Welcome to the website that accompanies Staging Cultural Encounters! This site chronicles the travels of the the Algerian theater troupe Istijmam on their 2016 US tour. View the play they put on, Apples, written by renowned Algerian playwright Abdelkader Alloula. Read about issues they encountered in cultural translation and cultural exchange in the accompanying book, which also provides links to videos on this site. Istijmam’s US tour was organized by the Center Stage program under the auspices of the US State Department. Author and anthropologist Jane Goodman began working with Istijmam in Algeria in 2008.