Gertrude Bell in Mesopotamia

A professor of English and creative writing at the American University of Beirut, Mr. Myers is the author of more than a dozen plays about politics, history, and cultural encounters, including Atwater: Fixin’ to Die; The Lynching of Leo Frank; Dead of Night, about the official murder of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton; Perfectly Clear, about Richard Nixon and the Watergate tapes; Heartland, a black comedy about white supremacists; and Painting Persia, about the 1840s expedition of French geographer Xavier Hommaire de Hell and painter Jules Laurens. He also cotranslated Jawad Al-Assadi’s Baghdadi Bath, which played Off-Broadway in 2009.

In lieu of a public talk at Yale, Mr. Myers staged a reading of his play Mesopotamia, about archaeologist, Arabist, diplomat, and spy Gertrude Bell and the British occupation of Iraq. The performance featured actress Kathleen Chalfant, directed by Evan Yionoulis of the Yale Drama School. In conjunction with the production, Mr. Myers curated an exhibition at the Gallery at the Whitney, “Gertrude Bell in Mesopotamia,” a collection of letters, maps, books, intelligence reports, and photographs (many by Bell herself). He gave a talk, “Painting the Theater of the East,” to the WHC Fellows.