NO PLACE | لا مكان

Welcome to the NO PLACE | لا مكان Radio Play Series 

a new platform for Palestinian playwrights to explore contemporary themes through an historic medium of performance, brought to you by the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University and the A.M. Qattan Foundation

 
 
 
 

Another Swimmer / عائم
By Khawla Ibraheem
English version edited by A. George Bajalia
Directed by Khawla Ibraheem

 
 
 
 

Arabic Cast
Ameena Adileh
Adam Bakri
Mohammad Bakri
Reem Talhami

 

English Cast
Ameena Adileh
Adam Bakri
Mohammad Bakri
Reem Talhami

Music by
Rami Nakhleh

A kid who asks too much / طفلٌ كثير السؤال
By Bashar Murkus
Translated by Lore Baeten
Directed by Fidaa Zidan

 
 
 
 

Arabic Cast
Akheel Abu Saleh
Motaz Malhees

 

English Cast
Akheel Abu Saleh
Osh Ashruf

Music by
Thaier Bashir

The Last Machine / آخر زمن
By Ismail Khalidi
Translated by Shadi Rohana
Directed by Ismail Khalidi and Aliya Khalidi

 
 
 
 

Arabic Cast
Aliya Khalidi
Dima Matta
Mira Sidawi
Hadi Tabbal

 

English Cast
Yasmine Al Massri
Aliya Khalidi
Dima Matta
Hadi Tabbal

Dialect Coach
Awad H. Awad

The NO PLACE / LA MAKAN Production Team
Executive Producer: Tom Casserly
Produced and Edited by: Paola Cossermelli Messina 
General Manager: Simone Rutkowitz
Production Stage Manager: Fouad Hassan
Theme Music by: Desert Kites
Graphic Design: Nasreen Abd Elal
Artistic Advisers: Selma Dabbagh and Ahmed Masoud


Special Thanks
Nadia Abu El-Haj, Mahmoud Abu Hashhash, A. George Bajalia, Carol Becker, Brian Boyd, Layla Faraj, Eileen Gillooly, Lina Haramy, Ismail Khalidi, Scott RC Levy, Geoffrey Mustafa Lokke, Brinkley Messick, Nisreen Naffa, Peter Richards, Lamis Shalaldeh, Dalia Taha

 
 
 

ABOUT NO PLACE | لا مكان

 
 
 

RELATED PUBLIC PROGRAMMING

 
 
 
 
 
 

NO PLACE | LA MAKAN | لا مكان is a project of the Center for Palestine Studies produced in partnership with the A. M. Qattan Foundation, with support from Taawon, The Tides Foundation, and the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University.

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NO PLACE: Live on Stage!

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An evening of staged readings and a talkback with the NO PLACE / LA MAKAN playwrights!

CPS developed the NO PLACE / LA MAKAN theatre initiative to provide the opportunity for playwrights to develop a new work within a community of actors, directors, dramaturgs, scholars, and the other writers. The commissioned playwrights are: Khawla Ibraheem (London-Jenin), Ismail Khalidi (Tennis at Nablus, Returning to Haifa), and Bashar Murkus (The Museum, Hash). Collectively, these writers have had works produced on some of the world’s leading stages, including the Public Theatre (New York), the Young Vic (London), and the Tokyo International Festival, as well as residencies with the Sundance Institute Theatre Lab and the MacDowell Colony. The NO PLACE / LA MAKAN initiative will culminate in two fully-realized radio productions of each play (one in Arabic and one in English), translated, directed, performed, and recorded by professional theatre artists and radio producers.

The staged readings, copresented by Columbia’s School of the Arts and the Middle East Institute, will preview the English language versions of each play.

PLAYS
Another Swimmer by Khawla Ibraheem
English script edited by A. George Bajalia

Cast

Arash Mokhtar
Sherz Aletaha
Timur Kocak
Nicole Ansari 

The Last Machine by Ismail Khalidi
Translated from English by Shadi Rohana

Cast

Nicole Ansari 
Najla Said 
Sherz Aletaha 
Timur Kocak 
Hamzeh Okab

A kid who asks too much by Bashar Murkus
Translated from Arabic by Lore Baeten

Cast

Arash Mokhtar 
Hamzeh Okab 

NO PLACE / LA MAKAN: Live on Stage Production Credits

Ismail Khalidi — Director
Tom Casserly — Executive Producer
Fouad Hassan — Production Stage Manager
Calder Singer — Production Manager

PLAYWRIGHTS

KHAWLA IBRAHEEM is a Syrian/ Palestinian theatre artist born and raised in Majdal Shams – the occupied Golan Heights. She is an actress, playwright, and director. In 2004, a group for youngsters, Khawla among them, led by the Syrian writer Mutaz Abu Saleh, started a small theatre in the village: “O’eon” (eyes). She later graduated from Haifa University with honors in Theatre Studies. Khawla started her career as an actress with theatres in Palestine. She has starred in plays such as, A Parallel Timeline by Bashar Murkus, Servant of Two Masters by Carlo Goldoni, The Whole Story and Summer Time by Ameer Hlehel, The Bride and the Butterfly Hunter by Nisim Aloni, Winter Funeral by Hanoch Levin, Sarita by Maria Irene Frone, and The Publisher by Ameer Hlehel. She wrote and directed two shows for the National Palestinian Theatre: a musical for all ages called The Story Keeper and Soon to be Gone, a show that tells the story of the Druze Syrian community in the occupied Golan Heights. Khawla also wrote and directed several plays as a member of the Family of the Freedom Theatre, including London-Jenin. Khawla was in residence with the Sundance Institute Theatre Lab (2019) and the MacDowell Colony (2020).

BASHAR MURKUS is a theatre creator from Palestine - he lives and creates in Haifa, and is the artistic director of Khashabi Theatre which he, together with a group of Palestinian Artists, founded in 2011. Khashabi is a completely independent Palestinain theatre in the city of Haifa founded as the artists’ collective Khashabi Ensemble. In 2015 it achieved a physical space in the Wadi Salib neighborhood that was emptied from the majority of its original inhabitants 1948. Khashabi is working towards a Palestinian society that freely practices art and creativity as a natural right, and strives to renew its cultural identity by placing independent culture front and centre. Over the years, Bashar Murkus and Khashabi Theatre gained popularity in Europe and have performed in major festivals and venues such as Festival d'Avignon, Romaeuropa Festival, Theatre de la Ville Paris etc. 

ISMAIL KHALIDI is a playwright, screenwriter and theater director. His plays include Truth Serum Blues (Pangea World Theater ‘05), Tennis in Nablus (Alliance Theatre ‘10), Foot (Teatro Amal ‘16), Sabra Falling (Pangea ‘17) and Dead Are My People (Noor Theatre ’18). He has co-adapted two novels for the stage with Naomi Wallace; Ghassan Kanafani’s Returning to Haifa (Finborough Theatre ‘18) and Sinan Antoon’s The Corpse Washer (Actors Theatre of Louisville ‘19). Khalidi’s work has been included in numerous anthologies and he co-edited, also with Ms. Wallace, Inside/Outside: Six Plays from Palestine and the Diaspora (TCG ‘15). His writing has been featured in American Theatre Magazine, The Kenyon Review, The Nation, Mizna, Guernica, Al Jazeera and The Dramatist. Khalidi holds an MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. He is currently a Directing Fellow at Pangea World Theater.

TALKBACK MODERATOR
JEAN HOWARD is the George Delacorte Professor in the Humanities in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. At Columbia she has received the Faculty Mentoring Award in 2006 and the Presidential Teaching Award in 2020; she has also received Guggenheim, NEH, Mellon, Folger, Huntington, and Newberry Library Fellowships. In 2010 she gave the Columbia University Schoff Memorial Lectures on 'Staging History: Imagining the Nation' on playwrights William Shakespeare, Tony Kushner, and Caryl Churchill. Her teaching interests include Shakespeare, Tudor and Stuart drama, Early Modern poetry, modern drama, feminist and Marxist theory, and the history of feminism. She is on the editorial board of Shakespeare Studies and Renaissance Drama. She has published essays on Shakespeare, Pope, Ford, Heywood, Dekker, Marston, and Jonson, as well as on aspects of contemporary critical theory including new historicism, Marxism, and issues in feminism.

NO PLACE | LA MAKAN is a project of the Center for Palestine Studies. The radio plays were produced in partnership with the A. M. Qattan Foundation, with support from Taawon, The Tides Foundation, and the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University. For more info about the NO PLACE | LA MAKAN initiative click here.

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Returning to Haifa

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Returning to Haifa


In 1948, Palestinian couple Said and Safiyya fled their home during the Nakba. Now, in the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War, the borders are open for the first time in twenty years, and the couple dare to return back to their home in Haifa. They are prepared – of course – to find someone else living where they once did. Yet nothing could prepare Said and Safyya for the encounter they both desire and dread.

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There is a Field

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March 28 & March 29, 2016
World Room, Columbia Journalism School
2950 Broadway New York, NY, 10027

 
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THERE IS A FIELD, a new play by Jen Marlowe, is a play about Aseel Asleh, a 17-year old Palestinian citizen of Israel killed by police in October 2000. Based on interviews and primary sources collected over fourteen years, the play offers a uniquely personal lens for understanding inequality as the root of state violence and impunity.

This two-night run of the play was part of a larger Land Day Tour, across 20 U.S. universities, to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Land Day, a commemoration every March 30th since 1976 of Palestinian land expropriated by Israel.

Post-play discussions offered audiences an opportunity to further explore the themes surfaced in the play.

Discussions were guided by Jen Marlowe, playwright, Thenjiwe McHarris, co-founder, BlackBird, and Nadia Ben-Youssef, US Representative of Adalah - The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel.

Adalah represented Aseel's family and the families of the 12 other Palestinians killed inside Israel during the October 2000 events.

ABOUT THE PLAY

 

As the Second Intifada erupted in the West Bank and Gaza, demonstrations also began in Palestinian villages and towns inside Israel. In October 2000, Israeli forces killed twelve unarmed Palestinian citizens of Israel in these demonstrations. The youngest of those killed was a 17-year old boy named Aseel Asleh. There Is A Field, written by Jen Marlowe, is a play about Aseel's life and his killing, through the perspective of his older sister, Nardeen. Through Nardeen's struggle to cope with the murder of her brother, the play also addresses the larger struggle facing Palestinians inside Israel.

 

Directed by: Noelle Ghoussaini 
Written/Produced by: Jen Marlowe
Assistant Director/Stage Manager: Sarah Jane Schostack
Dramaturg: Deepa Purohit
Cast (alphabetical): Caitlin Nasema Cassidy, Alan Ceppos, Gamze Ceylan, Jackson Goldberg, Amel Khalil, Kesav Wable
Costumes by: Ari Fulton
Set Consultant: You-Shin Chen

COSPONSORS

African American Policy Forum
The Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies

 

Open to the public
$10-20 suggested donation

 
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Inside/Outside: Six Plays from Palestine and the Diaspora

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Wednesday, October 7, 2015
5:30 PM 7:30 PM

A Celebration of Inside/Outside: Six Plays from Palestine and the Diaspora with Naomi Wallace and Ismail Khalidi

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Join CPS and The Theatre Communications Group (TCG) as they celebrate TCG's publication of Inside/Outside: Six Plays from Palestine and the Diaspora. The first collection of its kind, Inside/Outside brings together work by six dynamic Palestinian playwrights from both occupied Palestine and the Diaspora. This anthology is a vital contribution to world theatre, introducing six politically, socially, and culturally relevant plays by Palestinian authors. The event will include a discussion of the anthology with the book's editors Naomi Wallace and Ismail Khalidi, as well as selected readings by talented performers.

Naomi Wallace is an Obie award-winning playwright. Her plays have been produced in the UK, the U.S. and the Middle East, and include In the Heart of America, Slaughter City, One Flea Spare, The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, Things of Dry Hours, The Fever Chart: Three Visions of the Middle East, And I and Silence, The Hard Weather Boating Party, The Liquid Plain. In 2009, One Flea Spare was incorporated in the permanent repertoire of the French National Theater. In 2015 Wallace received an Arts and Letters Award in Literature.

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Ismail Khalidi is a Palestinian-American writer. His plays include Truth Serum Blues (Pangea World Theater, '05), Foot, Tennis in Nablus (Alliance Theater, '10), and Sabra Falling. His writing has been published in Mizna, Guernica, the Nation, American Theatre, the Daily Beast and ReMezcla.

Khalidi curated the Center for Palestine Studies staged reading series "Permission to Narrate: Three Nights of Palestinian Plays" in March 2015.

COSPONSORS

 

Theatre Communications Group (TCG)

For any questions please email atroiano@tcg.org

Free and open to the public.

Wednesday October 7, 2015
5:30 - 7:30 PM
The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre
at The Pershing Square Signature Center
480 W. 42nd Street
New York, NY
10036


Refreshments will be served.

 
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Tennis in Nablus

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Thursday, October 4, 2012
6:30 PM 8:30 PM

 
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A staged reading of Tennis in Nablus, written by playwright and poet Ismail Khalidi. Moderated by Peter Goodman.

This "tragipoliticomedy" was nominated for a Suzi Bass Award for Best New Play and awarded the Quest for Peace Award from the Kennedy Center.

SUMMARY

Set in Nablus in the spring of 1939, Tennis in Nablus, brings to life the last days of the Arab Revolt as the people of Palestine attempt for one last time to drive out the British. With both deep passion and bold comedy, it is a genre bending look at Palestine's embattled status through the eyes of Yusef, an unflagging rebel, his wife, Anbara who is an indefatigable writer of anti-colonial tracts and his ambitious young nephew, Tariq. As their world ignites absurdly around them, this divided family faces their own demons as they seek to achieve peace and freedom with dignity.

COSPONSORS

Columbia University School of the Arts
The Heyman Center for Humanities
Middle East Institute
Alwan for the Arts

 

Thursday, October 4, 2012
6:30 PM 8:30 PM
Miller Theater, 116 Street & Broadway

 
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Permission to Narrate: Three Nights of Palestinian Plays

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March 25-27, 2015

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The Center for Palestine Studies invites you to staged readings of three plays that embody the contemporary Palestinian playwright's use of art to resist historical, political and geographic erasures.

This festival is curated by playwright Ismail Khalidi, co-editor of an upcoming anthology of plays entitled of Inside/Outside: Six Plays from Palestine and the Diaspora. A landmark collection in the field of Palestinian theater, Inside/Outside features an introduction by noted writer, poet and adjunct Columbia University faculty member, Nathalie Handal, and is co-edited by award-winning playwright Naomi Wallace.

Wednesday March 25, 7:30 PM
I am Yusuf and This is My Brother
By Amir Nizar Zuabi
Directed by Noelle Ghoussaini

It is the eve of Partition in the village of Baissamoon. Yusuf and Ali are brothers whose lives - like the lives of those around them - are soon interrupted by the chaos of 1948 and the tragedy that will haunt them long into the future.

Thursday March 26, 7:30PM
Land/Fill
By Dalia Taha
Directed by Ismail Khalidi

Mariam returns with her son Jawwad to reclaim land in the town where she grew up. But once there, she is faced with the bizarre changes that have occurred and those that are yet to come. A story about the erasure of memory and landscape, Land/Fill explores the ways in which the buried past manages to seep through, out, and up into the present.

603
By Imad Farajin
Directed by Jo Bonney

603 brings us to the core of the Israeli justice system where we meet Palestinian prisoners Mosquito, Boxman, Slap and Snake as they cope with incarceration and the uncertainty of when, if ever, they will be released.

COSPONSORS

Office of the University Chaplain
Columbia School of the Arts
Columbia Department of English
Heyman Center for the Humanities
Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race
Institute for Comparative Literature and Society
Middle East Institute
Noor Theatre

 

Free and open to the public.
Please RSVP to palestine@columbia.edu

The event will be accessible. There is a wheelchair lift that will be operated by a designated Columbia faculty representative.

March 25, 26, and 27, 2015, 7:30PM
Earl Hall Theater
2980 Broadway
Columbia University

 
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The Strangest

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A staged reading by Betty Shamieh followed by discussion with James Schamus

Wednesday, February 27, 2013
6:30 PM 8:30 PM

Midway through Camus's classic The Stranger, an unnamed Arab is killed. Leaping from this moment and working backwards through possible histories of tangled romance, ethnic conflict, and random violence, playwright Betty Shamieh has crafted a new play inspired by this unknown character. Infused with elements of Middle Eastern oral storytelling traditions and dance, The Strangest is an absurdist murder mystery about two Algerian brothers who vie for the love of the same woman. Their bitter rivalry ends with one brother being inexplicably gunned down by a French stranger.

Following the reading, the writer and director will be joined in discussion by moderator James Schamus.

PLAYWRIGHT

Betty Shamieh, Playwright: Shamieh is a playwright, author, screenwriter, and actress. She is the author of fifteen plays. As a playwright, her off-Broadway premieres are The Black Eyed (New York Theatre Workshop) and Roar (The New Group), which was selected as a New York Times Critics Pick and is currently being taught at universities throughout the United States.

DIRECTOR

May Adrales, Director: Adrales is a freelance director based in New York city, working primarily with new plays and new play development. She helmed the world premieres of Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them at Actors Theater of Louisville, Mary at The Goodman Theatre and In This House at Two River Theater Company. Recent and upcoming Productions include Katori Hall's Whaddabloodclot(Williamstown Theater Festival); Katori Hall's The Mountaintop (Milwaukee Rep); Stefanie Zadrevec'sElectric Baby (Two River Theater) and David Henry Hwang's Dance and the Railroad (Signature Theater).

MODERATOR

James Schamus, Professor of Professional Practice, Columbia University & CEO, Focus Features: Schamus is an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, producer, and film executive. His long collaboration as writer and producer for Ang Lee has resulted in eleven films, including Brokeback Mountain; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; The Ice Storm; The Wedding Banquet; The Hulk; Taking Woodstock and Lust, Caution. As CEO of Focus Features, Schamus oversees the finance, production, and distribution of numerous films, including Oscar winners Milk, The Pianist, Lost in Translation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Schamus has also produced or executive-produced many of the most important American independent films of the past decade (among them Safe and The Brothers McMullen), including four Grand Prize winners at the Sundance Film Festival. He is also a widely published film historian and theorist.

COSPONSORS

Heyman Center for the Humanities
School of the Arts
Noor Theatre
Alwan for the Arts

 

Miller Theater, Columbia University

RSVP Suggested:
http://fs3.formsite.com/soaweb/form31/index.html

Free and open to the public. First come, first seated.

For more information please visit: http://heymancenter.org/events/the-strangesta-staged-reading/