Clutch Productions To Present Staged Readings Of PALESTINE Written And Performed By Najla Saïd

Clutch Productions, in partnership with Holy Trinity Church Inwood and Creative Women New York, will present two staged reading performances of Palestine by Najla Saïd. All proceeds and donations from the performances will benefit humanitarian aid to the children of Gaza - specifically the Middle East Children's Alliance.

PALESTINE

Written and Performed by Najla Saïd
Direction and Dramaturgy by Sturgis Warner
Music by Ray Leslee

Saturday, June 15, 2024
2:00pm & 7:00pm

Holy Trinity Church Inwood
20 Cumming Street
New York, NY 10034

Tickets are $25 and available at www.clutchproductions.org/palestine-benefit-reading

A Q&A will follow each performance in addition to a reception after the evening performance. The run time is approximately 2 hours, 10 minutes including the performance and Q&A.

The venue is fully ADA accessible!

About the Play: In Palestine, actor/playwright Najla Saïd 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. 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 Saïd, 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 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. She went on a nationwide book tour sometimes performing the concert version of the play in lieu of book readings.

Clutch Productions is a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating opportunities for women artists in theatre and film. By commissioning and producing original works, Clutch provides vital creative space for women to collaborate.

Past productions include: The Inheritance of a Long-Term Fault*, Every Good Girl Deserves Fun*, Bullet Catchers, and The Worth of Water* as well as the vibrant, annual empowHER Reading Series. It has also co-produced Off-Broadway with The Culture Project and provided strategic support for a feature film (currently in development).

*denotes commissioned work

To post a comment, you must register and login.