Stephen Karam’s Sons of the Prophet is an award-winning play that chronicles a year in the life of two brothers--Lebanese-Americans Joseph and Charles Douaihy--whose father died of a heart attack two weeks after a car accident caused by a local high school football star placing a deer decoy in the middle of the road. While trying to cope with this, the brothers experience almost every other type of misfortune: personal, professional, and physical, and they fear that their lives will irreparably fall apart. Joseph, who was a runner training for the Olympic trials, has serious knee injuries and is working part-time as the professional and personal assistant of crazed book packager Gloria Gurney. Charles forges a positive relationship with Vin, the guilty football player, much to the dismay of the rest of his family, and he finds some comfort in the religion he had all but abandoned. The brothers’ Uncle Bill, who now has to live with them, is progressively becoming unable to care for himself. Joseph has a less-than-perfect affair with a reporter covering his story. Joseph and Charles must come to terms with their lot and must face the consequences of their actions. Much like Karam’s other plays, including Speech & Debate and The Humans, Sons of the Prophet, a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, is a examination of the basic human condition and the innate dark comedy that is born from tragedy.
Sons of the Prophet guide sections
