In an industry shaped by familiar choruses and blockbuster adaptations, news that an original musical about two star-crossed robots had won Broadway's top prize made an impact from Manhattan to Manama.
With it, Ali Daylami became the first Bahraini, and person from the Gulf overall, to receive a Tony Award as part of the team that produces Maybe Happy Ending, which won Best Musical earlier this month. It is a personal achievement, but also offers a path forward for a region more accustomed to experiencing drama from the seats.
“I'm definitely energised and inspired to keep going, to find new pieces and work that speak to me and hopefully resonates with people in the same way this show did,” Daylami tells The National from New York.
“But I would love nothing more than to bring that energy back home to the Mena region. Not just as a show, but as something that's built for us, by us.”
Daylami is keenly aware his achievement represents something larger than a testament to personal perseverance. While producers and impresarios emerge from the US, Europe and increasingly Asia, Arab voices in the industry remain rare. The road to a Tony Award is arduous not because of a lack of talent, he notes, but due to the absence of talent development support.
“We are sorted when it comes to the infrastructure, as we can see with places like Dubai Opera and the Royal Opera House Muscat,” he says. “While we know how to build the spaces, what is needed are places to develop local talent, like academies and conservatories that train performers, artists and artisans. That is beginning to happen now with places like the Sharjah Performing Arts Academy.”
Dynamic content is also needed, Daylami adds, to widen the palette of regional audiences raised on familiar material.
“How many times can someone see Phantom of the Opera or Hamilton? A content strategy is also needed that appeals to artists who want to make the work, and to audiences who want to see it again.”
Daylami’s own foray on the stage began as an audience member in Dubai Opera.
“It all started for me when Les Miserables had its premiere at the Dubai Opera,” he says, referring to the 2016 Cameron Mackintosh production. “That was a bespoke Dubai production with a West End cast. And I said to myself, this is happening here now. I got to be part of it.”
The experience crystallised the need to remove himself from his job at an advertising firm in Bahrain to study theatre management and producing at New York’s Columbia University.
“I needed to have theatre credits to apply confidently for the programme,” he recalls. “That was the challenge. So I said to myself that I have got to start somewhere.”
That beginning was a local production of Piaf, a play by British playwright Pam Gems about the life of French singer and Second World War dissident Edith Piaf.
Premiering at the Manama Theatre Club in 2019 and featuring a cast made up almost entirely of artists living in the kingdom, Daylami says its relative success revealed an important lesson he later carried with him to Broadway.
“The shows that work are the ones you can scale down – something you could do in a car park, a garage, a park or even a living room – and still carry that spirit, intimacy and ability to reach people on a personal level,” he says.
“Piaf was assembled locally in Bahrain with a fantastic team and amazing local talent and it remains one of my favourite experiences.”
Following a stint as a creative consultant during preparations for the musical Umm Kulthum: The Golden Era, ahead of its West End premiere at the London Palladium in 2020, Daylami had gained enough experience to join what he recalls as one of only two Arab students in Columbia University's theatre management programme.
It was in New York amid the cut and thrust of the industry that he worked on as many jobs as he could, landing production stints on the blockbuster Wicked and the jukebox musical The Heart of Rock’n’Roll.
While describing those experiences as useful CV-building exercises, Daylami became aware of an off-Broadway English adaptation of the Korean musical Maybe Happy Ending, which already proven to be a hit in its home country.
“My area of study at Columbia gave me a strong interest in what was happening internationally as well as on Broadway and in the West End, so I was always tracking what was going on globally,” he says. “So with Maybe Happy Ending, I knew it had an amazing reputation overseas.”
Admiring the show from the stands is one thing. Being part of the team that brought it to Broadway defied some industry conventions. Maybe Happy Ending is not a recognisable brand based on popular source material or a historical backdrop. And the story itself, a tender tale of two outdated helper robots in Seoul, is a difficult marketing pitch.
Daylami says the decision to back it was not shaped by university coursework or commercial trends. It was pure instinct.
“It was the music. It was absolutely divine,” he says. “It is optimistic, heartbreaking and honest. It reminded me why we go to the theatre in the first place.”
After an admittedly slow start since premiering on Broadway last year, the risk began to pay off.
“Our show came in with a lot of scepticism, but people fully embraced it,” he says. “I think this is a great statement for the industry to reward itself for taking a huge gamble and supporting great art and supporting new writers and new composers and new theatre makers.”
Now with a Tony Award to his name and the production continuing to pack in audiences at New York’s Belasco Theatre, Daylami is already looking for another hidden gem to bring back to the Gulf.
“I would love to move away from the touring model,” he says. “I would love to create something that is more bespoke for the region. Something that speaks to the local audiences. Something that appeals to their own histories, their own passions and their own experiences.”
