Inside/Outside

Six Plays from Palestine and the Diaspora

Ismail Khalidi, Naomi Wallace, Ismail Khalidi, Naomi Wallace

• Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781559364799
• eBook ISBN: 9781559367981
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

Due to the enormous—and ever-growing—interest in Palestinian plays around the world, Inside/Outside brings together six dynamic Palestinian playwrights from both Occupied Palestine and the Diaspora, making it the very first collection of its kind. These plays take on Palestinian history and culture with irreverence, humor, and, above all, an electrifying creativity. This anthology will be a vital contribution to world theater, introducing six political, social, and culturally relevant plays by Palestinian authors living inside the country, and those of descent living outside: Handala adapted by Abdelfattah Abusrour; 603 by Imad Farajin; Keffiyeh/Made in China by Dalia Taha; Plan D by Hannah Khalil; Tennis in Nablus by Ismail Khalidi; and Territories by Betty Shamieh.

Naomi Wallace's award-winning plays, which include One Flea Spare and The Fever Chart, are produced in the United States and around the world. Wallace is a recipient of an Obie Award, the MacArthur Fellowship, and the inaugural Windham Campbell prize for drama in 2013.

Ismail Khalidi is a playwright and poet. His plays include Tennis in Nablus, Truth Serum Blues, and Sabra Falling.

KEFFIYEH/MADE IN CHINA

Dalia Taha

AUTHOR’S STATEMENT

Theater is a celebration of fragility, transience, imperfection, collapse, precariousness, unreliability and collision. Of all the art forms, it is the one that relies most on what is avoided. It’s the space in which failure isn’t a disaster but an explosion of possibilities. It’s inherently a resistive space because, quite simply, it’s constantly in creation. I’m in love with theater, and the source of that love is never identifiable. But when prompted for an answer to the question of what is it that I prize most in theater . . . Seriousness. Terror. Humbleness. Poverty. Generosity. The theatrical experience cues the intricateness of these states by creating a space where they are exercised outside their status as social values, outside the exchange system that conventionally structures our interactions. It molds a space that carries within its transience its strength.

Theater is a permanent demonstration of the limits of power. It ridicules power and renders it impotent. It affirms again and again the potentiality of our agency: the agency that can only be exercised when being engaged fully with avoidance. I write for theater because, to me, in writing about ordinary people in extraordinary conditions—where guilt, responsibility, morality, ethics, empathy, love and hatred are constantly threatening to collapse—it’s only theater that could establish the threat of collapse as a collective experience: understanding the consequences and the stakes of such moments, and our responsibilities as humans and individuals in relation to them. I believe in theater because it doesn’t make us happy.

PRODUCTION HISTORY

Keffiyeh/Made in China was presented in a co-production of the Royal Flemish Theatre and the A.M. Qattan Foundation in 2012. It was directed by Bart Danckaert. The set and...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Tennis in Nablus
• Keffiyeh/Made in China
• Plan D
• Handala
• Territories
• 603
• Further Reading
• Author the Authors