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, Maxine Peake (appearing on screen), Kamila Shamsie and Shamshad Khan amongst a host of others.

The show was a huge success, selling 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) variously covered the affair, highlighting the very current tension artists are feeling about the curtailment of freedom of political expression, which was at the heart of the dispute: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/apr/04/manchester-theatre-restores-cancelled-palestinian-event-after-artists-protest