming plays at Hillman Library before auditioning and that students audition “with the expectation that they have read the script in advance.” Duggan said although the current form does not ask about this, future iterations of the form will include a question confirming actors have read the full script of the production they’re auditioning for.
Despite ultimately leaving the play, Khan said she sees her situation as a learning opportunity for the department to develop stronger inclusionary practices.
“The department was complicit in untruthful and bad representation until I, as a student, brought it up to them and then proceeded to educate faculty members on cultural basics that I don’t think I should have had to explain,” Khan said.
Spade You, an actress in “Morning Reckoning” and an international student from southwest China, said faculty members’ actions when navigating Khan’s circumstances have made her uneasy about how the department could handle her own cultural boundaries.
“In the future, will there be any things that happen to me like that? Is there anything that’s conflicted with my boundary, and will I experience that?” You, a senior theater arts major, said. “After this time, the department can consider more about actor’s boundaries and more about minorities’ boundaries and how they should include that from the beginning of the show.”
Diversity and inclusion?
The Department of Theater Arts’ website makes repeated references to its belief in the importance of diversity and inclusion in its curriculum and productions, calling it “a priority” and saying students and faculty of all backgrounds, including from different religious identities, are “welcome for our casts, crews and production teams.”
“We prioritize diversity and inclusion in our curriculum, classrooms and departmental productions and are committed to a diverse faculty and student body,” the department’s mission statement says. “We strongly view diversity of experience and perspective as critical and foundational for academic and artistic excellence, research innovation and fostering a collaborative community within and beyond the department.”
Duggan said she believes the theater department creates an inclusive environment for its members, regardless of how Khan’s situation played out.
“We can always do better,” Duggan said, “but I think the department has a lot of positive things that we did in this, and it didn’t work out.”
Duggan, who has been in Pitt’s theater department since 2006 and department chair for a cumulative eight and a half years, said she could not recall the last time a hijabi was in a main stage production at Pitt and doesn’t believe there are any other hijabi students in the department besides Khan.
The circumstances surrounding Khan’s decision to leave “Morning Reckoning” have made some in Pitt’s tight-knit Muslim and theater communities question the theater department’s stated commitment to diversity and inclusion.
Khan’s younger brother Raahil Khan, a first-year biology major, said he’s proud of his sister for accomplishments in the theater department but said he felt the lack of respect she received back was “upsetting.”
“It just seems like there’s a lack of knowledge about what it means to be a hijabi on stage,” Raahil Khan said.
Zeyad Amr, a senior law, criminal justice and society major and former president of the Muslim Student Association, said asking Khan to remove or hide her hijab is “almost making a mockery” of the garment’s religious meaning.
“It’s like taking somebody who’s visibly Jewish and making them eat pork on stage,” Amr said. “This is not something you just take off and put on a wig instead — that’s not really how this works. If that’s the way it works, I believe every single person who follows the Islamic faith probably would have done that … it would have saved a lot of Muslim people a lot of hardship and targeting.”
Aqsa Owais, a junior bioengineering major and Muslim student, said she felt this moment should have been used as a case study on how to navigate different identities.
“The root of this problem is just lack of communication and having unfair expectations for a person who is very committed to their religious identity,” Owais said. “I think this was a missed opportunity for something really powerful and something really beautiful to happen.”
Olivia Wick, a senior theater arts, English writing and film and media production major, said the way faculty members have handled Khan’s situation has made her reconsider the department’s commitment to practicing the diversity it preaches.
“Even though Tamanna is the only Muslim hijabi that I know of in the theater department, there’s no way she’s the only Muslim hijabi at Pitt who enjoys theater. It’s just they probably haven’t been made to feel welcome here yet, which is a problem,” Wick said. “I came here expecting to learn what diverse theater was, and I thought I was learning that for a while, and then these things are happening and it’s like, I thought this was supposed to be better.”
Tamanna Khan previously worked for The Pitt News’ marketing photo booth team. Khan does not currently work for The Pitt News, and this story is unrelated to her previous duties.