Palestine

Ashley Marinaccio examines the importance of youth theatre in Palestine through the work of a number of organizations, including ASHTAR Theatre, the Freedom Theatre, and Al Rowwad Cultural and Theater Training Center.

Playwright Renée Darline Roden talks about her travels to Israel and Palestine to gain inspiration for a new play and encountering what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie calls “the danger of a single story.”

For the last few years, professor Catherine Coray has been helping create collaboration opportunities for theatre artists in Arab countries and the Americas. Arab Voices: Stories of Palestine is the most recent iteration, and has taken place in New York, Abu Dhabi, and Beirut.

MJ Kaufman writes about the decision not to see To the End of the Land ​at Lincoln Center. 

Gary English looks at the production Other Places by the Palestinian theatre group Al Khashabi Ensemble.

Jamil Khoury writes about curating a series of six staged readings about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that power of theatre to speak to controversial issues.

Gary English, artistic associate at The Freedom Theatre on the West Bank in the Jenin refugee camp, discusses the complications of presenting work on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict in the US.

Patricia Davis on Mosaic Theatre's US premiere in Washington, D.C. of I Shall Not Hate, based on the life of Palestinian doctor Izzeldin Abuelaish.

In a volatile, war-torn place, things change quickly and recurring issues of conflict, occupation, and survival dominate—all the more reason to have festivals like this and theaters like Ashtar that persist under such circumstances and create transformative experiences.

In 2012, eleven young theater students succeeded in starting Ashtar’s first youth festival. Ashtar Theatre, which was founded in 1991 by Iman Aoun and Edward Muallem, describes itself as “a dynamic local Palestinian theatre with a truly progressive global perspective.” Their core programs are drama training of local youth through an extracurricular after school program, Theater of the Oppressed Forum Theatre productions that explore “essential critical topics in Palestinian society” and international collaborations.

Patricia Davis writes about The Freedom Theatre in Palestine, focusing on its controversial work with youth and its history, which includes the assassination of their founder.