I, DAREEN T

American Premiere created and performed by Einat Weizman
written by Dareen Tatour and Einat Weizman
directed by Nitzan Cohen

Part III of Voices Festival Productions' 2022

Voices From a Changing Middle East Festival: Losing/Finding Home

VIRTUAL PERFORMANCE
WITH COMMUNITY DISCUSSION on ZOOM

Israeli theatre creator, actor and activist Einat Weizman’s solo documentary theatre piece is based on the story of Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour, convicted by Israeli authorities for “incitement to violence” over a poem and two posts she published on Youtube and Facebook. A long legal battle (during which she was under house arrest) ensues, as Tatour argues that her poem and posts constitute legitimate protest against the crimes of Occupation. Weizman meets Tatour during her legal struggle and accompanies her to hearings. The encounters create a friendship that gives birth to a play. Einat faces her own silencing and censorship as both her and Dareen’s narratives merge and the boundaries between them become blurred as Weizman’s performance exposes a suppressed reality and act of liberation, from the chains of oppression, through the solidarity of sisterhood.

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 I Dareen, T runs 75 minutes (with no intermission)

About the Artists

Einat Weizman is an actor, theater director, and a playwright based in Tel Aviv. She is also a Palestinian rights activist.  All of her plays, performances, and events are political documentary theater meant to shed light on the blind spots of Israeli reality. Her theater provides a platform for making diverse voices heard, including those that are outside of the social cultural consensus and challenge conventional thinking.  Since 1996 and for many years, Einat Weizman worked primarily as an actor on Israeli television and film productions, and was a popular public persona in Israel. Things changed sharply in 2014 during the Israeli attack on Gaza. For the first time, Weizman was publicly attacked for her political views and she experienced attacks on social media from thousands of people; these attacks spread from the internet to the streets. This was how her first play, Shame: Talkbacks on Theatre, came into being (it was subsequently staged at Mosaic Theater Company of DC as Shame 2.0). Her second play was Palestine, Year Zero, a play about a Palestinian building assessor who estimates the damages to Palestinian homes that were destroyed or damaged. House 121: A Lesson in Political Construction, is a short performance she co-created with Azes AlTuri about the Bedouin village Al Araqib (see a recent feature on the piece which was transformed into The “El-Arakib Struggle Museum” installation, jointly created by Weizman, Alturi, and director Nitzan Cohen, Einat , tells the continuing sorry tale of the eponymous village, located 10 km. north of Beersheba, which has been destroyed by the IDF now over 200 times. Ongoing protests and legal proceedings have yet to reestablish it). Other recent plays include Prisoners of the Occupation, which strives to give voice to Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails. The play was banned on political grounds by the Akko (Acre) Festival’s steering committee under pressure from the Ministry of Culture and Sport. Immediately thereafter, she staged two theatrical events at the Jaffa Theatre: Prison Notebooks and The State Against the Poet Dareen Tatour (both in 2017). Each of these events provoked condemnation from Israeli public officials, with the theatre subsequently facing threats of funding cuts. Her most recent play is How To Make A Revolution, currently playing at the Jaffa Theatre.

For more information, go to www.einatweizman.com

Nitzan Cohen is a leading director in Israel, a frequent collaborator with Einat Weizman, and most recently served as Artistic Director of the Tmuna Theatre in Tel Aviv. Watch this interview between Cohen and Israeli Stage founder, Guy Ben-Aharon, about the making of I, Dareen T.