After suffering a stroke, Silk Road Cultural Center’s Founding Co-Executive Artistic Director, Malik Gillani, has been on a journey of aphasia recovery. While Malik continues to regain lost language, the power of his voice as an arts leader, activist, and storyteller remains. Follow Malik as he inspires and informs.

Generating ideas and discourse has always been what we do. Spoken Essay is an emerging collection that poses difficult questions and imagines creative possibilities that move us toward a more socially connected world.

Founded 20 years ago by creative and life partners Jamil Khoury and Malik Gillani as Silk Road Theatre Project, Silk Road Cultural Center has spent most of those years in residence at downtown’s Chicago Temple, first presenting readings and one full production in an upstairs space, and then building out a basement theater in Pierce Hall, where they presented works reflecting pan-Asian, North African, and Muslim experiences while advocating for better representation of those stories and more opportunities for artists with roots in the diverse Silk Road diaspora across the nation.

Their name comes from the moniker for the ancient trade route that ran from the Far East to the Mediterranean. Khoury is a Chicago native of Syrian Orthodox and Polish and Slovak descent, while Gillani is a Pakistani Ismaili Muslim immigrant. They changed the company’s name over a decade ago to reflect their expansion into digital work; as Reader columnist Deanna Isaacs noted in September 2020, “During a 2011 interview, Khoury had told me that they were intrigued by the dissemination opportunities of the Internet and were aiming to produce video plays that would expand their reach to an international audience.”

Now Silk Road is giving up their downtown space. But their mission remains expansive. 

I caught up with Khoury and Gillani earlier this week to discuss their next steps. Gillani, who suffered the double whammy of a heart attack and stroke in September 2019, is interested in creating work “for people with aphasia in the arts.” He and Khoury have formed a partnership with the J.T. and Margaret Talkington College of Visual and Performing Arts at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. TVCPA has also been working with the university’s STAR (Stroke & Aphasia Recovery) program through the Health Sciences Center. Silk Road is building an aphasia arts forum with the university.

Gillani’s stroke affected the left side of his brain, which is where the language centers are located. He’s still working to regain speech fluency, but he’s determined to be onstage himself in 2026, performing his own story: The Art of Aphasia. “We want to give hope to people who’ve had strokes and traumatic brain injuries,” he says. When we talk about the variety of work that found its way onstage at Silk Road (which formed specifically as “an intentional and creative response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001”), Gillani points out that music from several cultural traditions formed a big part of that work.

The decision to move away from Pierce Hall isn’t abrupt or unexpected, as Khoury notes. The company had originally planned to give up the space at the end of 2021, and then asked for an extension from First United Methodist Church (which is the congregation housed at Chicago Temple) for another year. But with COVID still very present, they reevaluated that extension and realized that it didn’t make financial sense to stay in that space. (Khoury explains that, while they hadn’t been on a lease or paying rent as a resident company, they did make a monthly gift to the church.)

Khoury also notes that they’ll continue working with the church on Silk Road’s Polycultural Institute. But the work of that emerging institute, as well as the company’s continued and growing interest in multimedia production, means that focusing on finding a venue that can facilitate that kind of production has become more of a priority. 

“We want to have a soundstage that will really allow us to accelerate our output and elevate the quality of the work. We’re very proud of the digital work that we’ve done since 2010 and that we’ve continued doing. But we want something that’s more—I don’t know if the word is ‘stable,’ but just kind of more established. We’re not walking away from live theater and we’re having conversations with different universities about potential collaborations.” That could mean producing shows and forums in different neighborhoods in the city.

Reflecting on their time at Pierce Hall, Khoury says, “We were able to build community and I think tell some really great stories and build these wonderful relationships with playwrights and artists and audiences. It will always be a major part of the Silk Road story, but that story is gonna be a long story.”

In this WGN-TV Cover Story, news reporter Gaynor Hall and photojournalist Vincent Tagle report on how Founding Co-Executive Artistic Director Malik Gillani continues to persevere and inspire two years after suffering a devastating stroke that left him with aphasia.

Congratulations to Silk Road Cultural Center's Co-Founder and Co-Executive Artistic Director Malik Gillani on being named a 2021 Leader for a New Chicago! A total of 10 Chicago leaders were honored by the Field Foundation of Illinois, in partnership with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The leadership awards, created in 2019, are part of Field’s ongoing investment in racial justice visionaries and organizations addressing systemic issues in Chicago’s historically underserved communities.

The other honorees are: Tony Alvarado-Rivera, Executive Director, Chicago Freedom School; Brandon “Chief Manny” Calhoun, Co-Founder, The Era Footwork Crew; Monica Lynne Haslip, Founder and Executive Director, Little Black Pearl; Maira Khwaja, Director of Public Strategy, Invisible Institute; Meida Teresa McNeal, Artistic and Managing Director, Honey Pot Performance; Grace Pai, Director of Organizing, Asian Americans Advancing Justice/ Chicago; Aislinn Pulley, Co-Executive Director, Chicago Torture Justice Center; LaSaia Wade, Founder and Executive Director, Brave Space Alliance; and Damon Williams, Co-Director, #LetUsBreathe Collective.

Source: Village View South Suburban Edition

CHICAGO - Black middle- and high-school teens from six Chicago Public Schools who were trained in virtual playwriting courses created by Silk Road Cultural Center got a chance to see their monologues and short plays on racial equity professionally performed and broadcast on YouTube, thanks to a Healing Illinois grant from the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS).

The students are part of Silk Road Cultural Center's Black Teen Lives Matter, a virtual project in four acts that feature the writings of Black teens in the organization's Empathic Playwriting Intensive Course (EPIC) program from 2017-2020. The EPIC courses, held virtually during the pandemic, helped students develop empathy and social understanding through playwriting.

So far, Silk Road Cultural Center has used its $12,000 Healing Illinois grant to produce two video compilations of students' monologues and skits, and to sponsor an EPIC playwriting residency at Ryan Banks Academy in the Woodlawn community between Nov. 17 and Dec. 8, 2020. The works from the residency will be incorporated into the project's final act this summer.

"I think that the Healing Illinois grant really resonated with what we are trying to accomplish with Black Teen Lives Matters," said Elizabeth Rosner, development associate at Silk Road Cultural Center. "We set out to respond to this period of racial awakening and to amplify the voices of our city's young people."

Student writers were from the following schools: Galileo Scholastic Academy of Math & Science on the Near West Side; John Hope College Prep in Englewood; Skinner West Elementary School in the West Loop; Lindblom Math and Science Academy in Englewood; Ryan Banks Academy in Woodlawn; and Wescott Elementary School in Auburn Gresham.

Police violence and Chicago crime were some of the topics students wrote about in Act One, which features monologues. In one monologue called "The 2 That Changed My Life," an actor tells the story of a writer's brother being shot and killed by police with two bullets while trying to run from a gang who wanted to take his new gym shoes.

In another monologue called "My Life," a male actor expresses a teen writer's fear of living in Chicago because of its crime:

"I'm from the area where everyday people die. Sometimes I just think about it and ask God 'Why do all these innocent people gotta keep dying?'" He goes on to say: "This crime is unbelievable, leaves me unspeakable. Everyday I go out and wonder if they're beatable. I even get scared to sometimes go around the block because you never know who could pull up and get shot."

Family relationships and police violence were highlighted in short skits in Act Two. In one play called "Whatever It Takes," a character consoles his best friend and fellow athlete after learning that his friend has resorted to steroids to live up to his father's athletic stardom, all while struggling with physical abuse from his father. In another play, "Red, White, Blue Won't Always Protect You," a young Black lady engages in dialogue with a white police officer about why he killed her brother.

The Act Three video, which was not funded with a Healing lllinois grant, focuses on taking a stand against injustices, such as police brutality and racial and gender discrimination.

The Act Four video, which is currently under production, will highlight students' perspectives about the pandemic, racial awakening, virtual learning and other matters during the past year.

The screening for the final video compilation is scheduled for July 28 and July 31 via Zoom. For more information, please visit Silk Road Cultural Center's website.

Silk Road Cultural Center is a community-centered art making and arts service organization rooted in Pan-Asian, North African, and Muslim experiences. Through live theatre, digital media, and arts education, the organization challenges disinformation, cultivates new narratives, and promotes a culture of continuous learning.

The Field Foundation of Illinois, in partnership with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, announced today the 2021 Leaders for a New Chicago cohort. The leadership awards, created in 2019, are part of Field’s ongoing investment in racial justice visionaries and organizations addressing systemic issues in Chicago’s historically underserved communities. The MacArthur Foundation committed $2.1 million to support the awards to recognize and support a diverse group of leaders from communities directly impacted by Chicago’s history of structural racism, discrimination, and disinvestment.

The ten leaders, whose work aligns with Field’s grantmaking areas of Justice, Media & Storytelling, and Art, represent a diversity of religion, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, age and expertise, and individuals from different geographies and income levels. Some are CEOs and executive directors, some are creators and co-founders, some are activists and organizers, and some are part of collective, shared leadership models.

“We continue to be inspired by these powerful visionaries,” said Field Foundation Leadership Investment Program Officer Hilesh Patel. “The Leaders for a New Chicago Award continues to find where power lives inside our communities, and provides the support and funding these folks need to dream bigger so they can continue to create change.”

Said MacArthur Senior Program Officer Geoffrey Banks: “We are proud to play a part in elevating the voices of individuals who are leaders in their communities and professional fields and to provide them with unrestricted support to keep pursuing their goals and personal growth as they change the landscape of our city.”

Malik Gillani

CO-EXECUTIVE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR – SILK ROAD CULTURAL CENTER

In his role as co-executive artistic director of Silk Road Cultural Center, Malik Gillani counters negative images and stereotypes of Middle Eastern and Muslim peoples with representation grounded in authentic, multi-faceted, human experiences. Founded in 2002 along with his husband and work partner Jamil Khoury, Silk Road Cultural Center is a community-centered theater, artmaking and arts service organization rooted in Asian, Middle Eastern, and Muslim experiences that began as an intentional and creative response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Malik has worked tirelessly to build an inclusive arts ecology in Chicago, providing theater artists and professionals from Silk Road backgrounds with opportunities for career growth. Every year, hundreds of Chicago actors, directors, designers, and other theater professionals work with Silk Road Cultural Center and 70 percent are from ALAANA communities. Prior to the pandemic, he conceived of and developed Silk Road Cultural Center’s model for creating online video plays which are now being accessed across the globe.

These video plays now form a foundation of Silk Road Cultural Center’s media projects, and the experience with developing video plays was instrumental in easing the transition to virtual programming during the pandemic. In September of 2019, Malik suffered a severe heart attack and stroke that initially left him unable to use the right side of his body or to speak. As an artist and arts leader living with stroke-induced aphasia and apraxia of speech, he continues to use the arts as a means for sparking conversations through the power of storytelling.Malik is uniquely positioned as a Muslim, Queer, Person of Color, and as an immigrant in a position of leadership. His presence in the performing arts sector is vital to a field that struggles to decenter whiteness within storytelling and performance. Through Silk Road Cultural Center, Malik has long challenged the misperceptions and inequities reinforced in traditional theater practices and institutional theater models. He weaves management, negotiating, fundraising, community organizing, and alliance-building into keeping the organization a stable and growing entity.

Source: Asian American Theatre Revue

The Field Foundation, in partnership with the MacArthur Foundation, has named its 2021 “Leaders for a New Chicago," 10 community leaders who have been impacted by racism, discrimination and disinvestment in underserved Chicago communities.

The awards are part of Field’s ongoing investment in racial justice visionaries and organizations addressing systemic issues in Chicago’s divested ccommunities.

Each recipient will receive a $25,000 award to use as they wish; the $25,000 operating grant goes to their affiliated organization.

The recipients’ work covers a wider range of areas, according to Field Foundation Leadership Investment Program Officer Hilesh Patel, including justice, media and storytelling, and art. The awardees themselves represent a diversity of religions, ethnicities, gender identity and sexual orientation.

“We continue to be inspired by these powerful visionaries,” said Patel, in a release. “The Leaders for a New Chicago Award continue to find where power lives inside our communities and provides the support and funding these folks need to dream bigger so they can continue to create change.”

MacArthur Foundation officials said it wanted to recognize community leaders making a difference in the lives of others.

“We are proud to provide (the leaders) with unrestricted support to keep pursuing their goals and personal growth as they change the landscape of our city,” said Geoffrey Banks, senior program officer for the MacArthur Foundation, in a release.

The 10 winners are LaSaia Wade, founder and executive director, Brave Space Alliance; Grace Pai, director of organizing, Asian Americans Advancing Justice/Chicago; Damon A. Williams, co-director, #LetUsBreathe Collective; Tony Alvarado-Rivera, executive director, Chicago Freedom School; Aislinn Pulley, co-executive director, Chicago Torture Justice Center; Brandon “Chief Manny” Calhoun, co-founder, the Era Footwork Crew; Malik Gillani, co-executive artistic director, Silk Road Cultural Center; Meida Teresa McNeal, artistic and managing director, Honey Pot Performance; Monica Lynne Haslip, founder and executive director of Little Black Pearl; and Maira Khwaja, director of public strategy at Invisible Institute.

Shock, that’s how LaSaia Wade describes finding out about being awarded $50,000 for her leadership skills as founder and executive director of Brave Space Alliance, the Black-led, transgender-staffed LGBTQ center in Hyde Park.

“Someone of my stature, I’m still working, still building, still figuring out what leadership looks like for myself and for people that come up behind me. It’s an every-day growing experience, so I was shocked,” she said.

Wade is one of 10 recipients of the Field Foundation’s Leaders for a New Chicago award, announced Tuesday by the foundation, in partnership with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The awards are part of Field’s ongoing investment in racial justice visionaries and organizations addressing systemic bias in Chicago’s marginalized communities. The MacArthur Foundation committed $2.1 million for the awards that recognize and support diverse leaders from communities affected by Chicago’s history of structural racism, discrimination and disinvestment.

The $50,000 award is divided in half — $25,000 for the recipient’s personal use and $25,000 for the affiliated organization’s general operations. Wade’s work through Brave Space Alliance, which provides community services such as a food crisis pantry, support groups, an LGBTQ and BIPOC-centered job board and HIV testing, aims to amplify the voices of transgender people of color in Chicago and to build their decision-making at micro and macro levels.

“I appreciate the award. It allows me to catch up on my bills and take my family out. But it also means I have to come back to work even harder,” Wade said. “The work isn’t done.”

And work is what so many community leaders have been doing since 2020. Given the stress the pandemic has put on already marginalized communities in the city, in addition to the racial reckoning following George Floyd’s death, leaders have been called on to do more for those in their communities.

Hilesh Patel, the Field Foundation Leadership Investment Program officer, said that’s why choosing this year’s cohort of leaders was especially hard.

“It was significantly harder this year because people saw leaders get pushed to the forefront with the pandemic and the uprising. ... Those two things pushed them further in ways that they didn’t expect, and then they responded with everything they needed to,” he said.

“Ten were chosen,” he said, “but it was a hard-fought battle to get to that point. At some point, one member of the selection committee said, ‘Instead of saying no, we need to say ‘not now.’”

Grace Pai, director of organizing at Asian Americans Advancing Justice/Chicago, is a part of 2021′s cohort. She was shocked, as well, to learn she was chosen. Pai’s community organizing work in advancing racial, economic, social and environmental justice led to her nomination. Pai helped get the Teaching Equitable Asian American Community History Act (TEAACH) passed, which mandates that Asian American history be taught in all Illinois public schools.

The state law will go into effect in fall 2022, Pai said. The award money will be used for implementation — outreach to school districts, teacher training and engagement — to make sure that when Asian American history becomes required, teachers are prepared to teach it well.

“We’ve seen a huge increase in anti-Asian racism and sentiment over the last year, so we see this TEAACH campaign as one way of fighting for a long-term solution and not just responding to the violence after it’s happened,” Pai said. “I’m incredibly grateful that the foundations are investing in the cohort of leaders in this way.”

The other 2021 Leaders for a New Chicago cohort (whose work aligns with Field’s grant-making areas of justice, media and storytelling, and art) include:

• Damon A. Williams, co-director of the #LetUsBreathe Collective, a movement builder, organizer, artist and educator who has organized a mass effort to redistribute police funding toward health-facing services in the city.
• Tony Alvarado-Rivera, executive director of the Chicago Freedom School, an educational space in Chicago dedicated to youth activism, leadership and movement building. Last year, on the evening of May 30, during the George Floyd protests, Chicago Freedom School opened its doors in the South Loop to young protesters. Police entered the building and issued a cease-and-desist order threatening fines and arrests. The school has sued the city, saying constitutional rights to free speech and freedom from “unreasonable illegal search” were violated.
• Aislinn Pulley, co-executive director of the Chicago Torture Justice Center, whose mission is to help survivors of police violence heal. The practice is survivor-led and built on shared power. She’s also a founding member of Black Lives Matter’s Chicago chapter.
• Brandon “Chief Manny” Calhoun, co-founder of the Era Footwork Crew, who uses dance and footwork to connect communities across the city, while simultaneously bringing attention to the South and West sides of Chicago. Chicago footwork is a style of music and battle dance that’s been in the city since the late 1990s.
• Malik Gillani, co-executive artistic director of Silk Road Cultural Center, which challenges misperceptions and inequities in traditional theater practices by countering negative images and stereotypes of Middle Eastern and Muslim people with representations grounded in authentic, multifaceted human experiences.
• Meida Teresa McNeal, artistic and managing director of Honey Pot Performance, which supports the development of new works by artists of color. McNeal helped launch the Chicago Black Social Culture Map that documents Black social life through live programs, a digital map and archival events.
• Monica Lynne Haslip, founder and executive director of Little Black Pearl, an arts and culture institution designed to create positive vehicles for children and families to thrive. Her philosophy and art practice are anchored in racial equity and the intersection of art, education and community development.
• Maira Khwaja, director of public strategy at the Invisible Institute. Since joining the organization in 2015, Khwaja has worked in the areas of civic education and sustained listening, and has facilitated citywide public dialogues to eradicate police misconduct.

Patel said the awards are a way for the Field Foundation to say to the chosen community leaders: “We see you.”

“We recognize the work that you’re doing, and this is a way to hopefully give you some breathing room,” he said. “And I think that’s what the $25,000 individual awards were designed to do.”

“Not only do we see you,” he said, “but if this is, in any way, an ability or a conduit for you to take care of yourselves and for you to rest and take a vacation, then that would be great.”

“I think a lot of community organizers’ work goes unrecognized,” Pai said. “It’s something that we do not do for the recognition, but because fighting for racial justice and racial equity is critically important work, it impacts all of us every day.”

“Especially this year,” she said, “in light of the violence that we’ve seen — both police violence and state violence in the Black community and this harassment and sometimes physical violence against the Asian American community — I think it’s made a lot of these issues hit really close to home for a lot of people. I’m just really appreciative for the recognition.”

A 30-year-old dancer who co-founded the Era Footwork Crew, a group that uses “footworking,” a uniquely Chicago-style dance, to bring communities together.

The 40-year-old co-founder of Black Lives Matter’s Chicago chapter, now working with survivors of police brutality at the Chicago Torture Justice Center.

A 26-year-old organizer who shepherded a four-year project by the Invisible Institute to document the torture of more than 100 Black men, making their stories publicly accessible.

These are among the 10 winners of $50,000 each from “Leaders for a New Chicago,” an initiative of the Field Foundation and MacArthur Foundation to support individuals and organizations addressing systemic racism in underserved South and West Side communities.

Launched in 2019, the award — a no-strings-attached $25,000 grant for each winner, plus another $25,000 for their organizations — is a more accessible spin on MacArthur’s lauded “genius grants” awarded annually to nationally known figures boasting lofty achievements.

This third cohort being acknowledged and celebrated are folks diligently working in their individual trenches, some lesser known, others more familiar — including Generation X members and Millennials. All have been dedicated to uplifting hurting communities of color.

“The Leaders for a New Chicago Award continues to find where power lives inside our communities, and provides the support and funding these folks need to dream bigger so they can continue to create change,” said Field Foundation Leadership Investment Program Officer Hilesh Patel. 

“We continue to be inspired by these powerful visionaries,” Patel said.

Brandon “Chief Manny” Calhoun co-founded Era Footwork Crew in 2014, a dance company that now works with inner-city youth. He grew up on the East Side with seven siblings, raised by a single mother who struggled with a disability, so he identifies with those youth.

“I grew up very poor. I got into dance at an early age, from going to the Bud Billiken Parade and seeing the dancing, as well as both my sisters being part of dance groups,” he said.

“I was probably 15 when I discovered footworking, drawn to it because it was more expressive, heavily improvisational and had a competition aspect. Growing up in these areas, it kept us off the street and gave us a creative outlet, which we want for our youth.”

The awards, part of the Field Foundation’s racial justice investments mission, is supported by a $2.1 million MacArthur commitment.

“We are proud to play a part in elevating the voices of individuals who are leaders in their communities and professional fields and to provide them with unrestricted support to keep pursuing their goals and personal growth as they change the landscape of our city,” said MacArthur’s senior program officer for Chicago Commitment, Geoffrey Banks.

Winners include: LaSaia Wade, founder/executive director of Brave Space Alliance; Grace Pai, director of organizing for Asian Americans Advancing Justice/Chicago; Damon Williams, co-director of #LetUsBreathe Collective; Tony Alvarado-Rivera, executive director of Chicago Freedom School; and Aislinn Pulley, co-executive director of the Chicago Torture Justice Center.

Pulley has been engaged in racial justice work since high school, founding a nonprofit arts group while attending Lane Tech. 

From there, she moved on to “We Charge Genocide,” a group that testified before the United Nations Committee Against Torture, about use of torture at the Chicago Police Department. The group then successfully worked to pass Chicago’s landmark $5.5 million reparations ordinance to help survivors of that torture.

“I started here on the day after the trial started for Laquan McDonald’s killer, officer Jason Van Dyke,” said Pulley, who has been with the Chicago Torture Justice Center since 2018.

“Our work is centered on trying to free the remaining incarcerated survivors of convicted torturer Jon Burge, and officers who trained under him, while spearheading a new therapeutic clinical modality we call operating through a ‘politicized healing lens.’ ”

Other winners are Malik Gillani, co-executive artistic director of Silk Road Cultural Center; Meida Teresa McNeal, artistic and managing director for Honey Pot Performance; Monica Lynne Haslip, founder and executive director of Little Black Pearl; and Maira Khwaja, director of public strategy at Invisible Institute.

Khwaja came to Chicago for college, and fell in love with its passionate and dedicated community of social justice activists. She has worked at the institute for the past five years.

“I understand that the fight for freedom from police and state violence on the South Side of Chicago and the fight for freedom from military occupation in my homeland of Kashmir is the same struggle,” said Khwaja, managing editor of the recently released Chicago Police Torture Archive. 

“I feel that if you can understand Chicago, you can understand the entire country, because Chicago makes clear some of the worst state violence people in this country experience.”

A mural honoring the 370,000 people who work in the Loop has been installed on a building along Ida B. Wells Drive, formerly known as Congress Parkway.

The mural was commissioned by Chicago Loop Alliance as part of its “Loop Employee of the Month” program that has been ongoing since March 2019.

Chicago artist Dwight White completed the mural on October 26. He says the mural contains symbols that represent past winners of the Loop Employee of the Month award.

“You will see that each element of the mural has a significant meaning. After the global pandemic and months of quarantine, I believe this mural will have an even greater impact and meaning to all who work in the Loop,” he said.

Loop Employees of the Month so far include:

• Marion Batey, business relations specialist for Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership
• Kathy Bliss, assistant to the CEO of Auditorium Theatre
• Malik Gillani, co-founder and executive director of Silk Road Cultural Center
•  
• Beatriz Jara, events director for ROOF at theWit
• Michael Love, security lead at Joffrey Tower
• Gwendolyn Matthews, sales associate for Carpe Librum
• Robert Middlekauff, data visualization manager at Lumere and founder of the Illinois chapter of FairVote
• Pradip Nayak, owner of Sunshine Infinity, Inc.
• Dina Fenili Niekamp, director of sales and marketing at Kimpton Gray Hotel
• Jerome Pickens, houseperson at DoubleTree Hotel
• Stephanie Sanchez, manager at Land & Lake Kitchen and managing partner with LM Restaurant Group
• Belissa Bella Suloski, healthcare mediator with the Illinois Attorney General’s Office

I’d been thinking about Silk Road Cultural Center, the mission-driven performing arts company founded by Jamil Khoury and Malik Gillani in 2002, before I got an e-mail from Khoury last week.

Since the pandemic shutdown, every arts organization I can think of has been throwing content up online—trying, desperately, to keep a connection going with their audiences. But Silk Road, which moved seriously into online programming a decade ago, had a leg up on that. During a 2011 interview, Khoury had told me that they were intrigued by the dissemination opportunities of the Internet and were aiming to produce video plays that would expand their reach to an international audience. It seemed like an appropriate time to check back in with them.

“Things are good, all things considered,” Khoury said, when he picked up the phone, leaving room for an ocean of trouble.

There’s the macro hit the arts are taking from the pandemic. According to a Brookings Institution study by Creative Class guru Richard Florida and urban planner Michael Seman, the fine and performing arts are among the industries suffering the most COVID-19 damage. In “Lost art: Measuring COVID-19’s devastating impact on America’s creative economy,” they looked at national data from April 1 through July 31 of this year, and estimated that half the jobs in fine and performing arts (including freelance work) are gone, and that we’re in for “a protracted period of restrictions on live performances.”

According to Arts Alliance Illinois (citing a survey by Americans for the Arts), 42 percent of Illinois arts organizations “are not confident they will survive the impacts of COVID-19.”

Like everyone else, Silk Road shut down in March. They were one day away from preview performances of a world-premiere play, My Dear Hussein by Nahal Navidar. But that’s not all they’ve been dealing with:

“In September of 2019, my husband and Silk Road Cultural Center Co-Founder and Co-Executive Artistic Director, Malik Gillani, suffered a heart attack and stroke,” Khoury wrote in an e-mail to the Silk Road community last week.

“The double whammy of heart failure and neurologic damage has reset our journey, particularly as the stroke caused significant impairments to Malik’s expressive abilities.”

If you’ve ever been to Silk Road’s intimate theater in the depths of the historic Chicago Temple, chances are you’ve been greeted by Gillani—a quietly welcoming presence with a smile and a handshake for everyone: the yin to Khoury’s exuberant yang.  

On September 13 last year, Khoury told me, Gillani, then 49 years old, collapsed with a heart attack in the 150 N. Michigan Avenue building that houses the Silk Road office, and was rushed to Northwestern Memorial Hospital. A week later, still in the hospital, he was hit with a life-threatening stroke that left him unable to use the right side of his body or to speak. After 55 days of hospitalization (at Northwestern and the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab), and months of intensive outpatient therapy, a lot of the paralysis is gone and his mind is intact, Khoury says, but the speech will take time to recover.

Gillani made it to one of the last performances of Silk Road’s production of Fouad Teymour's Twice, Thrice, Frice . . . last year. “The second he walked into the lobby and saw an audience, he kicked into Malik mode, and even though he couldn’t shake hands properly he was shaking people’s hands, greeting people, speaking a kind of unintelligible language,” Khoury says. “I think most people had no idea what was going on, but they just worked with it. Some asked me if he was speaking Urdu or Arabic.” That play is now Jeff-nominated, but for Khoury there’s an ironic edge: “We run a theater that’s about giving voice to people who don’t have a voice, and now he’s lost his voice.”

“It was several months before he could say my name,” Khoury says, but in December he spoke his first full sentence: “I love you.”

Silk Road had to cancel three plays this season, but will survive financially if they’re able to resume live theater production in the fall of 2021, even with reduced capacity, Khoury says.  Meanwhile, the videos on their website—all available for free viewing and all with prescient relevance—include Not Quite White, a 2012 documentary with a narrative that describes whiteness as like “an automatic upgrade to first class,” and a flash to an image of Donald Trump.

“We know that the road to recovery is long, arduous, and complicated,” Khoury wrote in his e-mail. He was predicting a positive outcome for his partner, but his words are also apt for these troubled times.