Growing up in rural NSW, James Elazzi never saw himself, or even a character close to himself, on stage or screen. So he decided to write one.

Today, Elazzi is a highly regarded playwright and screenwriter based in western Sydney, whose popular plays speak personal truths about migrant communities, the pressure to conform and the guilt when you don’t. His heartfelt, colourful, often comedic works have been shortlisted three times for the NSW Premier’s Literary Award (Son of Byblos, Queen Fatima and Lady Tabouli) and he is a four-time Sydney Theatre Award winner.

But for many years, Elazzi hid from his parents the fact he was writing plays. By day, he carried out his respectable role as a teacher, then wrote madly into the early hours of the morning.

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“I’d teach during the day and write at night, for hours. I was never exhausted because I was driven to share my stories,” Elazzi tells Broadsheet.

Elazzi grew up in the south-western Sydney areas of Picton and Tahmoor where his parents farmed Lebanese cucumbers. His parents fled Lebanon in 1976 when their seaside village of Jieh was bombed, marking the escalation of the civil war. His mother, an avid theatregoer in pre-war Lebanon, would save up the money to take young Elazzi to the theatre as a treat.

“We only went a handful of times, but I never saw myself on stage or television. And I got to the point where I thought, ‘I don’t see myself on stage, so I’m going to write those characters.’”

Omar and Dawn (performed at KXT in Sydney in 2018, now being adapted to screen) explored culture, sexuality and isolation through the lead character of Omar, a first-generation Lebanese Muslim Australian. Lady Tabouli (at Griffin and National Theatre of Parramatta in 2020) is an unflinching, searingly funny examination of the culture clash in contemporary Australia when Lebanese Australian Danny, desperate to explore his true personality after calling off his engagement, is constrained by his conservative family. Son of Byblos (2022, Belvoir’s 25A Downstairs) follows closeted Adam as he attempts to live up to his father’s expectations, while his mother dreams of a life outside the kitchen.

Reviewing Son of Byblos in Theatre Now, Veronica Hannon wrote: “From my first encounter with Elazzi’s writing … I have felt I was walking through a doorway into my growing years in working-class, migrant-rich, suburban Sydney … it was a refreshing change from other new Australian work where tired clichés often defined such characters.”

Karim is Elazzi’s latest play and his directorial debut, an exploration of the tension between maintaining cultural traditions and embracing one’s true self. It details a father and his son, Joe, struggling to make ends meet, who ultimately get kicked out of their home. A kind neighbour, Abdul, takes them in and teaches Joe to play his Lebanese oud as a potential way out of the poverty cycle.

“It’s about family guilt,” explains Elazzi. “In my family and community, we feel a lot of guilt, especially when we want to move away from those cultural structures we’re born into. You’ve got to succeed, there’s no opportunity to fail. My family has come from a culture that’s been displaced, so in this generation, you’ve got to pull up your socks and be someone, you’ve got to carry the family name and prove you’re a success. That responsibility and pressure is placed on you and if you don’t go down that road, you’re immediately seen as a failure.”

Elazzi has since come clean with his parents, who have surprised him by how proud and supportive they are of his plays – although he is selective about what they see. “I haven’t invited them to a couple of the plays, they’re so personal, there are some things I just don’t want to share with Mum and Dad – the sexual stuff.”

Although Elazzi’s seasons regularly sell out, he is also consistently trolled by those who don’t appreciate the truths he unearths. “I’ve got a lot of hate in the past, people set up fake accounts and send me abusive messages, but it’s so fine. The stuff I write about, I’ve got to have a thick skin.”

Elazzi believes there is a hunger for new Australian stories and highlights Sri Lankan Australian playwright S Shakthidharan’s epic Counting and Cracking, which is enjoying a return sold-out season at Carriageworks in Sydney before touring New York.

“People are hungry to be represented, to see themselves on stage. National Theatre of Parramatta has been incredible in putting untold Australian stories on stage. I applaud them for being so trailblazing,” he says, noting other theatre companies merely aim to tick the diversity box, but typically stick with the tried and true. “To cultivate new audiences, you need to start somewhere. They won’t come immediately, but eventually they will come.”

Karim is showing at Riverside Theatres from July 25 to August 3. From $59.

nationaltheatreofparramatta.com.au/show/karim/