About the Play:

The Invisible Hand is a full-length drama by Ayad Akhtar. An American banker has been taken hostage by an isolated militant group in Pakistan. When his ransom goes unpaid, his only hope is to trade on his expertise in international finance to earn his way to freedom. In an unsteady landscape of power and control, The Invisible Hand is a geo-political thriller that asks, just how free is the free market?

The Invisible Hand a provocative drama about how fanatical devotion – whether it's to the scripture or to the dollar – can often lead to devastating consequences. American banker Nick Bright finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time when an Islamist militant group kidnaps him in Pakistan. With no one negotiating his release, he agrees to an unusual plan. Nick offers to use his skills as a trader to raise the $10 million ransom on his own by teaching his quick-tempered captor Bashir how to manipulate the "Invisible Hand" of the market and master the world international finance. While Nick and Bashir clash over their worldviews, Bashir proves to be an adept student of capitalism. In a race against the clock to save his own life, taut scenarios unfold as Nick works to earn his release while unwittingly handing the tools for financial chaos and political vindication to his captors. Who will decide his fate? His captors, or the whims of the market? This suspenseful play is a chilling and complex look at how far we will go to save ourselves and the devastating ramifications of our individual actions on global power and politics.

The Invisible Hand received its world premiere in 2014 at the New York Theatre Workshop and received an OBIE Award for playwriting and won the Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award. Its UK premiere was in 2016 at the Tricycle Theatre in London. It is currently being produced around the world.

Cast: 4 male

What people say:

"Like [his] sizzling drama Disgraced, Mr. Akhtar's shrewd play [The Invisible Hand] raises probing questions about the roots of the Islamic terrorism that has rattled the world for the last decade and more…[It] makes a forceful point about the seemingly ineradicable terrorism roiling the Middle East. Inspired though it may be by religious ideology, it is necessarily fueled, like most other movements that drive cultural change, by the brute power of money." — The New York Times

"The Invisible Hand is far more politically provocative [than Disgraced], opening as it does in a Pakistani prison where an American banker is being held for ransom. Confounding initial indications, the play is not a captive narrative about pain and torture but a scary (and dreadfully funny) treatise on the universality of human greed." — Variety

"The Invisible Hand is a hand-wringing, throat-clenching thriller that rarely lets up over the course of two hours…your focus is kept on the interplay of ideology and plot development, which is Akhtar's wheelhouse." — New York Magazine

"[A] tense, provocative thriller about the unholy nexus of international terrorism and big bucks…." — Seattle Times

"Ahktar again turns hypersensitive subjects into thought-provoking and thoughtful drama." — Newsday

"The prime theme is pulsing and alive: when human lives become just one more commodity to be traded, blood eventually flows in the streets." — Financial Times

"Whip-smart and twisty." — Time Out New York

About the Playwright:

Ayad Akhtar is a Pakistani American playwright, novelist, screenwriter who was born in New York City and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is a graduate of Brown and Columbia Universities with degrees in Theater and Film Directing. His play Disgraced won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He is also the recipient of an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, two OBIE Awards, a Jeff Award, and the Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award.