CORRECTION: This story about the play Inana at the Denver Center Theatre Company should have said it closes Feb. 28.

Working in a post-9/11 world is a blessing and a curse for Arab-American actors. There is more work than ever, but more than ever, the roles available are terrorists. Suicide bombers. Insurgents. Religious fanatics.

It's enough to give a guy a complex.

Along comes Inana, a play written by the not-Arab Michele Lowe, in which the principal characters are not only Iraqis, but Iraqis of a type we almost never see in American culture. They aren't destitute, fundamentalists or terrorists. They don't even have accents.

Rather, Lowe has written about Iraq in the weeks before the American invasion, when a museum curator, Darius (Piter Marek), anticipates the looting and destruction of antiquities. In response, he steals away to London to protect a sculpture of Inana, the Sumerian goddess of sex and war.

"We're breaking the mold with this one," said Laith Nakli, who plays a bookseller.

Marek agrees: "The type of play that Michele has written, it's a love story," he said. "It is universal, which I think makes it quite different. She takes us to a place we think we know so much about, but in truth we know very little."

None of the actors is Iraqi, although Alok Tewari, of Indian descent, lived in Iraq during the 1980s. All are American, although all came here along different routes: from Lebanon, from Egypt, from Syria.

They're divided on how important it is to have actual Middle Easterners playing these characters.

"I do think that when you are from the region, any good actor can really immerse themselves in these roles," Nakli said. "You can subconsciously bring a layer that no one else will bring."

At the audition, most of them went in with Arab accents (not part of their regular speech patterns), accustomed, as they joke, to beginning every audition with the question, "Accent or no accent?" This time, they were told "No accent." The point was not exoticism.

"I think that's part of the problem that this play is trying to solve," said Nasser (Al) Faris. "This differentiation in America is part of the core of the problem. It plays into a way of being that the Western world has been playing into since colonial times."

And though work is available, each has had to reconcile what role he will do without betraying himself. For Nakli and Faris, that has meant turning down lucrative work. For Nakli and Marek, it comes out through creating their own work, such as the New York Arab-American Comedy Festival.

"Regardless of where that attention is coming from, some of it is a genuine curiosity," Marek said, "but something like the festival is what we're doing as artists, how we choose to respond to it."

"It's a double-edged sword," Nakli added. "Stories about the Middle East are hot now, they're in the limelight. As an actor, you think, 'It's good, I'm in a tough business and it's getting a little easier.' "

Several of them, earlier in their careers, took on roles they would no longer accept. "Two or three years ago I just decided that I didn't want to do those kinds of parts," Faris said. "I used to be very politically active before I became an actor. One night I was watching the news and I realized I was doing absolutely nothing about what was going on, as an individual. I called my manager and said I didn't want to do any more stereotyped roles."

Artistically, that can be as limiting as it is politically freeing.

"I love playing evil people, but when it represents an entire culture it becomes very difficult," he said. "I have no problem being a character where violence is perpetrated and a sense of struggle is expressed. There's a struggle there. These people have lives."

All point to Lowe as creator of a play expressing the humanity and struggle of a segment of a people.

"I think it boils down to the author," said Tewari. "She took a vision of the Middle East that has to do with war, but it's very different. For somebody to think out of the box, it takes a lot of vision."

bornsteinl@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5101

Inana

* When and where: Now in previews; opens Thursday. Through Feb. 28 in the Ricketson Theatre of the Denver Performing Arts Complex, Speer Boulevard and Arapahoe Street

* Cost: $25 and up

* Information: 303-893-4100

Who's who

* PITER MAREK

Plays Darius, a museum curator in Mosul, Iraq, who on the eve of the U.S. invasion sneaks a relic out of the country to protect it

* ALOK TEWARI

Plays the curator's assistant in Iraq; also, a messenger in London

* NASSER (AL) FARIS

Plays Darius' father-in-law, a sculptor in Mosul

* LAITH NAKLI

Plays a friend of Darius who owns a bookshop and is tortured for his wares, such as a book with a Titian sketch of a naked baby

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