A Festival of Palestinian Art

Stand-up Comedy

AMREEKA 2026: The Comedy Show

Curated by Wafaa Bilal and featuring an all-Palestinian line-up

Back by popular demand after a sold-out run in 2023, AMREEKA 2026: The Comedy Show is a raucous night of stand-up comedy, this year featuring an all-Palestinian lineup! Curated by former Golden Thread Artist-in-Residence Wafaa Bilal, this unique show brings together  comedians with one thing in common: a deep love of complaining. The toxic culture and politics in “Amreeka,” as some Middle Easterners playfully pronounce it, offer ample fodder for further complaints. This cathartic and witty venting holds a mirror up to reality showing it has become so absurd and surreal, one must laugh, if not cry.

For Iraqi artist Wafaa Bilal, the show, just like his solo works, “is an artistic platform for creating dialogue and bringing people together on highly charged topics. Not politicizing laughter but laughing at politics as a form of solidarity and resistance.”

Film Screening

The Horse of Jenin

by Alaa Shehada

Built from the debris of a major invasion, the Horse of Jenin sculpture became a constant presence in Alaa’s life growing up in Occupied Palestine. It stood proudly in the center of the city for twenty years, symbolizing hope and resistance. Then, on October 29, 2023, an Israeli bulldozer entered the city, ripping the sculpture from its place — and from its people. Now, Alaa is left wondering… What happened to the horse? This filmed version of Shehada’s brilliant solo show combines storytelling, mask, and stand-up comedy, and stands as an ode to the power of imagination and the resilience it brings.

A New Threads Staged Reading

A Country Made of Salt

by Denmo Ibrahim
directed by Nabra Nelson

A baker, a mystic, and a falcon walk into an office one stormy night… Rabia Haddad is on a mission to discover a lost history. But as she builds her map, the archive begins to talk back, blurring the lines between testimony, memory and myth. Could it be that the one story she needs most is her own? A play about inheritance, letting go, and the desire to belong to something larger than yourself, A Country Made of Salt invites us to reflect on the stories we keep — and what stories keep us.