By Sanaz Toossi
Directed By Hamid Dehghani
“English Only.” This one rule governs language instructor Marjan’s classroom, where she teaches four adult students outside of Tehran. Together, they leapfrog through a linguistic playground, chasing fluency through a maze of word games, listening exercises, and show-and-tell sessions. They hope that one day English will make them whole. But it might be splitting each of them in half.
Sanaz Toossi’s Pulitzer Prize-winning English is a disarmingly funny and tender play about the foibles of language and miscommunication. Make sure you’re marked as “present” for a work Variety calls “undeniably one of the best plays of the decade,” when it makes its Denver debut in spring 2026.
Hands down a masterpiece of theater.
– Variety
Show Resources:
Buell Theatre
MAP
Singleton Theatre
MAP
Kilstrom Theatre
MAP
Helen Bonfils Theatre Complex
MAP
Wolf Theatre
MAP
Randy Weeks Conservatory Theatre
MAP
Garner Galleria Theatre
MAP
Play, Comedy
Approximately 1 hour and 40 minutes with no intermission
No
May 12, 20, & 28
ASL-Interpretation & Audio Description: May 3
Adult language.
Recommended for ages 13+.
Denvercenter.org is the official source for tickets to this show. View all Terms & Conditions.
This production is in the past
A sharp, human portrait of language and identity. In a moment when Iran is often reduced to sensational headlines, English insists on something else: attention to the people who live there, the choices they make and the identities they hold onto.”
– OnStage Colorado
English invites its audience to sit with the complexity of identity across cultures. It does not resolve that complexity. Instead, it makes space for something fuller, more human.”
– BroadwayWorld
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Shadee Vossoughi 
Roxanna Hope Radja 
Lanna Joffrey 
Vaneh Assadourian 
Nima Rakhshanifar Hamid Dehghani
Omid Akbari
Afsaneh Aayani
Charles R. MacLeod
Melanie Chen Cole
Hessam Dianpour
Vaneh Assadourian
Grady Soapes, CSA
And
Lauren Port, CSA
Matthew Campbell
Sage Hughes and Harper Hadley
