Center For Palestine Studies At Columbia University Launches New Radio Play Program

NO PLACE/LA MAKAN will be a platform for Palestinian playwrights to explore contemporary themes through an historic medium of performance -- radio. For the inaugural 2021-2022 season, four plays have been commissioned from artists based in Palestine and in the diaspora, each of which will receive two world premieres in the form of dedicated Arabic and English productions. The 2021-2022 commissioned playwrights are: Khawla Ibraheem (London-Jenin), Ismail Khalidi (Tennis at Nablus, Returning to Haifa), Bashar Murkus (The Museum, Hash), and Dalia Taha (Graduation, Fireworks). Collectively, these writers have had works produced on some of the world's leading stages, including The Public Theatre (New York), the Young Vic (London), The Royal Court Theatre (London), and the Tokyo International Festival, as well as residencies with The Sundance Institute Theatre Lab and the MacDowell Colony.

The NO PLACE/LA MAKAN program will provide the opportunity for playwrights to develop their new work within a community of actors, directors, dramaturgs, scholars, and the other writers in their cohort. The writers will be joined by Artistic Advisors Selma Dabbagh (The Brick, BBC Radio 4; Sleep It Off, Dr. Schott, WDR Radio Germany) and Ahmed Masoud (Escape from Gaza, BBC Radio 4), who will support the artists in crafting their pieces for radio.

The artists and production team will also take part in capacity building exercises to broaden this program's impact on up-and-coming professionals in the Palestinian arts community.

The program culminates in two fully-realized radio productions of each play (one in Arabic and one in English), translated, directed, performed, and recorded by professional theatre artists and radio producers. This production process will take place simultaneously at Columbia University in New York City as well as at Al-Qattan Cultural Centre in Ramallah, Palestine. The plays will be broadcast in 2022 as part of a month-long festival celebrating this work, alongside conversations, interviews, and events exploring the work's conception and the lived realities out of which it was born. The recordings will be archived on the Center for Palestine Studies website, released as part of an ongoing podcast series, and broadcast worldwide on WKCR 89.9 FM, Columbia University's radio station, as well as through partners in Palestine and around the world.

Dr. Brinkley M. Messick, Director of the Columbia University Middle East Institute, says "CPS Stage is excited to bring Palestinian theatrical imaginations to world listeners with NO PLACE/ LA MAKAN".

Mahmoud Abuhashhash, Director of the Culture and Education Programme at the Qattan Foundation adds "This project will contribute to providing the Palestinian Theatre movement with new expertise and knowledges that will encourage the production of this theatrical form that has a tremendous ability to reach out to new audiences overcoming all form of borders and barriers in Palestine and worldwide. "

NO PLACE/LA MAKAN is a project of the Center for Palestine Studies produced in partnership with the A. M. Qattan Foundation, with support from Taawon, The Tides Foundation, and the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University. The program is led by a committee of academic and arts professionals including Dr. Brinkley M. Messick (Professor, Columbia University), Dr. A. George Bajalia (Assistant Professor, Wesleyan University), Kate C Wilson (Adjunct Professor, City University of New York) Geoffrey Mustafa Lokke (Ph.D Candidate, Columbia University Theatre and Performance), Simone Ilana Rutkowitz (Program Manager, Columbia University Center for Palestine Studies), and Executive Producer Tom Casserly.

ABOUT CPS STAGE:

Founded at Columbia University in 2010, and honoring the legacy of Edward Said, the Center for Palestine Studies remains the only such dedicated academic center in the United States. In 2020-21, the Center celebrates the completion of its first decade, which has been marked by academic excellence and world-renown public programs. The arts are pillars of the Center's programming, which includes both a vibrant film series and an ongoing theater initiative.

The Center launched its CPS Stage program in 2012 with a staged reading of Ismail Khalidi's play Tennis in Nablus at Columbia's Miller Theater. This was followed by the programs Permission to Narrate (March 2015), with new works by Amir Nizar Zuabi, Dalia Taha, and Imad Farajin, Inside/Outside (October 2015), coinciding with the launch of the play collection by the same name, Break the Wall (November 2017), and most recently Returning to Haifa (October 2019).

ABOUT THE A.M. QATTAN FOUNDATION:

The A.M. Qattan Foundation (AMQF) is an independent, not-for-profit developmental organization working in the fields of culture and education, with a particular focus on children, teachers and young artists.

Founded and registered in 1993 in the UK as a charity and as a charitable company limited by guarantee, it has had a branch in Palestine, registered as a non-profit organization, since 1998. The Foundation's operations are mainly in Palestine, with additional activity in the United Kingdom through The Mosaic Rooms. The Foundation's mission is to achieve a dynamic cultural environment conducive to the production of emancipatory thought and knowledge, with a vision toward a just, free, enlightened, and tolerant society with an active global presence, one that embraces dialogue and produces knowledge, art and literature.