Fringe Preview: Headscarf and the Angry Bitch

In 2007's Capital Fringe Festival, local actress Zehra Fazal mounted an impressive and potentially controversial staging of My Friend Hitler, a solo show depicting the internal tension the dictator might have felt during his rise to power. Fazal returns to this year's Fringe with another solo production that has been gaining some buzz. Headscarf and the Angry Bitch centers around Zed Headscarf, a character who is trying to be a professional folk-rocker. Using songs and parody, Fazal's original play explores what it means to be a contemporary Muslim-American woman.

"I wanted to do something very honest," Fazal told DCist. "I also wanted to experiment with writing and performing comedy."

Drawing from varied sources, Fazal's script recognizes, as she put it, that "the definition of what it is to be Muslim is expanding and it's okay to be vocal about it."

"Some parts are fictionalized, and some parts are, verbatim, stories from my own life," she went on to explain. "I also had a lot of thoughts stirred by conversations I had with friends--Muslim and non-Muslim alike."