NO PLACE | لا مكان Radio Play Initiative

 

NO PLACE | لا مكان is a platform for Palestinian playwrights to explore contemporary themes through an historic medium of performance — radio. For the inaugural 2021-2022 season, four plays have been commissioned from artists based in Palestine and in the diaspora, each of which will receive two world premieres in the form of dedicated Arabic and English productions.

 
 
 

The 2021-2022 commissioned playwrights are: Khawla Ibraheem (London-Jenin), Ismail Khalidi (Tennis at Nablus, Returning to Haifa), Bashar Murkus (The Museum, Hash), and Dalia Taha (Graduation, Fireworks). 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), the Royal Court Theatre (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 program will provide the opportunity for playwrights to develop their new work within a community of actors, directors, dramaturgs, scholars, and the other writers in their cohort. The writers will be joined by Artistic Advisors Selma Dabbagh (The Brick, BBC Radio 4; Sleep It Off, Dr. Schott, WDR Radio Germany) and Ahmed Masoud (Escape from Gaza, BBC Radio 4; Application 39, WDR Radio Germany), who will support the artists in crafting their pieces for radio.

The artists and production team will also take part in capacity building exercises to broaden this program’s impact on up-and-coming professionals in the Palestinian arts community. 

The program culminates 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. This production process will take place simultaneously at Columbia University in New York City as well as at Al-Qattan Cultural Centre in Ramallah, Palestine. The plays will be broadcast in 2022 as part of a month-long festival celebrating this work, alongside conversations, interviews, and events exploring the work’s conception and the lived realities out of which it was born. The recordings will be archived on the Center for Palestine Studies website, released as part of an ongoing podcast series, and broadcast worldwide on WKCR 89.9 FM, Columbia University’s radio station, as well as through partners in Palestine and around the world.

Dr. Brinkley M. Messick, Director of the Columbia University Middle East Institute, says “CPS Stage is excited to bring Palestinian theatrical imaginations to world listeners with NO PLACE/ LA MAKAN.” 

Mahmoud Abuhashhash, Director of the Culture and Education Programme at the Qattan Foundation adds “This project will contribute to providing the Palestinian Theatre movement with new expertise and knowledges that will encourage the production of this theatrical form that has a tremendous ability to reach out to new audiences overcoming all form of borders and barriers in Palestine and worldwide.”

NO PLACE | LA MAKAN 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. The program is led by a committee of academic and arts professionals including Dr. Brinkley M. Messick (Professor, Columbia University), Dr. A. George Bajalia (Assistant Professor, Wesleyan University), Kate C Wilson (Adjunct Professor, City University of New York) Geoffrey Mustafa Lokke (Ph.D Candidate, Columbia University Theatre and Performance), Simone Ilana Rutkowitz (Program Manager, Columbia University Center for Palestine Studies), and Executive Producer Tom Casserly. Paola Cossermelli Messina joins the team as the 2021-22 Public Humanities Radio Play Fellow and brings experience as a sound designer and audio engineer.

ABOUT CPS STAGE
Founded at Columbia University in 2010, and honoring the legacy of Edward Said, the Center for Palestine Studies remains the only such dedicated academic center in the United States. In 2020-21, the Center celebrates the completion of its first decade, which has been marked by academic excellence and world-renown public programs. The arts are pillars of the Center’s programming, which includes both a vibrant film series and an ongoing theater initiative.

The Center launched its CPS Stage program in 2012 with a staged reading of Ismail Khalidi’s play Tennis in Nablus at Columbia’s Miller Theater. This was followed by the programs Permission to Narrate (March 2015), with new works by Amir Nizar Zuabi, Dalia Taha, and Imad Farajin, Inside/Outside (October 2015), coinciding with the launch of the play collection by the same name, Break the Wall (November 2017), and most recently Returning to Haifa (October 2019).

ABOUT THE A.M. QATTAN FOUNDATION
The A.M. Qattan Foundation (AMQF) is an independent, not-for-profit developmental organization working in the fields of culture and education, with a particular focus on children, teachers and young artists.

Founded and registered in 1993 in the UK as a charity and as a charitable company limited by guarantee, it has had a branch in Palestine, registered as a non-profit organization, since 1998. The Foundation’s operations are mainly in Palestine, with additional activity in the United Kingdom through The Mosaic Rooms. The Foundation’s mission is to achieve a dynamic cultural environment conducive to the production of emancipatory thought and knowledge, with a vision toward a just, free, enlightened, and tolerant society with an active global presence, one that embraces dialogue and produces knowledge, art and literature.

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, and the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University.

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Launch of the NO PLACE | لا مكان Radio Play Series!

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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 Nakhlah

 
 

A kid who asks too much / طفلٌ كثيرالسؤال
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 | لا مكان 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

NO PLACE | لا مكان is a project of the Center for Palestine Studies produced in partnership with the A. M. Qattan Foundation, with support from Taawon, and the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University. Learn more about the development of the project here.

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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.

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 CHAIR
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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Producing for Radio

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A conversation with Paola Cossermelli Messina and Scott RC Levy, two practitioners at the intersection of theatre and sound arts, about what it means to tell stories for radio, from design to production.

From arts professionals looking to expand to a new medium to arts aficionados interested in hearing how radio plays are made, this seminar, discussion, and Q+A will provide an opportunity for everyone to learn something new.

Speakers
Paola Cossermelli Messina is a PhD candidate in Ethnomusicology at Columbia University in the early stages of her dissertation exploring music, identity and diaspora in and between Lebanon and Brazil. She holds a B.A. in Music and Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and an M.A. in Media Studies from The New School, with a specialization in sound. Her Master's thesis on the oral histories of Iranian women musicians was awarded a Middle East Studies Association's Graduate Student Paper Prize in 2016. Her most recent thesis and project, an experimental ethnography on a jukebox in a lesbian bar, was presented at Harvard's 2021 Graduate Music Forum. A sound designer and audio engineer by trade, she has worked in film and podcasts, and for the past 5 years has produced and edited the Arab Studies Institute's podcast الوضع. She teaches audio workshops at Sarah Lawrence College and, prior to pursuing her PhD, was the Project Manager for CUNY-Creative Arts Team's program Sound Thinking NYC, a free summer intensive for NYC high schoolers interested in careers in music production and audio engineering. She has been a Mason Endowed Fellow (2020-21) and was selected by the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities and the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University as the 2021-22 Public Humanities Radio Play Fellow.

Scott RC Levy is an award-winning and acclaimed artistic director, producer, director, actor and educator. He is currently the Executive Director of Green Box Arts in Green Mountain Falls. He served as the Producing Artistic Director of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center Theatre Company for 10 seasons. For his work at the FAC, Levy was awarded multiple Henry Awards (including Best Season of a Theatre Company in Colorado), Pikes Peak Arts Council Awards, and other national recognitions. Before moving to Colorado in 2011, Levy was the Producing Artistic Director of the Penobscot Theatre in Maine. Additionally, he has produced, directed and/or performed on, off and off-off Broadway, for the New York International Fringe Festival, at Shakespeare’s Globe in London, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland, and in over 60 cities across North America. He has taught for several institutions including: University of Colorado, New York University, the Playwrights Horizons Theater School, the Guggenheim Museum and the University of Maine. Levy holds a BFA in Acting and a Master’s in Educational Theatre, both from New York University. He is a member of Actor’s Equity Association, and serves on the boards of the Cultural Office of the Pikes Peak Region and the Colorado Theatre Guild.

Moderator
Tom Casserly is a New York-based theatre producer and current MIA Candidate at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. He is the Executive Producer of the Center’s NO PLACE | LA MAKAN | لا مكان program and the co-founder of the annual Youmein Creative Media Festival in Tangier, Morocco.

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, and the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University.

 
 
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Writing for Radio

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A conversation with two celebrated Palestinian writers, Selma Dabbagh and Ahmed Masoud, about what it means to write for radio and their experiences writing in, about, and outside of Palestine. Opening remarks by Brinkley Messick. Q&A session moderated by A. George Bajalia.

This event on 08 July 2021 opened the Center’s NO PLACE | LA MAKAN | لا مكان program, which will commission, develop, produce, and distribute four new radio plays by Palestinian playwrights in 2021-2022. A series of ancillary events will build skills in writing and producing within the audio medium and be open to the public.

Radio Plays in Palestine
In the late 1940s, the Palestinian theatre community was flourishing, marked by the establishment of the Union of Palestinian Artists and the Union of Theater Troupes. Radio dramas had been commonplace for over a decade, with new Arabic plays being produced for both the Palestine Broadcasting Station and the BBC Arabic Service. According to a contemporary critic, these works were “creating a new type of literature—providing a new expression of living thought.” The catastrophe of 1948 decimated this artistic community and its infrastructure. 

NO PLACE revives this platform for new expressions by Palestinian theatre artists working across borders. Above all, radio allows Palestinian writers to explore contemporary themes of presence and absence, public and private lives, silence and the human voice.

Selma Dabbagh is a British Palestinian writer of fiction. Born in Scotland, she has lived in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, France, Egypt and the West Bank. Her first novel, ‘Out of It,’ (Bloomsbury, 2011) set between London, Gaza and the Gulf was listed as a Guardian Book of the Year. She has also written radio plays ‘The Brick,’ for BBC Radio 4 (nominated for the Imison Award) and ‘Sleep It Off, Dr. Schott,’ for WDR in Germany and had short stories published by Granta, Telegram and International PEN as well as writing for film and stage. Her non-fiction has appeared in the Guardian, London Review of Books, GQ and other publications. She is the editor of ‘We Wrote In Symbols; Love and Lust by Arab Women Writers,’ (Saqi, 2021) and lives in London.
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Ahmed Masoud is a Palestinian writer, director and academic from Gaza and based in the United Kingdom. He is the author of Vanished – The Mysterious Disappearance of Mustafa Ouda, among other works, including two radio plays, Escape from Gaza produced by BBC Radio 4 Play (13 January 2011) and Application 39 produced by WDR Radio in Germany.
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Brinkley Messick is Professor of Anthropology and of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies at Columbia University. He was a founding Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies (2010-15), and currently is the Director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia.
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A. George Bajalia is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Wesleyan University and a theatre director who works primarily between Morocco and the United States. He is the co-founder of the annual Youmein Creative Media Festival in Tangier, Morocco and the Northwestern University in Qatar Creative Media Festival.
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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, and the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University.