New Threads Staged Reading Series 2023
New Threads returns in 2023 with staged readings of our two new play commissions, one by Adam Ashraf Elsayigh with dramaturg Salma Zohdi inspired by the life of political prisoner Alaa Abd El-Fattah and another by Tariq Hamami with dramaturg Dawn Monique Williams about the Black Panthers in Algiers. The readings will take place on Tuesday, August 22nd and 29th at 7pm. Attendance is FREE, but seating is limited, so registration is highly recommended.
August 22, 2023 - August 29, 2023
Brava Theater Center
2781 24th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110
Readings are FREE, however registration is recommended as space is limited.
New Threads is Golden Thread’s annual staged reading series that engages its audience in the process of playmaking and allows writers of Middle Eastern and non-Middle Eastern descent an authentic and supportive space to develop work about the Middle East. Since its launch in 2011, many New Threads plays and playwrights have continued on to receive mainstage productions. Each reading is accompanied by talkbacks with the artists and other experts that explore the themes of the play which enable you to experience the creative process.
New Threads 2023 Lineup
Black Panthers in Algiers
by Tariq Hamami
dramaturgy by Dawn Monique Williams
Inspired by the Black Panthers’ residency in Algiers in the 1960s, Tariq Hamami explores the intersection of the Black American and Algerian battle against colonialism and white supremacy. Drawing from his own family history, Hamami is developing a new play that will center the Algerian experience while highlighting the global interconnection in our ongoing struggle for freedom and human dignity.
Alaa
by Adam Ashraf Elsayigh
generative dramaturgy by Salma Zohdi
Adam Ashraf Elsayigh and Salma Zohdi are developing a new play that honors the story of British-Egyptian blogger and high-profile political prisoner, Abd El-Fattah, who has spent much of the last decade and remains to this day imprisoned in Cairo. Abd El-Fattah continues to write from his confinement, somehow smuggling treatises to the outside world. Elsayigh’s Alaa will invite audiences into a world that juxtaposes physical storytelling and embodied ritual using Abd El-Fattah’s recently-anthologized writings.