Summary
The third scene takes place three months later. Amir is drinking on the terrace when he suddenly smashes his glass on the floor. The burst of violence doesn’t bring down the tension, however, and he goes inside to make another drink. Emily comes home with groceries and reminds Amir that Isaac and Jory are coming over for dinner. She is making pork tenderloin. Emily says she believes it must be good news that Isaac is coming over; he wouldn’t come over to tell her that she wasn’t going to be included in the art show. Emily approaches Amir in an overtly sexual way. He tells her they’ve talked about this, and it doesn’t help. She says she misses him, and he says he knows. After a moment, she says she assumes he forgot to get wine. He says he has, and apologizes.
Emily asks what’s wrong. Amir says he had a meeting with law firm partners Steven and Jack the day before, and they asked him where his parents were born. Amir listed the country as India, because Pakistan was technically still India when his parents were born, before the British “chopped it up into two countries in 1947,” but the partners noticed the cities are no longer in India. Steven wanted to know why Amir was misrepresenting himself, and why he changed his name from Abdullah to Kapoor. Amir says they must have run a background check and suggests it is related to his apparent support of the imam.
The intercom buzzes earlier than expected. Emily goes to get ready while Amir admits the guests, Isaac and Jory—a late-thirties African-American woman described in the stage directions as “commanding, forthright, intelligent. Almost masculine.” Isaac and Amir discuss the basketball teams they support, making superficial small talk. Jory smells the pork tenderloin cooking and Amir confirms with Isaac that he eats pork. Isaac says he has to make up for all the lost years, referring to the years he would have only eaten kosher and thus not eaten pork.
While Isaac is in the bathroom, Jory and Amir casually discuss legal cases. Amir pours straight Scotch for Jory. They discuss how Mort has taken up meditation as a means of losing weight and lowering cholesterol. Amir asks about the job offer from Credit Suisse, which Jory turned down despite an even higher salary offer; she says the partners at their firm are countering with higher pay.
Out of the blue, Amir suggests they could start their own firm: Kapoor, Braithwaite. Amir says Steven and Mort got ahead by undercutting the competition, and Jory says downtown WASPs didn’t want to do mergers and acquisitions. Amir says that’s why Jews did it, eventually making Steven and Mort the establishment. He says, of himself and Jory, that “we are the new Jews.”
Amir says the firm will never be theirs, and Mort and Steven are always going to remind them that they were “just invited to the party.” Jory says she doesn’t think it’s a bad idea. After a beat, she says Amir’s name. However, just then Isaac returns from the bathroom, holding a book. Emily enters as well, looking lovely. The two couples politely discuss the mix-up in the timing of dinner. Amir serves drinks.
Isaac discusses the book he holds, Denial of Death, which he recommended to Emily, and which Amir says Emily has been raving about. Isaac says he got the title for his new show, "Impossible Heroes," from the book. He explains that he chose the title to reflect a movement of young artists who have the impossibly heroic task of making art sacred again after years of consumerism and cynicism. Amir and Jory poke fun at the title, but Isaac asks Emily what she thinks, since it’s her show now as well.
Emily is surprised by Isaac’s reveal, and thanks him for the inclusion. Everyone congratulates her and they raise their glasses in a toast. Amir asks how many paintings will be included and Isaac says he has room to curate four or five. He says he wants the one above the mantle, and he is interested in Study After Velázquez’s Moor, the painting Emily was starting at the beginning of the play. Jory says she hasn’t heard the term “Moor” in a while, and Emily talks about the original to which she is paying homage, adding that she used Amir as her “muse.”
Isaac comments on how the portrait is a stunning tribute to Amir. They discuss Amir’s six-hundred-dollar Charvet shirt, which he wore in the portrait. Isaac likens the shirt to the lace collar Velázquez’s apprentice-slave wore, suggesting that the painting shows Amir in the world he now clearly now belongs to, while also raising questions about Amir’s place in that world. Redirecting the discussion of Emily’s paintings, Amir says he prefers the landscape paintings Emily used to make, which Isaac says he doesn’t like. Isaac thinks a young Western painter drawing on Islamic representation in service of the tradition is an unusual and remarkable statement. Amir asks what the statement is, and Isaac says that Islam is rich and universal, “part of a spiritual and artistic heritage we can all draw from.” Isaac asks Emily what she said in London at the Frieze Art Fair, and she says that the Renaissance is when we turned away from something bigger than ourselves, making a cult out of the personal ego. Emily says the same never happened in the Islamic tradition, which she sees as connected to a wider, less personal perspective. Isaac says he is going to quote her in the catalog.
Analysis
In contrast to the brief and relatively subdued first and second scenes, Scene 3 of Disgraced is long and discomforting, steadily building dramatic tension and complicating the characters’ established relationships to the point of rupture. Akhtar opens the third scene, set three months after the close of Scene 2, by foreshadowing the violent climax the play will reach: As Amir is out on the terrace alone, drinking whiskey and pacing, he suddenly smashes his glass. The violent outburst sets the tone for the rest of the scene, disrupting the otherwise tranquil image of Amir taking in the evening view on the terrace.
Amir smashing his glass also suggests something has gone wrong in his life. Whatever is bothering him also leads him to forget that Isaac and Jory are coming over for dinner that night, of which Emily reminds him. Emily mentions how she assumes Isaac is bringing good news about her inclusion in his Whitney show. In the next moment, she approaches Amir in a suggestive way, which leads him to reproach her, reminding her that her advances don’t help. Emily replies that she misses him. The exchange stands in contrast to the flirtatious manner the couple showed in Scene 1. Through the couple’s coded language, Akhtar reveals, however cryptically, that there has been an interruption in Emily and Amir’s sex life, and it is Amir who is unwilling or unable to engage with Emily as he used to. The detail contributes to the sense that something is troubling Amir.
Emily picks up on Amir’s mood and asks what is wrong, prompting Amir to admit that Steven and Jack, partners at his legal firm, have been asking questions about Amir’s background. Touching on the themes of Islamophobia, duplicity, and Muslim-American identity, Amir reveals to Emily that he claimed both his parents were born in India, not Pakistan. Further, the partners questioned him about why he changed his surname from Abdullah. Amir implies that the intentional obscuring of his Muslim background has come off as conspicuous to his bosses, who have grown to suspect him after he—and the law firm, by extension—was shown in the Times supporting a man accused of funding terrorism.
Amir and Emily have to end their discussion of Amir’s concern about his career when Jory and Isaac arrive earlier than expected. While making small talk with the couple, Amir confirms that Isaac eats pork despite having been raised to keep kosher. The seemingly innocuous line reveals to the audience Isaac’s Jewish background and foreshadows some of the arguments Amir will make later in the scene as the men’s mutual hostility grows. When Isaac is off stage, Amir and Jory discuss their work at the law firm, and Credit Suisse’s attempt to hire Jory. Akhtar turns the seemingly benign conversation into something more tense when he brings in the theme of the place of minorities by having Amir propose that he and Jory strike out on their own and create a new firm. Amir argues that the Jewish men who run their firm will never allow a black woman and a South Asian man—“the new Jews,” according to Amir—to have an equal share of the power that comes with making partner. Jory says Amir’s name in a serious way that suggests she is about to deliver some vital piece of information. But before she can speak, her husband re-enters the room. Akhtar adds this moment of foreshadowing to the many others established in the scene, leaving the audience to wonder what Jory was going to say.
Akhtar answers one expectation early in the scene when Isaac reveals to Emily that he is including her in his show. The two couples toast to her success, and the tension of the scene is temporarily alleviated. However, the cessation in tension is undermined by the four characters’ discussion of Emily’s portrait of Amir, Study After Velázquez’s Moor. Jory says she hasn’t heard the term “Moor” in a while, implying that it is provocative for Emily to use such an antiquated and potentially offensive term. Amir jokes that he is her personal Moor, and Emily, in her defense, twists the term, preferring to consider him her “muse.” While the comment can be taken as a joke, Emily’s words nonetheless evoke Isaac’s suggestion that Emily will be viewed as an orientalist, particularly given that she has a South Asian husband.
Isaac contributes to the discomfort of the moment as well: feigning praise for Emily’s portrait, Isaac suggests that people will question Amir’s “place,” by which he means a Pakistani-Muslim–descended man’s suitability to wear six-hundred-dollar shirts in an Upper East Side apartment. With this subtly aggressive comment, Isaac compares 17th-century viewers of Portrait of Juan de Pareja who might have questioned the image of a slave wearing a lace collar to contemporary Americans whose Islamophobia leads them to see the image of an affluent American-born South Asian man as unnatural.
