Photos by Nuala Shaar

Voices of Resilience (2024)

Working in collaboration with independent publishing house, Comma Press, I co-produced and directed the show Voices of Resilience in April 2024 at HOME, Manchester. The event centred around the diary of Atef Abu Saif, Gazan writer and sometime minister of culture for Palestine, who was visiting the besieged Strip in early October with his teenage son when the conflict broke out. His diaries were published in media outlets around the world, and collected together in Don’t Look Left, published by Manchester’s Comma Press in December 2023.

Extracts from the book were interspersed with performances of Palestinian poetry, read by Palestinian artists and activists. Poets featured in the show include esteemed Gazan writers, Refaat Al-Areer and Hiba Abu Nada, both of whom were tragically killed in October and December 2023. The show was accompanied throughout by live oud music, performed by Egyptian artist Ahmad Adnan. For the show, we commissioned a visual score created by Gazan filmmaker Hossam Abo-Shammallah.

The show featured performances from Kingsley Ben-Adir (One Love, Barbie), Maxine Peake (Keeping Rosy, The Falling) appearing on screen, Kamila Shamsie (Home Fire) and Shamshad Khan amongst a host of others.

The show sold out the main space at HOME theatre, though it was initially subject to cancellation by the venue due to Zionist lobbying. As a result of many hundreds of people protesting against the decision the venue eventually agreed to reinstate it. The Guardian (along with several other media platforms) covered the affair, highlighting the current tension artists are feeling about the curtailment of freedom of political expression, which was at the heart of the dispute. Lyn Gardener commented on the censorship of the event in an article for The Stage, whilst Middle East Eye ran a report on issues of censorship by UK Institutions, which highlighted Voices of Resilience as a case in point. Video documentation of the original HOME show is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpLE8WwlsaI.

Following this initial showing of the work we toured it to the Edinburgh International Book Festival, featuring performances by Scottish-Syrian actor Firas Ibrahim, Ahmed Nehad, Nada Shawa, and Noor Hemani.

We also created a new version of the show integrating writing by three additional Gazan writers - Nahil Mohana, Sondos Sabra, and Ala'a Ebeid. This was presented to a sell-out audience at the Barbican Centre in September 2024. The show features performances by Nabil Elouahabi (Trigger Point, Blue Lights), Maxine Peake, Yusra Warsama (Castle Rock, Deliver Me), and poet Hind Shoufani: https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2024/event/comma-press-voices-of-resilience

The show at the barbican received reviews from The Telegraph and Middle East Eye, amongst others.