[3] He wrote a 10-minute scene, drawing on his experience at Columbia presenting a design to a jury of critics, which involved three ego-driven architects and one student.
Safdie was awarded a Woolrich Fellowship, and founded The West End Gate Theatre, a student theater company that included actors like Oscar nominee Ethan Hawke and The Whole Nine Yards actress Amanda Peet.
[6] Safdie teaches playwriting and play analysis at the University of Miami and also advises the Astonishing Idiots, a new student-run theater company, housed under the Department of Theatre Arts.
It stars Ellen Burstyn, Amanda Plummer, Ted Levine, Mark Blum, Mary McDonnell and Geneviève Bujold.
Broken Places, a dark comedy about the effects that parents can have on their children's future relationships, was first produced at the Tribeca Lab in New York in 1995.
The play was optioned by Castle Rock and CBS and a half-hour comedy pilot script Fashion Avenue was written.
"[12] Private Jokes, Public Places debuted at the Malibu Stage Company in 2003 and went on to play in New York at La MaMa E.T.C.
[18] Private Jokes, Public Places was a critical off-Broadway hit and was singled out in 2010 by Terry Teachout of the Wall Street Journal as one of the best half-dozen new plays he had seen since he started reviewing.
[19] It offers a disturbing, humorous glimpse inside the contemporary world of architecture as Margaret, a young Korean-American student, presents her thesis for a public swimming pool to an all-male jury of famous architects.
This premise is a starting point for an examination of academia, intellectual pretension, the failure of postmodernist culture and the state of the male-female power struggle.
[24] The plot: Henry Grunwald, a Viennese Jew who fled the Nazis and became a successful New York advertising executive, is now retired and nearly blind.
[25] West Bank, UK, a musical comedy collaboration with Ronnie Cohen, about a Palestinian and Israeli forced to share a rundown rent-controlled apartment in London, England, debuted at La MaMa E.T.C.
The play tackles controversial urban design issues and explores whether architecture has become more of an art than a profession, and at what point the ethics of one field violate the principles of the other.
"[28] Checks & Balances explores the issues of legal and illegal immigration, class, privilege, the definition of family, as well as how society deals with the aged.
spans conflicts from 1930s Poland to a future state of Palestine, as a Jewish tourist in present-day Oaxaca, Mexico, spirals out of control after seeing a ‘Boycott Israel’ poster.
[22] Unseamly opened to critical acclaim [46][47][48][49][50][51] at the Infinitheatre in Montreal on February 13, 2014, inviting much controversy as the story closely paralleled a sexual harassment case that was brought against Safdie's cousin and CEO of American Apparel, Dov Charney.
Aside from making veiled threats against his family, it also revealed his social security number, which was later implicated in credit card fraud.
[3] In December 2014, Safdie staged a reading of his play Mr. Goldberg Goes to Tel Aviv which explores the relationship between left-leaning Diaspora Jews and Israelis in the context of Mideast politics at the Rialto Theatre in Montreal, Quebec.
[64] Unseamly and Checks & Balances are published by Broadway Play Publishing Inc.[65] He has been a contributor to Metropolis Magazine,[8] and has also written for Dwell,[8][66] The Forward,[8][67] The New Republic,[8] The Jerusalem Post,[68][8][69] Israel National News,[70] The Algemeiner,[71][8][72] The Times of Israel,[8][73] the National Post,[74] the Canadian Jewish News, and the Israeli radio network Arutz Sheva.
[8] Three of his plays, Boycott This, Mr. Goldberg Goes To Tel Aviv and "Lunch Hour" were second Prize winners in the Quebec-wide playwriting contest, Write-On-Q!