PROGRAMME 2025
PROGRAMME 2025
DATES AND TIMES TBA
Welcome to the Fringe:
Opening Ceilidh
Amira Al Shanti: Harvest
[THEATRE]
An intimate concert and reading of Harvest the Musical by composer, writer and performer Amira Al Shanti. The musical follows the story of six women during the Olive Harvest in Palestine, showcasing how traditions prevail despite the ongoing challenges of occupation and apartheid. This is the first time Harvest will be shared publicly, with a unique showcase of the songs and reading of the plot by Amira. Like roots sprouting from a seed, it is hoped that this showcase will lead to more opportunities for this musical in the future
Noor Abuarafeh: An Orange Tree, an Olive Tree and a Painting That Knows No Borders
[PERFORMANCE]
This lecture-performance invites the audience on a personal and political journey through the West Bank's fragmented landscape. The narrator recounts their return home after a prolonged absence, facing the stark reality of a land under occupation. Guided by intimate hikes through the West Bank, they weave together encounters with fellow hikers, such as Mohamed, who documents each village through his sketches, preserving a disappearing landscape. These
sketches echo the work of the narrator’s father, a painter whose art also serves as a testament to the Palestinian villages before their destruction. Slowly the audience is invited by the narrator to collectively reclaim a lost landscape in the face of settler colonial violence.
Dareen Tatour: Al-Damun: The War of Memory
[POETRY and FILM]
Dareen Tatour is a poet, photographer, and film-maker from Palestine, her work chronicles her own experiences and those of the Palestinian people. Tatour came to international prominence in 2015 when she was arrested in her home by Israeli security forces and accused of inciting terrorism. for writing a poem entitled ‘Resist, my people, resist them.’ For Welcome To The Fringe she will present her film The War on Memory which examines the occupation’s attempt to eradicate history, in particular through the destruction of the village of Damun. This will be accompanied by a poetry reading and photography exhibition.
Amal Kaawash: مراجيح Marajeeh (Swings)
[MUSIC]
A musical encounter where Amal Kaawash brings to life songs from the Palestinian tradition; as part of the wider heritage of Bilad El Sham, alongside her own original compositions, rooted in her experience as a Palestinian artist born in Lebanon to a family displaced from Palestine in 1948. Joined by the brilliant guitarist Joe Aouad, Amal weaves music and storytelling into a continuation of the collective narrative, where inherited memory and present-day expression meet.
Fadi Murad: Flux in this Forgotten Farm
[PERFORMANCE]
Come Back Home / Holding Water is a performance between fire and water, between the past and future. A voice tries to speak, faster and faster, until it breaks. A body slips, calls out, wishes. My mother was a hydrologist. I saw her one last time. Water wages war. First fire found me. A father plays the oud. A smell disappears. A child sings. Between confession and collapse, something is carried. Something refuses to leave.
Gazelleband
[MUSIC]
Gazelleband present the Palestinian story through music and storytelling, led by Gaza’s first female oud player, Reem Anbar. This duo set with writer and buzuq player Louis Brehony explores the shared musics of Palestine and its surrounding region, blended with tales of resistance from around the world.
LAFI
[MUSIC]
Mohammed Lafi is a Palestinian rap artist from Jabalia Camp, Gaza, known for using music to confront oppression, siege, and political repression. Starting in 2011, he creatively turned basic household tools into recording gear and his rooftop into a stage. His activism intensified with the 2017 youth movement "We Want to Live," leading to his arrest and multiple imprisonments by Hamas authorities from 2018 to 2022 due to his outspoken songs on Gaza’s harsh realities. Despite facing physical and psychological abuse, he continued to produce powerful music reflecting his experiences. His story gained international attention through Human Rights Watch, BBC documentaries, and various media outlets. Today, amid ongoing threats and conflict, Mohammed remains committed to using his art as a voice for freedom and hope.
Ahmed Alnouq and XXXX: We Are Not Numbers
[LITERATURE]
These are the stories of young people from Gaza, born under Israeli occupation and blockade. They are people who have endured unspeakable struggles and losses, who keep fighting to be recognised not as numbers, but as human beings with hopes, dreams and lives worth living.
We Are Not Numbers was founded in 2014 to give voice to the youth of Gaza. Writers Ahmed Alnouq XXXX and XXXX will share their writing, vital, urgent and full of heart, spanning over ten years to the present moment, their work offers an unparalleled insight into the past, as well as the current and next generation of Palestinian leaders, artists, scientists and scholars and imagine where we might go from here.
The Hands Up Project: Welcome to Gaza
[THEATRE]
Dancing, genies, animals, mother-in-laws and ghosts. Messages - phone calls, zoom calls, voice notes - reporting a nightmare of bombed hospitals and schools, children lying like rubble in the collapsing streets.
Performed by some of their original creators, 19 plays by children from Gaza and the West Bank, written pre-October 7th 2023, are woven into a continuous 90-minute play, continually interrupted by messages from the genocide. The plays were submitted for the Hand’s Up Project’s annual remote theatre competition in 2017, 2018 or 2019, and previously published in Hands Up publications Toothbrush, Welcome to Earth and Popcorn. Continually interrupted by verbatim audio, written and video, the play portrays real life in Gaza before and after the watershed of October 7th 2023.
Welcome to Gaza is produced by the Hands Up Project, and compiled and directed by award-winning playwright, Peter Oswald.
Randa Jarrar: The Last One
Wrapped in a death shroud, Asheerah escapes genocide through ingenious medical gadgets and accidentally time-travels to 2055. Oops—she's Earth's only survivor! Her new BFF? Francesca, an AI carrying a brilliant legal scholar's consciousness, who spills all the tea about humanity's spectacular downfall.
Bruno Cruz: Arab a Dub Dj Set
[MUSIC]
Get ready for an electrifying DJ set that dives into the heart of Palestinian underground music! From the freshest beats to the lively rhythms of dabke and dahyeh, this performance is an explosion of sound and energy. It's a journey through the vibrant pulse of Palestinian culture, bringing together traditional dance with cutting-edge underground sounds. In short, it's a non-stop Palestinian dance party!
Mahmoud Alhourani / Arab Puppet Theater Foundation: Performance Desperately in Need of an Audience
[THEATRE]
This is a tale of uprooting and devastation, of the merciless force of war as it descends upon a peaceful village by the sea, tearing people away from their land and turning their simple lives into an unending nightmare.
At the heart of this chaos lives a simple man with his chicken and dog, going about his daily routine, unaware that the planes soaring above will soon reduce his home to rubble and make him a target in the path of war’s ruthless machinery.
This silent performance, laced with dark humour, bends the rules of puppet theatre, where stage props and settings—crafted from cardboard—become puppets themselves.
Ahmed Tobasi: And Here I Am
[THEATRE]
Written by Hassan Abdulrazzak
Based on the life and performed by Ahmed Tobasi
And Here I Am is a gripping coming-of-age story based on the life and performed by Palestinian artist Ahmed Tobasi. Set against the backdrop of the First and Second Intifada, we follow his epic journey from the battle-scarred alleys of Jenin Refugee Camp, to the confines of an Israeli prison. From an armed resistance fighter to an artist. From exile in Norway back to his homeland, where he continues to resist using culture
Combining fact and fantasy, tragedy and comedy, award-winning writer Hassan Abdulrazzak captures an extraordinary odyssey of defiance, resilience, and the relentless pursuit of freedom.
As the Israeli army once again invades Jenin Refugee Camp, And Here I Am is not just a tale from the past—it is an urgent story of the present.
Gaza Poets Society: My Death is not a Song
[POETRY]
Gaza Poets Society is a group of 32 young poets from Gaza. One of its founding members Mohammed Moussa will join us to give a reading entitled ‘Writing Poems in Times of Genocide. Moussa, who grew up in Jabalia Refugee Camp and works as a poet, journalist and translator has been a prominent voice during the ongoing genocide in Gaza. He has two published anthologies; his debut is *Flamingo*, and the third will be published in the festival.
Amir Sabra: Within This Party
[DANCE]
Within This Party is a work of Palestinian contemporary dance from the renowned dancer and choreographer Amir Sabra. Drawing on hip hop, dabkeh, and improvisation to search for the personal and the intimate within the collective, it continues Sabra’s exploration of that elusive and distinctive quality that can take familiar movements and gestures, and transform them into something unique.
Nafas Collective: Ruh al Ruh (The soul of my soul)
[STAGED READING]
Rafat Al Aydi is a Gaza-based playwright and director. He wrote the basic storyline of Ruh al Ruh in one day and one night last summer during the war in Gaza. That of a couple that is in the war trying to find their lives inside the situation. The woman tries to hold them together inside their home clinging to their old life. The man goes outside to try to fix their life, but he is an artist and wants to fight the war in his way, through imagination. Both fight in their different ways to keep sane within the situation of war. The play is an ode to imagination and the ‘artist way of living’.
Nafas Collective is an international theatre collective that initiates projects that deal with humanity in a hardening society worldwide. In our work we explicitly seek dialogue and connection through theatrical imagination and philosophical research. This play will be done as a rehearsed reading with local actors.
After the reading there will be an after talk with writer Rafat Al Aydi (if a connection with Gaza can be established at that moment).
Nur Garabli: CHÉ
[DANCE]
CHÉ is a duet where two women confront each other—and the world—through a dynamic fusion of theater, movement, and vocal resistance.
CHÉ explores the deep connection between earth, energy, and gender, examining how the body becomes a vessel for revolution and a stage for protest. It is a celebration of Arab-Palestinian identity, reflecting the struggles of women who endure layers of control: the suffocating weight of silence, the grip of patriarchy, and the unending conflict within and around them.
Through movement, voice, and defiance, this piece alchemizes pain into protest, transforms stories into acts of resistance, and reclaims our presence as a force of undeniable power.
Keffeyeh: Made in China
[THEATRE]
The play 'Craving Mangoes' is written by the wonderful Palestinian playwright Dalia Taha (Royal Court). It is a surreal almost Beckettian piece in regards to the writing and language of the play. A mother and father avoid confirming the identity of a young, unidentified body, doing their best to narrate a version of events in which he is still alive. The play is a short two-hander naturalistic style, set in the unknown and unfolding within a single timescale. It is a surreal psychological thriller with a story that resonates universally. It explores themes of loss, denial, and grief.
Essentially a play about love. In “Craving Mangoes,” the second episode of ''Keffiyeh: Made in China'' (a collection of award winning short plays), Dalia Taha ushers us into a parent’s worst nightmare — identifying a son at the local morgue. A nameless Palestinian couple sits outside the vault, unable to step inside.
This will be performed alongside another episode of the collection, testimonies, and a poem of Mahmoud Darwish. .
Sami Abu Wardeh
[COMEDY]
One hour of theatre and comedy, taking aim at the fascistic tendencies of Western "civilisation". Storytelling, joke-telling and physical comedy abound in this attack on the flimsy construct of nationalism and the tools of state oppression..
Diline Abushaban: Gaza Food and Stories
[STORYTELLING]
Food demonstration and storytelling show, aims to make the audience feel as if they were in Palestine with the stories, smells, sounds, and finally tastes of Palestine through tasting what was made in front of their eyes, then go home with 'Awe' moments that stay with them for the rest of their lives, motivated to keep telling the stories they heard and making the Palestinian dish they tasted. My intention is to create a 'mini Palestine' in the hearts of the audience through stories and food. All in healing intention for Palestine.