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.
In December, Palestinian playwright Hanna Eady (author of The Return, shared at Mosaic Theater Company in 2017, and actor in Motti Lerner's The Admission at Theater J in 2014) takes us to the day before the unveiling of a monument to honor heroes of the 1948 War of Independence, in the courtyard of a psychiatric hospital and the site of the destroyed Palestinian village Deir Yassin. Before the ceremony, a memory of what took place on 4/9/48 comes alive.
“Almond Blossom at Deir Yassin is a play of Palestinian First Memory that keeps refreshing itself from another memory, beating the walls of forgetfulness, resisting the statics and deafening silence of museums, and refusing to stay sealed behind doors of classified archives,” says playwright Hanna Eady. “It’s the story of Amal – which means hope – and a dreaming of return to Amal’s birth ground, in the pile of the dead, rising up in the form of new life.”
A stunningly relevant play about memory, atrocity, displacement and, yes, even hope.
Featuring
Edward Gero, Lisa Hodsoll, David Bryan Jackson, and Raghad Makhlouf
More reflections from playwright, Hanna Eady:
“A play about Palestine/Israel will always be very timely as long as the Palestinian issue is not resolved. So, absolutely YES, the play will go on. It is ready to make that same argument that we will continue to have more wars as long as we continue to deny and rebury the truth. Open the box on the first massacre and let the healing begin."
Directed by John Vreeke
Followed by Discussion with the playwright. Evening Run Time: 2 hours.
The Voices From a Changing Middle East Festival is supported in part by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities' Projects, Events & Festivals program, which receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts
Palestinian playwright Hanna Eady with the cast of "Almond Blossom at Deir Yassin," featuring Edward Gero, Lisa Hodsoll, Raghad Makhlouf and David Bryan Jackson
on December 6, 2023, in Washington, DC.
Photo credit: Tracy Meehleib
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MEET THE CREATIVE TEAM
Hanna Eady, a Palestinian American theater artist. Founder of the first theater at his native village in Buqayah (Peqiin) where he wrote his first play ART AND POLITICS. Founder of New Image Theater in Seattle, Washington, writing and directing world premiers among them: ABRAHAM’S LAND, and BOSNIA-MOYA. SEEING DOUBLE by S.F. Mime Troupe. TWO ROOMS by Lee Blessing. In 1993 he returned home to create a docudrama about the internal Palestinian refugees in Israel and co-created SAHMATAH, MEMORY OF STONES with Edward Mast. He played “Ibrahim” in the US production of THE ADMISSION, by Motti Lerner, and in the Hebrew production at Yafa, Al-Saraya Theater. THE RETURN with Hebrew title OVED SHABBAT, co-wrote with Edward Mast, US premier at Mosaic Theater in Washington D.C. Wrote and directed for Alhaneen Theater in Nazareth: black comedy LOVE TUNNEL, HAJJAR EL-ARAB (Hajjar, Bishop of all Arabs). Most recently founded Dunya Productions premiering FLOOD with Jenna Eady, LETTERS FROM PALESTINE IN THE TIME OF COVID, and LOVED ONES, FAMILIES OF INCARCERATED with Edward Mast.
Mr. Eady has an MFA from the University of Washington School of Drama in Directing, and a BFA in Theater from the University of Wisconsin, and a BA in Social Work and Psychology from the University of Haifa.
John Vreeke Former company member Woolly Mammoth Theatre. He has directed for multiple theaters in the DC area including Mosaic, Theater J, Washington Shakespeare Company, Forum, Charter, Theatre Alliance, Everyman, Metro Stage, Olney, Roundhouse, Kennedy Center Family Theater and finally Woolly Mammoth theater where the hallmark of over twenty years of work was taking on “problem” plays, and plays that are in a continuing evolution, plays like Sam Hunter’s A Bright New Boise, Peter Nachtrieb’s Boom, Rajiv Joseph's Describe the Night Homebody/Kabul. For the Voices Festival last fall, he directed My Calamitous Affair…along with his longtime collaborator and colleague Ari Roth. Currently in Seattle he re directed the Return (based on his direction of the play for Mosaic Theatre) by Hanna Eady and Ed Mast for Dunya Productions, a new theater idea focusing on amplifying voices of the Middle East. He has six best director nominations with the Helen Hayes Awards society. In a past life, he was an associate producer on the CBS TV series, Northern Exposure.