2023-24: A season of new play development- EVENTS
VFP presents a trio of readings from (and about) Israel/Palestine at this precarious moment, looking back to the past and into the future; all part of our long-running Voices From a Changing Middle East Festival.
Stay Safe tells the story of an Arab-Jewish theater group working on a new play, in Israel, during the summer of 2014, as the Gaza war breaks out. The group meets for rehearsals, while political tensions grow and the war becomes more and more violent. Rocket alarms keep interrupting rehearsals, and just when it seems like a war is about to start between the actors, they find a new enemy to unite against.
from the author, Stav Palti-Negev:
Sadly and unbelievably, we are once again experiencing a war very similar to the one that inspired me to write STAY SAFE. The horror is repeating itself. I am writing these words while we are under constant rocket alarms, and it feels like everything is magnified and even more dreadful this time around. I don't recall being this worried about the fate of Israel in 2014. I can't imagine how the characters in the play would behave if it were set during this current war. Everyone is so depressed and paralyzed with anxiety that I can't picture anyone rehearsing plays at the moment.
But rehearse we will, in January, as the author re-opens her play in the weeks ahead to update the promise and the trauma of intercultural collaboration - and sharing each others narratives - and travails - during a most wrenching time.
Directed by Kate Bryer
Featuring cast members Karen Vincent (as Aviv), Raghad Makhlouf
(as Nissrin), Kate Kenworthy (as Mira), Ethan Miller (as Kobi),
and Hassan Nazari-Robati (as Elias)
MEET THE ARTISTS
Stav Palti Negev is an Israeli writer and playwright. Her play Salim Salim received the Best Play award at the 2014 Acco Festival of Alternative Israeli Theatre and ran for two years at Tmuna Theater in Tel-Aviv, from 2015 to 2017. In 2021, the play won The Woodward International Playwriting Prize and received its English-language premiere as part of the UNH Theatre and Dance’s 2022 season. Her play “Elsewhere: a play for an audience of one” premiered at the Acco Festival in October 2016. In 2018, Stav developed a virtual reality (VR) adaption of the play in collaboration with The Public Theater, and in 2019, it received a second adaption as an audio play. Stav’s work has been developed in the United States through The Public Theater, Atlantic Theater Company, MacDowell, The Lark, The Flea Theater, New York Live Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, The Orchard Project, and The 14th Street Y, among others. Stav is a 2017 alumna of The Public Theater’s Emerging Writers Group, a 2015/2017/2021 HaPais Council for the Arts Artist award recipient, a 2016/2019 Asylum Arts development award recipient, and a former member of the Middle Eastern American Writers Lab at The Lark in New York City. Her most recent play, a large-scale immersive production which she wrote and directed, “The Garden of Earthly Desires,” premiered in December 2022 in Tel Aviv. Stav holds an M.A. in Performance Studies from NYU Tisch School of the Arts and a B.A. in Theater Studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Kathryn Chase Bryer is the Associate Artistic Director of Imagination Stage. She is a theatre artist with a background in directing, acting, dramaturgy, teaching, and administration and holds a B.S. from Northwestern University. For Imagination Stage, Kathryn has directed over 50 productions in the last 25 years and has helped to develop and commission over a dozen scripts. In addition, she has worked at many theatres in the DMV area to develop and direct new scripts, including Breast in Show by Joan Cushing and Shoah Business by Jennie Eng. In 2014, she directed The BFG which won the 2014 Helen Hayes for Best Scenic Design and Best Production, Theatre for Young Audiences, and in 2015 her production of Wiley and the Hairy Man won the 2015 Best Production, Theatre for Young Audiences. In 2018, Kate won the Helen Hayes for Best Director of a Musical for her production of Wonderland, Alice’s Rock and Roll Adventures which also won Best Production Theatre for Young Audiences. At Imagination Stage this past season she directed Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed the Rock Experience (winner 2021 Helen Hayes Best Production for Theatre for Young Audiences), and The New Kid In addition to her duties at Imagination Stage, she has directed Scapin (2014) and Peter and the Starcatcher (winner of Helen Hayes 2018 Best Ensemble, Musical) and The Last Five Years at Constellation Theatre Company, The Late Wedding (2017) at the Hub Theatre and Fly By Night (2018) at 1st Stage, VA (nominated for 11 Helen Hayes Awards winning 5 including Best Director of a Musical, Hayes), The Wolves at Next Stop Theatre in Herndon, Va., The Oldest Boy at Spooky Action Theatre, American Spies and other Homegrown Fables at the Hub Theatre, A Doll House, The Late Wedding at UMD and Dracula a Feminist Revenge Tragedy at UMBC. Upcoming: Urinetown at American University
Click for previous offerings in this year’s
Voices From a Changing Middle East Festival: At War • Before • & After:
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