Artist Molly Rice with women of the Pittsburgh Afghan refugee community

Part of Shiftworks’ Artist Residencies in the Public Realm with Immigrant and Refugee Communities, Molly Rice began collaborating with women of the Pittsburgh Afghan refugee community in 2017. Early on, the women expressed their desire to share their stories of home, family, Afghanistan, and the refugee experience with Pittsburghers. Deeply embedded in each story was a strong tie to the rituals and practices of making and eating Afghani food. The women wished ultimately to form and run a catering business in Pittsburgh serving Afghan food.

Rice began this residency with the Community Assistance and Refugee Resettlement (CARR) program of the Northern Area Multi-Service Center (NAMS). During the first year, Rice built strong relationships with women from the Afghan refugee community through the original host organization. Near the end of the first year of the residency, NAMS discontinued CARR due to federal cuts to refugee entries into the country. However, due to the strength of the relationships Rice had built with the women in the first year, they were able to continue collaborating outside of the structure of the original host organization.

Rice engaged deeply with the women, learning their stories and meeting their families. Based on these conversations and interviews, Rice developed Khūrākī, a multisensory theatrical experience that combined storytelling with the regional cuisines of Afghanistan. Rice worked with the women to select five actors who would tell their stories on stage. The dialogue, written by Rice, emerged directly from her interviews and conversations with the women. As the stories were shared with the audience, Afghan food cooked by the women was served to the audience, augmenting the visual and auditory experience of the actor’s portrayals with the tastes and scents of Afghani cuisine. 

Over 280 people attended the four sold-out performances and two dress rehearsals. Rice and her collaborators have since been commissioned to stage versions of Khūrākī by the University of Pittsburgh and PNC Bank.

Over the course of developing Khūrākī, the women attended workshops on entrepreneurship, food service training, and how to work in a commercial kitchen. After the residency was completed, the women applied the skills that they had learned over the course of producing Khūrākī to develop their own business plan. In late 2019, they launched Zafaron Afghan Cuisine.

Learn more about Molly Rice and her other projects on the RealTime Interventions website.

Watch a short documentary on the project, titled Drop By Drop, that was produced by local PBS affiliate WQED.

Learn more about the project by reading some of the coverage it received in local media.

Molly Rice is a playwright and experience designer whose work gravitates toward unusual collaborations, offbeat musicality, and site-specific enchantments. Her work has been developed and produced in NYC (the Public, Playwrights Horizons, Rattlestick, Women’s Project, NYTW) and nationally (American Repertory Theater, Montana Rep, Kitchen Dog). Her work has been featured in American Theater Magazine, The Dramatist, Dramatics, Kenyon Review, Play: a Journal [online], and Indie Theater Now. Rice is Co-Artistic Director of the production company RealTime Interventions.

The residency was established as a collaboration with the Community Assistance and Refugee Resettlement program (CARR) of the Northern Area Multi-Service Center. CARR identified their goal for collaborating with an artist to increase connectivity and integration of refugees with the Pittsburgh community. CARR was closed in December 2018, but the residency continued independently with women of Pittsburgh’s Afghan refugee community.

Karen Hart; Rebecca Johnson; Katy Dement; Carol Mullen; New Sun Rising; Sprezzatura Catering; Union Project; Islamic Center of Pittsburgh; City of Asylum; Chatham Women’s Business Center; PNC Bank; La Dorita Kitchen ; Carnegie Mellon School of Music; Pixelab Studios, Point Park University; Allegheny County Department of Human Services; Aldo’s Foodservice; All for All; KIVA; Open Door Project and SBDC at University of Pittsburgh; Bridgeway Capital; and Pittsburgh International Airport.

Image credits

Gallery, top:
(1) Alex Manalo performing in Khūrākī by artist, photo courtesy Heather Mull; (2) Display outside Khūrākī performance, photo courtesy Heather Mull; (3) Krystal Rivera performing in Khūrākī by artist, photo courtesy Heather Mull; (4) Women of the Pittsburgh Afghan refugee community cooking, photo courtesy Jen Saffron; (5,6) Cooking for Khūrākī performance, photo courtesy Heather Mull; (7) Family member serving food at Khūrākī performance, photo courtesy Heather Mull; (8) Tressa Glover performing in Khūrākī by artist, photo courtesy Heather Mull; (9) Ashley Williams performing in Khūrākī by artist, photo courtesy Heather Mull; (10) Musicians play at Khūrākī while Kelly Trumbull awaits her cue; photo courtesy Heather Mull; (11) Artist and Rebecca Johnson of NAMS at Khūrākī performance, photo courtesy Heather Mull; (12) Alex Manalo performing in Khūrākī by artist, photo courtesy Heather Mull.

Artist Headshot:
Artist Molly Rice, photo courtesy artist