Najla Saïd: Palestine a one woman play and talk back

CitySpace Arts Center in Easthampton MA

Easthampton for Peace presents in collaboration with CitySpace, Najla Saïd in PALESTINE.

In Palestine, actor/playwright Najla Said provides a unique passage into one of the most volatile and historic corners of the earth. With compassion, humor, and honesty she makes a case for Palestinian and Arab points of view in ways that truly allow them to be heard. The performance will be followed by a talk back and dialogue with Najla.

Doors at 7:00pm | Show at 7:30pm | 16+

Raised in privilege on New York City’s Upper West Side (where many of her best friends were Jewish) Najla was forced as a teenager to take a family trip to the Middle East to visit her father’s homeland. Anorexic and depressed, obsessed with boys and the beach, her experiences nevertheless kindled a life-long exploration of what it means to be both Arab and American.

Najla takes audiences on a whirlwind tour from kissing Jewish boys to “the stench of Gaza,” through two wars, the horrors of 9/11, encounters with world figures including Yasser Arafat, and life with her beloved father. Edward Said, was a professor at Columbia University and, until his death in 2003, a worldwide spokesman for Palestine and the Middle East.

Palestine was originally produced in 2010 by Twilight Theatre Company in association with New York Theatre Workshop. The eight-week Off-Broadway run at the Fourth Street Theater was sold-out. In 2012 Palestine was subsequently produced by InterAct Theatre as part of their Outside the Frame Festival in Philadelphia. Najla has a performed a concert version of the play all over the country with performances at Harvard, Brown, Boston College, Franklin and Marshall, University of Michigan, University of Alabama, Middlebury, among dozens of others.

In 2013 Najla expanded the play into a memoir published by Penguin Books under the title Looking for Palestine. Copies will be available for sale.