Fargo Nissim Tbakhi’s Satirical Solo Show Offers Theatre Audiences Discomfort, Laughter and Catharsis

By Gauri Mangala    

September 9, 2025             

How do you produce a show about a genocide while that genocide is actively taking place? Is there any point to this form of activism? Palestinian–American performance artist Fargo Nissim Tbakhi is confronting these questions as he prepares to bring his satirical solo show, “An Evening with Complicity Huffman,” to the the Drake’s Louis Bluver Theatre, as a part of the 2025 Cannonball Festival.

In the production, Tbakhi portrays Complicity Huffman, a caricature of an Israeli-American poet who is hosting a reading of her latest work, ‘Untitled Nobel Prize Submission.’ As the reading goes on, strange things keep happening—the poems she reads are different, the sound system keeps acting up and unexplained blood is pooling. The haunted reading reaches a head when the voices of Palestinians break free and take control of the show, the narrative and Huffman.

The inclusion of "Complicity Huffman” as a Special Presentation in this year’s festival was decided by a panel of producers that included Nick Jonczak, co-founder and 5th Year Producer of the Cannonball Festival. The panel noticed a shift in this year’s collection of applications. While overall application numbers have dwindled, a larger proportion featured strong political themes and messages.

“We were looking at applications from artists who were [saying], ‘I’m hungry. I have something to say, and I need to say it now,’” Jonczak said.

“When we saw this particular application come in, we were really excited about the way in which it was trying to speak to the moment. We have several pieces in Cannonball this year that are trying to speak to the moment, but this particular artist, Fargo, was doing it in a really articulate and nuanced way. That’s something else that we look for: What is the maturity of the experimentation?” 

Fargo Nissim Tbakhi performing in “An Evening with Complicity Huffman” at OUTSider Fest in Austin, Texas in February 2024. Tbakhi’s solo show will be staged at Philadelphia’s Louis Bluver Theatre at The Drake, as a part of the 2025 Cannonball Festival. Photo: Rolando Sepulveda

Tbakhi’s “germination process,” as he called it, started with a joke—as well as a cheeky pun on Felicity Huffman, the actress convicted on felony charges for mail fraud in an SAT cheating scandal in 2019. Back in 2021, the artist created the first iteration of the idea as part of a virtual open mic hosted by the RAWI, or Radius of Arab American Writers. “I came up with the name of Complicity Huffman. I found this hat that I wanted her to wear. And I wrote the final poem of the show.”

Tbakhi revisited the idea of a haunted poetry reading and proposed a full version of the show to OUTsider Fest in Austin, Texas, a festival showcasing the work of LGBTQ+ artists. Tbakhi’s pitch was accepted in the Summer of 2023 to be performed the following year.

Then, Tbakhi said, October 7th happened.

“The escalation of the genocide really became the structuring condition of every day for me. The festival was in February 2024, and I had to write this show which is—funny. And it felt very, very strange to be in that space,” he said. “It took a longer time to get to a shape and structure where I could find the sharpness of the critique [that would] meet the moment, and where the laughter I wanted from people was pointed at the right target in the right way.”

Photo: Rolando Sepulveda

Tbakhi found that the audience at OutsiderFest laughed at his jokes. In a time when there is little relief to be found, perhaps satire offers a brief respite. In Tbakhi’s embodiment of Complicity Huffman, the audience gets someone to direct their anger at. They also get someone they can laugh at. 

Tbakhi’s sharp, dual-wielding writing can flick on a dime between humor and dread. Audiences will feel a particular catharsis as he spotlights the various entanglements of the U.S. government and the corporations that are financially contributing to the genocide. But it is the last poem of the play, voiced by the disembodied voices of Palestinians speaking through Complicity, that will have audiences holding their breaths. As Tbakhi delivers the line, “The future is Palestine, though you keep this from your children,” we are reminded that our laughter has only been a temporary relief.

Tbakhi said he was nervous about portraying the character, about how it would feel and how audiences would respond to it. “I remember a conversation with some younger performance students…[and] one of them said, ‘I didn't know that you could do that. I didn't know you could just create a character to hate and pummel and eviscerate and just place it in your body in drag,’” he said.

Tbakhi is proud of the impact that such a revelation can have on a young performer, but as he recalls those eureka moments during his own journey as an artist, he questions the overall impact of his work. In fact, he questions the impact that most forms of activism can have against a genocide.

Photo: Rolando Sepulveda

“It is meaningful to me to be in a room of people with whom I can laugh at these things. And with whom I can get to a moment of silence and seriousness with these things,” he said. “Mass protests, rallies, these forms of performance that we've attempted…[they] haven't accomplished what we want them to accomplish. So being in the space of a more intentional, theatrical and artistic performance, it can feel kind of weird sometimes.”

Despite Tbakhi’s questions about the tangible effect that art can have on violence of this scale, it is clear that his work has already made an impact on audiences. But he also recognizes that the support of his work has a goal of timeliness, and he is grappling with how the popular nature of his artmaking might undercut the gravity of his message. 

“[T]he ‘now–more–than–everness’ of all of my work right now…is disgusting. It feels awful to be this object that people are investing their sorrow and their pity into, [because] it is not reflected in action and in meaningful sacrifice.”

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“An Evening with Complicity Huffman” will run as a part of the Cannonball Festival at the Louis Bluver Theatre at the Drake from September 11th to the 16th.

Gauri Mangala is an Indian-American producer, writer and theatremaker. As a producer, Gauri has enjoyed working on commercial productions like “The Cottage” (Broadway), the national tour of “The Kite Runner” and Hasan Minhaj’s national comedy tour, “The King’s Jester.” Gauri is a member of the 2024-25 Philadelphia Asian Performing Artists Playwriting Project and a theatre critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer and other publications. She received her BA in anthropology and theatre arts from Gettysburg College and is pursuing her MA in theatre at Villanova University.