On Wednesday, September 19, several Chicago artists received an invitation to audition for a play called Angel by playwright Henry Naylor. Angel is the second production in a series called “Arabian Nightmares”. The invitation was sent by local Chicago theatre Akvavit on behalf of Urbanite Theatre, located in Sarasota, Florida. Angel is inspired by fake news tweeted by the English-language news outlet Slemani Times. The tweet contained a photo of a woman named Rehana who was rumored to have killed as many as 100 members of ISIS. It has since been proven that though the photo, taken by Swedish journalist Carl Drott, was of a real woman, she was not Rehana, or “The Angel of Kobane” as they claimed. This story of the “Angel” has no basis in fact, and was disproved by the BBC in 2014. Rehana, “The Angel of Kobane,” never existed at all. Continue reading “When The Show Must Not Go On: Chicago Artists Respond to Controversial Casting Notice”