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A Palestinian remembers the Holocaust
By Aziz Abu Sarah
A few days ago, the world commemorated Holocaust Day with memorials, moments of silence, and time taken to remember the lives of loved ones lost. For years this day has been a source of internal conflict for me as a Palestinian, so this year my wife Marie and I decided to hold our own memorial by doing something I have put off for a long time: we watched the movie “Schindler’s List”. It was my first time seeing the movie, which tells the story of a German man who risked his life to save hundreds |  | Tell Her the Truth: Tony Kushner & Alisa Solomon on Caryl Churchill's ' Seven Jewish Children 'A Play for Gaza
By Tony Kushner & Alisa Solomon
Caryl Churchill has made Seven Jewish Children available for productions without licensing or royalties for presenters who request audience contributions for the London-based relief organization Medical Aid for Palestinians. | | Royal Court acts fast with Gaza crisis play
By Mark Brown
By any theatrical standards the latest play by Caryl Churchill has been remarkably speedy, going from pen to performance on a London stage in under a month. The reason for the speed is Gaza. Churchill was so appalled by events there that she felt compelled to write, and the Royal Court theatre in London felt a duty to quickly produce her play, titled Seven Jewish Children - A Play for Gaza. | | Missing the Point: Mohammed Kacimi’s “Holy Land” at the Khan Theatre
By Haim Watzman
“On both sides of a war, unity is reflexive, not intentional or premeditated. To disobey is to breach that elemental accord, to claim a moral separateness (or moral superiority), to challenge one’s fellows, perhaps even to intensify the dangers they face,” Michael Walzer writes in his seminal Just and Unjust Wars. Walzer refers in this passage to the moral dilemma faced by the enlisted man, but the same dilemma is not foreign to civilians. Wanting to be part of our society and in discourse with | | Curtain not to be raised on the 29th Acco Festival of Alternative Israeli Theatre
The 29th Acco Festival of Alternative Israeli Theatre was supposed to get underway during the Intermediate Days of Sukkot: October 15 through 19, 2008. However, due to the friction and resultant riots between Jews and Arabs in the city during Yom Kippur, Acco Mayor Shimon Lankry has decided to cancel the Festival. | | Telling a story of Gaza without preaching it
By Olivia Snaije
Sometimes culture can succeed where politics fail. A year after being anointed the Quartet's Middle East envoy, Tony Blair has still not crossed the border into Gaza - though his sister-in-law has, arriving last weekend with a group of activists protesting Israel's economic blockade - but Shelley Silas' new play "Eating Ice-cream on Gaza Beach" tries to bring something of Palestine to the British capital. | | See Under: Homeland
By Randy Gener
On U.S. stages, Israeli and American artists espouse humanism in a world of violence.You cannot not talk about it. You cannot hide it inside a basement and hope that no one will find out. There will always be someone—a child, perhaps, armed with the courage of intense precocity—who will set about exorcising “the beast.” | | Oy vey: Romeo is a middle-aged Jew
A Jew, a Muslim and a Catholic decide to put on a play together in Copenhagen… No, it’s not the start of an ethnic joke. It’s something that is really happening: an original work in English with a multinational cast. The play, entitled Romeo and Juliet: The Sequel, is a musical comedy about Jews and Muslims in love, will be performed at Krudttønden in Østerbro in October 2008. | | Israelis stage daring saga of the abandoned Palestinian raised as a Jew
By Donald Macintyre
In one of the many electric moments in The Return to Haifa, the Cameri Theatre's compelling new play opening in Hebrew here tonight, there is a heart-rending struggle between the adoptive mother of a young soldier in the Israeli army and the natural mother who has arrived with her husband in the desperate hope of reclaiming their son 20 years after she last saw him. | | Their Voices Will be Heard: Artist Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Situation
Each performance of these two plays, being performed in rotating repertory, will be followed by a post-show talkback with the actress and a member of the artistic staff of New Repertory Theatre. Additionally, we’ve planned enhancement events throughout the month of March. | | Corrie play not helpful to dialogue, QIC director says
By Janice Arnold
The politically charged play My Name is Rachel Corrie, which is now playing in Montreal, is not a basis for discussion on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, says the director of the Quebec-Israel Committee (QIC). | | More about the conflict in the Middle East. as A Musical Comedy
By Joe Beaudin
I have to admit: when I was watching the first 15 minutes of West Bank, UK, I felt a little uneasy because I thought what was going to unfold throughout the 75-minute runtime of the show was another dramatic production about conflict in the Middle East that was going to make me feel guilty for not knowing... more about the conflict in the Middle East. Fortunately, my intuition was wrong, and the show's music, lyrics, and actors wooed me and won me over by the end. | | Conflicts and Confrontations is at the National Theatre
By John Nathan
About a year ago, two artistic directors had coffee together on London’s South Bank. With its theatres, concert halls and galleries, this is probably the most artistically vibrant strip of land in the world, so two directors talking here is not exactly front-page news. Theatre is a competitive but cosy world where directors, writers and actors are constantly exchanging ideas, discussing past projects and future plans. | | Benedictus: An ambitious international collaboration among artists from Iran, Israel, and the United States
By Lanie Wieland
Benedictus: An ambitious international collaboration among artists from Iran, Israel, and the United States Created by Mahmood Karimi-Hakak, Motti Lerner, Roberta Levitow, Danny Michaelson, and Torange Yeghiazarian, September 29 - October 21, Thick House, 1695 18th St., San Francisco. Only 72 hours before a scheduled US attack on Iran. Two estranged childhood friends, one Jewish and one Muslim, born in the same town in Iran, agree to a secret meeting in a Benedictine monastery in Rome to negotia | | Should anti-Israel play be staged?
By Gabe Ross
A controversial one-woman play about an American killed in Gaza will be staged this summer during the Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF) in Shepherdstown, W.Va., and some longtime ticket holders are objecting. | | My Name is Rachel Corrie hits the stage in Seattle
By Gina Whitfield
My Name is Rachel Corrie made its West Coast debut last week at Seattle’s Repertory Theatre. The one-woman play is based on Corrie’s life and untimely death. The Olympia Washington native was killed four years ago, in March 2003, at the age of 23. She was crushed by an Isreali bulldozer while she tried, along with an International Solidarity Movement team in the Gaza Strip, to protect a Palestinian home from demolition | | Iranian theatre critic embraces Israeli actresses
By Smadar Perry
A senior Iranian theater critic went behind the scenes of Plonter, a play performed by the Israeli Cameri Theater and staged at the international festival in Seoul, South Korea. The Iranian critic, Kaslion Faver, warmly embraced the Jewish and Arab actresses, who performed both in Hebrew and Arabic. "I was very moved, this is the best play I have seen at the festival," she said. The Iranian critic told Yael Ronen, who wrote and directed the play, that it touched on very sensitive issues, "Withou | | No gripping drama
By Kathy Shwiff
Unfortunately, "My Name is Rachel Corrie" is not an exception The one-woman show, playing at the off-Broadway Minetta Lane Theatre through Nov. 19, tells the story of Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old from Olympia, Wash., who was killed when she was run over by an Israeli bulldozer in the Gaza Strip in 2003. It is based on her personal journals as well as e-mails that she sent to her parents and friends. | | Actor Spreads Culture of Peace through Art
By Mohamed Elshinnawi
At a time of tension between cultures, regional wars and political differences couched in religious terms, some are trying to find a middle ground. One of them is an American actor who believes in spreading the message of peace and tolerance through theater and film. F. Murray Abraham embodies American diversity. The Academy Award-winning actor's father was Syrian, his mother was Italian, and he grew up in Texas, where he became fluent in Spanish. | | Award Winning Arab-American Comedian's New One Man Show is a Plea for Peace in the Middle East
“The goal of my one man show is to let my fellow Americans know that Arab-Americans don’t support the killing of innocent people on either side of the current conflict,” explains Dean Obeidallah, whose one man show “I Come in Peace,” debuts in the NY Fringe Festival on August 11, 2006. “We hope that Arab-Americans can live in peace here in the US and we pray that our relatives in the Middle East can live in peace as well.” | | Movie on Jewish-Muslim love challenges taboos, provokes ire
In a darkened lane the young lovers crouch and caress. The girl leans to kiss the boy, then hesitates. He removes the Star of David pendant hanging from his neck and fastens it around hers, where she can no longer see it. "This way, you'll think of other things," he says gently. The scene is just one of many provocative moments in the movie "Marock," a story of Jewish-Muslim love challenging taboos in this traditional Muslim society and provoking Islamic politicians' ire. | | Faces of War, a provocative look at the Israeli-Palestinian crisis
The highly dramatic play, Faces of War, a provocative look at the Israeli-Palestinian crisis seen through the lives of two friends raised together, but now on opposite sides of the war, will be given its New York premiere, July 10 as part of the prestigious Makor theater series.. It is being produced by BIMA-NY in association with Makor/92nd Street Y, directed by BIMA-NY member, Harriet Spitzer-Picker. Faces of War, is written by award-winning television writer, Stephanie Liss, who won a Writers | | NY theatre under fire for postponing 'My Name is Rachel Corrie'
By Claudia Parsons
Three years after she was killed by an Israeli bulldozer, Palestinian rights activist Rachel Corrie is sparking controversy in New York where a theatre has been accused of censorship for postponing a play about her. "My Name is Rachel Corrie" is a one-woman show based on diaries and e-mails written by the 23-year-old U.S. rights campaigner who died on March 16, 2003, trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian building in the Gaza Strip. | | Theatre the medium of illusion :Israeli Plonter on South African Stage
By Y Zohar
I thought a lot of how to begin writing this column. Many questions arose. How do you review reality? Saying its good? Bad? Did I like it? Did I hate it? Did I enjoy it? Well, the answer is yes. I 've done all of that. I felt it. I live it.
Plonter showed at the Artscape theatre in Cape Town. This building and its specious performing halls, big splashy lobby and open arena that now filled up with people of all of South Africa's society, was once the place for the opera house, where white people | | A playwright's tribute questions Palestinian dispossesion
Henry di Suvero is a sucker for punishment. Seeking out injustice is his hobby. "It's my schtick," he says in an easy American drawl. After a long career as a left-wing lawyer - defending United States civil rights activists, 1968 left-wing protesters the Weathermen and draft dodgers - di Suvero retired and moved to Byron Bay with his Australian wife. But the fire in his belly wouldn't die down, so he turned to playwriting, drawn back to the drama of power and oppression. | | Rachel Corrie brought back to life
By Yaakov Lappiny
London's small Royal Court Theatre, situated in the elegant Sloane Square, is permeated by Arabic music as actress Megan Woods delivers a 90-minute soliloquy about the Palestinian struggle against Israel to a packed audience. Woods plays 23-year-old Rachel Corrie, an International Solidarity Movement (ISM) activist who died in 2003 while attempting to prevent the bulldozing of a home being used to supply Palestinian terror networks with weapons. According to the play, Corrie was killed after cli | | Fences Make Good Neighbors at The New York International Fringe Festival
One Armed Man presents the world premiere of Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, a tragicomedy by Adam Klasfeld, at FringeNYC. It plays at Collective: Unconscious (279 Church Street at White Street) from August 18-28. Set in a fictional town in Arabia, Good Fences Make Good Neighbors follows a middle-aged writer who gets shot in the arm outside of his house, leaving him an amputee. But nobody believes that his arm is missing, fracturing his entire reality. His only source of safety from future atta | | Daniel Barenboim does not believe in hope any more :The West-Eastern Divan performs at Edinburgh International Festival
By Phil Miller
Daniel Barenboim does not believe in hope any more. Hope, the Jewish conductor says, is a luxury he can no longer afford. Perhaps the hope he had in his youth died with his first wife, the cellist Jacqueline du Pré. Or perhaps it faded when his soulmate, the Palestinian writer and activist Edward Said, died in 2003.
Barenboim leans forward in his chair and puts one of his oddly small, smooth pianist hands on my thigh. "You know, when I was younger I was more concerned with hope," he says, in hi | | Israelis and Palestinians given a shocking taste of each other's lives
By Donald Macintyre
There's a telling moment in the discussion after the performance of Plonter. A man asks the cast crossly why the settler women depicted in the play in long dresses and hats of the sort worn by many religious Jewish women, all "look the same". No more so, the Jewish director, Yael Ronen, points out, than the mourning Palestinian women grieving over the death of an 11-year-old boy. Or, says one of actors, Asaf Pariente, the equally stereotyped keffiyeh-clad Hamas gunmen who promise eternal vengean | | Letting Music Speak of Mideast Pain
By Felicia R. Lee
For Tamar Muskal, an Israeli-American composer, the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians goes beyond politics. It is music, it is poetry, it is the lone voice, speaking of pain and dreams. It is also in her composition "The Yellow Wind," which combines a full orchestra, an Arabic flute, Arab and Israeli poetry and songs, and excerpts from the
1988 book of the same title by David Grossman. It is to be given its premiere tonight by the Westchester Philharmonic in Purchase, N.Y.The Yellow Wi | | Torn between two identities
By Taryn Levy
Born to a Jewish mother and Palestinian father, Ibrahim Miari is an Arab-Israeli actor who hails from the northern city of Akko (Acre), a city known for its higher percentage of non-Jews than any other Israeli city. Miari is a member of the Akko Theater, who together with Israeli actress Meirav Kupperberg co-wrote and starred in a new play entitled "Blood Relative", which they have taken to San Francisco and Berkeley, California. | | A London hysteria
By Amnon Rubinstein
At the Royal Court Theatre, My name is Rachel Corrie plays to full houses and rave reviews. The play tells the story of the International Solidarity Movement activist who was accidentally killed by an IDF bulldozer in the Gaza Strip. Time Out's reviewer says Corrie was "riveted by the horrors she witnessed" against the Palestinians. No mention, of course, is made of the horrors suffered by Israelis. As Tom Gross wrote in these pages, several British reviewers compared Corrie with Anne Frank and | | The Mandala Olive Project LA delving into the history, the hype, and the tension in Israel and Palestine
By Robert Hurwitt
The Mandala Olive Project is a new performance built over a three month process delving into the history, the hype, and the tension in Israel and Palestine. Utilizing first hand accounts, current media clips, and agricultural characteristics of the land of Israelis and Palestinians, this on going project seeks to question where one can begin to understand this family feud when the material overwhelms and skews, misleads, and leaves mere impressions of the truth?
The Mandala Olive is a hilarious | | Cooking Up a Meaningful Plot in LA
By Tom Tugend
“To make really great falafel, crunchy on the outside and smooth and light on the inside, you must use only Bulgarian chickpeas,” British playwright Robin Soans said. “Next, you soak them in water for eight hours.” Soans, who talks in the sonorous tones of the veteran Shakespearean actor he is, knows whereof he speaks. He is, after all, the author of the play “The Arab-Israeli Cookbook,” whose characters spend a good deal of stage time preparing a feast’s worth of delicacies, including falafel, | | The Arab-Israeli Conflict is Cooked in a London Theatre
By Judi Herman
For those who seek any détente between the divided communities of Israel/Palestine, the idea of balance is crucial. The creative team behind the Arab-Israeli Cookbook reveals its good intentions in the title of the play (as perhaps I do myself in calling its setting Israel Palestine). The play even boasts two directors, Tim Roseman and Rima Brihi, Jewish and Lebanese respectively. Together with writer Robin Soans, they went to the Middle East and spoke to more than eighty people – over food cook | | An Israeli Recalls his War Years
By Irene Backalenick
The facts themselves raise the stakes of this one-man show to a high level. Calderon is an Israeli who lived through the Yom Kippur War of 1973, battling Egyptians and his own personal demons. Like other young men and boys of the time, he is hustled into the Army. Never mind that he keeps telling superior officers he is an actor, not a combat soldier. Does any one care about that kind of nonsense during the crisis? No! He is given a uniform and a gun—an Uzi, whose wooden handle allows him to “kn | | The Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company open its 10th anniversary season
By Carolyn Petrie
The Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company has chosen a wonderfully fitting play to open its 10th anniversary season. Ten years is quite a milestone in our tough and teeming theater community. It's also a great opportunity for an organization to celebrate its foundations and showcase its strengths. With the short comedy "Miklat," MJTC does just that. Playwright Joshua Ford has written a smart and scrappy play with a few foibles but a lot of heart. It's quite a perfect analogy for this production, and | | Lesbian Love Affair Brought Center Stage During Israeli/Palestinian Conflict
By Sura Faraj
Khoury's play, "Precious Stones," is about two women, Andrea, who is Jewish, and Leila, who is Palestinian. They form a Jewish/Arab dialogue group and end up falling in love. True to his own complexity, Khoury has only two actors portraying all six characters. The play explores issues of sexuality, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and class. While this may seem like too full a plate for your average theatrical meal, it’s easy to see, after speaking with Khoury, how this came about. Khoury based | |
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