Salma Hindy & Danielle Deluty: Parallel
Comedians and friends Salma Hindy & Danielle Deluty explore their parallel upbringings in their respective religious Muslim and Jewish households, and how outgrowing self-righteousness led them to each other today.
Raised in financially secure but emotionally volatile environments, both Salma and Danielle clung to religion for stability. And while their versions of Islam and Judaism explicitly treated women as inferior, both doubled down on their loyalty to their religions out of a desperate desire to belong. Since childhood Salma and Danielle each found joy in the arts and performance, but they learned to shrink the theatrical, expressive parts of themselves to earn the approval of the religious authority figures in their lives.
In Parallel Salma and Danielle reflect on their insufferable self-righteous attitudes as religious teenagers. Obedience and loud enthusiasm for dogma – be it anti-Semitism or anti-Arab Zionism — was how they sought to fit in with their environments. But as they progressed in their educational paths through university and graduate school, Salma studying biomedical engineering and Danielle in law school, it became too difficult to reconcile the clash between their religious practices and their senses of self worth as women.
The pair both found stand-up comedy in their late twenties as they began disengaging from religious life. And in 2022 they met each other at a Brooklyn comedy show. After each performed their set, they gushed to each other “I LOVE your 9/11 joke!” This was the entry point to their first friend date: a two-hour conversation bonding with childlike glee over the shared experiences of growing up indoctrinated to hate each other. Salma and Danielle see themselves in each other’s journeys of self-discovery.
Through finding each other, the two have made the bold choice to choose love over fear.
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Comedy
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$15.00 + $2.00 fee -
18-July 19, 2023 -
55 minutes -
Under St Marks
