James Rasheed’s new play, “Professional Skepticism,” will make its off-Broadway debut in late June.
The play, directed by Kareem Fahmy, will run from June 28 to July 15 in New York, in a Zootopia Theatre Company production.
The dark comedy has already had successful productions in Boston and Charleston, S.C. The play centers on four auditors at a Big Five CPA firm in Charleston, and their daily struggle to survive in business while keeping their morals intact. Rasheed's tale, which revolves around an audit scandal that threatens to change the characters into headline-generating personalities, was actually written before a series of accounting scandals enveloped Enron, Worldcom and Arthur Andersen.
The play’s plot follows the characters’ reactions after fraud is discovered in the statements of a major client and the audit team's senior accountants try to finesse the situation, sidestepping the issues and humiliating the junior staff in the process.
Before earning a graduate degree in playwriting from Brandeis University in
1999, Rasheed actually worked in the accounting profession -- first as an auditor for a Big Eight accounting firm and then as a controller of a medical corporation. Rasheed, 40, is now employed as a bank auditor.
The play is being staged at the Dorothy Strelsin Theatre at the Abingdon Theatre Arts Complex. Information about tickets and show times is available at
A musical based on the Enron saga has already been performed in Houston, while Leonardo DiCaprio will reportedly star in a fictional take on the company's internal unraveling.
