Our 2024 Season for Palestine is a celebration of the talent, creativity, strength, and resilience that define the Palestinian people. As we witness the unimaginable atrocities and ongoing human rights violations Palestinians are enduring, we recognize our responsibility to combat this brutal injustice by uplifting and honoring their narratives. Join us as we embark on a season of active dialogue and communal space sparked by inspiring legacy artists, award-winning plays and playwrights, emerging new works, and exciting collaborations.
Productions
What Do the Women Say? 2024
March 8, 2024
In honor of International Women’s Day, Golden Thread’s What Do the Women Say? returns to the Brava Theater Center with Expressions of Joy, a celebration of the resilience and richness of Palestinian traditions and culture through the works of Palestinian women artists.
Pre-show lobby activities 6:30 pm/ Show 8:00 pm, Pacific Time. Run time 120 minutes without intermission.
Returning to Haifa
April 12, 2024 - May 4, 2024
In the wake of the 1967 Six-Day War, with the borders finally open after two decades, Said and Safiyya, a Palestinian couple, return to Haifa in search of the echoes of a home they were forced to abandon during the Nakba in 1948. But are they truly ready for the encounter that awaits them upon their return? Returning to Haifa presents a deeply human portrait of two families, one Palestinian, and one Israeli Jewish, forced by history into an intimacy they didn’t choose.
“A moving confrontation between two sets of displaced people and an utterly unsentimental exploration of the complexities of home, history and parenthood.” - Michael Billington, The Guardian, 5 March 2018
“Returning to Haifa is a beautiful and important play portraying the personal tragedies created because of much bigger acts between humans.” - Nabila Said, Exeunt Magazine, 24 March 2018
No Summary 2024
May 24, 2024 - June 13, 2024
Now entering its fifth consecutive year, our digital conversation series No Summary features conversations with theatre companies in Palestine.
Our 2024 virtual artist conversation series embarks on a tour of Palestinian cities to offer audiences in the Bay Area and beyond a taste of the Palestinian theatre scene today. Each episode spotlights a different theater, showcasing its history, notable performances, challenges, and life behind the scenes through interviews with its artists and community members. Theater makers, audiences, professors, and students are all invited to join in these stimulating conversations.
Online via Zoom and Howlround TV Free with Reservation
24 Hours for Palestine
July 20, 2024 - July 21, 2024
A 24-hour online event featuring 100+ Global Artists and Activists for a Free Palestine, including performances and presentations honoring the Palestinian people and their steadfastness in the face of genocide, and discussions of how to build solidarity in the global movement for Palestinian liberation.
(Title inspired by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish)
New Threads Staged Reading Series 2024
August 2, 2024 - August 9, 2024
The 2024 New Threads Staged Reading Series features the work of international Palestinian playwrights:
Raeda Taha’s Where can I find someone like you, Ali?
Hanna Eady’s The Return
Each reading includes a post-show conversation with the audience and the artists.
11Reflections: San Francisco
October 4, 2024 - October 5, 2024
Devised and directed by Andrea Assaf
featuring renowned Syrian opera singer Lubana Al Quntar
and Turkish violinist and music director Eylem Basaldi
An episodic, multimedia performance, 11Reflections: San Francisco features internationally renowned performers alongside Bay Area artists reflecting on the impact of post-9/11 policies through stories, poetry, music and more, illuminating our collective experiences since 2001—from the fall of the Twin Towers, to the U.S. wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, to the Muslim Ban, to the funding of genocide in Palestine.
11Reflections: San Francisco is part of a new national series of performance works by Andrea Assaf, Eleven Reflections on the Nation, a performance on Arab American identity, Wars on/of Terror, and “the constant, quiet rain of death / amidst beauty” in a post-9/11 world. In each participating city, the project engages local artists and community members.
ALAA: A Family Trilogy
November 16, 2024 - November 17, 2024
by Adam Ashraf Elsayigh
generative dramaturgy by Salma S. Zohdi
directed by Evren Odcikin
In 2011, blogger Alaa Abd El-Fattah became a leading voice of the Egyptian Revolution by fusing his activism and tech acumen, inadvertently following in his famous family’s activist legacy. Since then, he has spent much of the last decade in prison, unlawfully held by a military regime seeking to silence him and his family. Weaving writings and personal testimonials from Alaa and his family matriarchs, this epic and ambitious script-in-hand workshop presentation will present the second play in the Trilogy focusing on 2011 to 2014.
ALAA: A Family Trilogy is commissioned by Golden Thread Productions with support from the Gerbode Foundation. This presentation is part of the Z Space Technical Residency Program, supported by the Mellon Foundation.